What do your customers need? Taking it one step further – how can you help them serve whom they serve? How can you help them do what they need to do?
What is their pain?
Some marketers talk about their customers’ pain. What causes your customers pain? What bugs them during their day? What makes it so they can’t do what they want to do? Therein lies your opportunity.
Listen for what is below the words
It may be hard to get to the root problem, but a conversation that is allowed to meander a bit, will give you many clues. Listen deeply.
Needs aren’t always apparent
What your customer needs is not always what they think they need. For instance, many people tell me they need more time in their day; which, of course, is impossible. The paradox of time is that if you slow down, stop multi-tasking and work more strategically, you become way more productive. That starts with slowing down.
Try telling a busy business owner they need to slow down and you’ll get 2 responses: I know and I can’t. They think they need to slow down for their health and sanity and they are willing to jeopardize those because those are future effects, but, really, they need to slow down for their productivity.
Here is a worksheet to help you. Worksheet 1.1.2
What do your customers need? Do you have stories about customers who thought they needed one thing, but really needed something else? How did you get to the root of the problem?