Chapter 4 Step 2: Pain Points Identification

● To know consumer pain points, the target market can be asked

Opportunity Seeking: Market — what they dislike about a particular brand or product.
○ These dislikes can be plotted on a moment-of-truth
Product Fit map that captures the consumer buying journey.

Opportunity Seeking is the process of spotting, evaluating and pursuing
relevant and sustainable revenue and profit generating activities in the
marketplace.
There are many ways to spot opportunities. One way is to use
what is called the Voice of Customers (VOC).
● Another way is the Voice of Enterprise
But seeking a market-product fit requires an understanding of the product
life cycle concept in order to know where the consumers are, and
therefore be aligned with their needs, which is especially important when
introducing a new product category.
Voice of Customers (VOC)
- is a research process used to capture the changing needs of
customers.
A key to the Voice of Customers is identifying and
understanding pain points, barriers and its root causes to trigger
greater demand in an industry.
● Note the best time to ask is when the consumers are conscious
of these pain points so get as close to the customers when they
are using the product or encountering your service.
● Entrepreneurs must not only want to solve customer’s
problems to win sales and profit but must have a caring
attitude and genuine desire to improve the lives of their
customers.
○ Beyond understanding their needs, they must
understand the customers as human beings — with
desires and fears, as well as aspirations and frustration
in life.
Exhibit 4-3: Pain Points of Consumers of a
Furniture and Appliance Retailer
Dislikes Wishlist

Exhibit 4-1: Pain Point Process Long time to check inventory

Before a level available in-store.
Purchase
Step 1: Pain Hunting
Being sold the display unit Something interesting to
● Entrepreneurs must choose a specific group of people as their During a with some scratches. read or watch while waiting
target market. Purchase for payment processing.
● Whether customer or noncustomer group, the group must Need to fall in line and pay
behave in a homogenous way like having common traits and twice: for furniture at the
seeking common benefits. furniture cashier and for
appliances cashier.
● The entrepreneur’s company must be capable of serving the
group well which must also be large enough to be profitable for Long time to process
the entrepreneur. payment.

Delivery schedule should not Coordinated briefing about

EXHIBIT 4-2: 4 TYPES OF BENEFITS After a be anytime within morning installation
Purchase (or within afternoon) but (extra parts to be bought by
have a narrower range for different crew to be expected
4 Types of
shorter waiting time. for installation.)
Consumer What Is It? Examples
Benefits Guard inspects product
bought.
Benefit related to the Mansmith and Fielders Inc.
Functional performance of the has proprietary training on
Benefit product or service the “5 Skills of Master
Strategists”. Some Examples of Pain Points if Suppliers are Unable to
be relevant to the retail channel members are as follows:
Benefit related to the Ever Bilena cosmetics are of
Economic price of the product or good quality but cheaper ● Lack of area coverage
Benefit service than imported cosmetics. ● Unsupervised placement and merchandising
● Sporadic availability of stocks
Benefit related to how “I feel I have high self-worth ● Low margin
Emotional the owner feels when when I hold a cup of ● Transactional approach, not relational or strategic in
Benefit owning or using the Starbucks coffee.”
account development
product or service
● Unprofessional salespeople
Benefit related to how Seeing entrepreneurs riding
Social Benefit other will perceive the in their BMW, Volvo or Benz,
owner of the product makes me think they are
financially successful.
 Step 3: Pain Points Understanding

● Not all pain points have the same level of importance.

● Entrepreneurs must understand the frequency, and depth then

choose the key pain point priorities that must be solved due to
relative higher impact that can be felt by the customers.

● This is where critical processes need to be identified and

prioritized based on which can solve more of a customer's
problems or create greater value for the customers.

● For instance, one of the dislikes in exhibit 4-3 is that the

security guard inspects products bought by consumers upon
exit, the last moment of truth in the customer purchase
journey
○ This could be very annoying to the customer who may
feel like a suspect or thief, as this is irrelevant or
inconvenient step, which is clearly more for internal
control or supply side thinking rather than for the
protection of the customer

While most benefit segmentation is based on consumers’ functional

needs, another way to do segmentation is via Emotive Needs, called
“Needscope” by market research firm Kantar

This includes:
1. Expressive (How one looks)
- Used by fashion and personal care
2. Gratification (How one feels)
- Used by food and pharmaceutical products
(or in the above example, of customer dissatisfaction
when security guard inspects products bought)
3. A combination of both (How one looks and feels)
- Used by the automotive and telecom industries

Step 4: Pain Healing

● It is important for entrepreneurs to have empathy and not just

understand pain points, but also accept that change is needed,
and that speed of change by external factors may leave them
obsolete in their industry.

● They should not be swivel chair owners, relying on reports that

have already been filtered by their subordinates.

● Entrepreneurs must have a regular schedule to go on field visits

and converse with customers and consumers directly, instead
of “outsourcing their eyes” all the time

● The need to know what is happening behind the numbers

being reported