As a business owner or CEO, have you ever asked yourself what pain or problem does your business solve for your customer? The other day I asked a coaching client this exact question and he couldn’t give me a clear answer — his response showed that there was some real fuzziness around what it is that they were actually doing for their customers. Since he really couldn’t identify what the pain or problem was that they solved, I told him that he had to get clear about this and actually put himself in the customer experience.

I wanted to share with you the process and questions I walked him through in case you find yourself in the same situation.

• What is it that people pay you to do or create?
• What solution or problem do they come to you (and give you their hard earned money) to help them with?
• Write out what you do for people, for your customers, your clients.
• My challenge to you is to actually then put on the client “hat” and go through your own process:  call your company; email your company; buy your product; demo your product; go through the whole process from beginning to end as if you knew nothing about it and see what it would be like if you were a customer or client. And then ask if it really delivers the solution to the pain or problem that you think it does or is it something different? Maybe you need to add something or take something away.

This gives you a 360 degree view of what the pain or problem is that you’re really solving. If you do this, you might discover that something has changed since you started your business. At least then you can know if something is changing right now or if you are in touch with what the pain or problem is for your customer.

Depending on what you discover, this is a great starter conversation!

Pick 4, 5 or 10 of your best customers and sit down with them and ask them these questions:

• What do you look to us for in problem solving, pain relief and solutions?
• What is it that you’re actually investing in when you do business with us?

Out of their responses, I think you’re going to be surprised that there are other opportunities, and then there are also going to be things that you’re doing that they don’t really value at all! Things that can be converted into something else that’s a lot more profitable for you and makes the customer a lot happier about your service.

Also if you can start these conversations, it creates a lifetime relationship for a customer. What is the value of a customer, not just for one transaction but for the next 5, 10 or 20 years?

So that’s my challenge to you today. If you’d like help around this or if you’d like to talk about how to implement this in your company, reach out to us at www.confidencecoach.org. We’re also on YouTube. If there’s someone else that you think needs help in this area, please feel free to share this with them too. Make it a great day.