What is a pain point in sales?
A specific problem the buyer has, the reason a change might be worth their time.
What it means
A pain point, or just pain, is a specific problem the buyer has. It is the reason a change might be worth their time and money. Almost every sales method starts here: SPIN calls it the problem, SPICED and MEDDPICC call it pain, and Gap Selling looks at the gap between today and where they want to be.
A missing feature is not a pain point. The pain is what the problem costs them in time, money, risk, or stress.
What it means for a sales email
The pain should be specific to this buyer, not a generic problem you could paste into any email. If you are guessing, say it as a guess they can correct, and ask whether you have it right.
Research points the same way. In a Salesforce survey, business buyers said they want sellers to understand their goals. Corporate Visions found that naming a cost of the current approach the buyer may not have weighed yet can be more persuasive than repeating a need they already stated.
Research mentioned above: Salesforce, 2022Corporate Visions, 2018
Try it on your own draft
Free tools that check this in your own writing. Nothing you type is stored.
Read more
Related terms
See where all of our guidance comes from. No statistic on this page is invented.