Where does it hurt?

Identifying & Measuring Pain

Trigeminal Neuralgia is an incurable pain experienced in the face across the 3 branches of the trigeminal nerve. The symptoms are horrific - a cross between extreme toothache & an electric shock. When TGN pain strikes, sufferers will do almost anything to get relief.

But how do we know it's more painful than, let's say, planned childbirth?

This question is answered by the McGill Pain Index; an attempt by a team at the Canadian university to quantify and compare the severity of different types of pain. TGN scores 44 out of 50; planned childbirth scores 32.

Defining Pain for SaaS

Just like a human in agony, we know that B2B buyers act on Pain, and so just like the McGill Pain Index it was clear to me that we needed to be able to objectively quantify SaaS Pain, and so I created this - The Pain Scale.

Even numbers represent corporate Pain, e.g. Not acting will cause the company to get critical events wrong.

Odd numbers represent personal Pain e.g. I will lose my job if I don't get this right.

We can't all sell products that score a 9 or a 10, but if we can't get to at least a 5, we will never achieve any kind of traction. There are three principal answers to low scoring Pain.

Sometimes the answer is to pivot the product, sometimes it's to shift to an alternative market. Sometimes the answer is to change the messaging. It's the latter we will focus on today.

Example

You supply logistics software to the food processing industry. Its machine learning algorithms streamline their processes, and the UX is way more user friendly than the cumbersome twenty year old tech they’re using now. But they’re used to what they know, and it’s a big decision to change.

A pleasure-centred solution

Your sales team has struggled with the pleasure-focused pitch of ‘better UX’ and ‘better processes’. The Champion loves it, but they can’t get internal traction.

You notice that inefficient processes result in two tonnes of environmentally damaging waste every day, which contravenes environmental regulations and puts them in line for hefty fines. Initially you express the Pain as, “We prevent wastage and stop you having to pay fines”. But it still doesn’t quite get to the heart of the pain, as the messaging misses both the wider context, and the sharp stab of a well expressed Pain.

A pain-focused solution

You then realise you might have a 9 out of 10 on the Pain Scale on your hands, and you settle on, “Scrutiny of environmental wastage is now the number 1 priority for municipal government. Company directors whose businesses are  found to be responsible will be personally liable. Not only will the business face crippling fines, and deeply damaging PR, but you could end up with a prison sentence of up to 6 months”. Now that feels like something that ought to be acted on. Pain and context are now at the forefront of your offering.

Exercise

Come up with at least 5 Pains that your offering can solve, and play with different ways of expressing them in order to get the score as high as possible indexed against the Pain Scale. Note these Pains on post-its and organise them by most to least painful.

If you were to zoom in on just three Pains, the most significant, highest scoring Pains that implementing your product will unquestionably heal, which three would they be? These are critical because they will be the baseline for everything else you do:

• Your messaging
• How you develop your product
• Where you focus in demos & discoveries
• The story you tell to capture demand

Ask yourself, if your messaging were to focus on just these three Pains would it be sufficient for the buyer to act?

Pain is the baseline for Whole Revenue Strategy. Read more about that here.