Your Prospect's Pain Tolerance Threshold?

In this day and age, consumers do business with hundreds of organizations to sustain their daily lifestyle. The number of services in daily use by each individual is quite staggering; between paying bills, searching for solutions and calling customer service, hundreds of hours are consumed annually.

The Merchant Pain Tolerance Threshold.

Because it is inconvenient to switch merchants every time the consumer is burned, they have built up what we call the Merchant Pain Tolerance Threshold. This pain threshold is higher or lower given the industry. Consumers have built up a high pain threshold for merchants such as banks, wireless providers and cable companies. On the other hand, consumers have a very small threshold for household supplies, gas stations, and cereals. If your cereal is awful, you will immediately switch, but if your cell phone company is awful, you may wait, or even not switch at all!

Astonishingly, merchants that charge the most seem to be the companies that consumers have the highest pain threshold for. These consumers will do business for 20 years with a terrible merchant simply to avoid the perceived pain that comes with it. Knowing that ALL of your customers experience life with an acquired pain tolerance threshold should change your strategy on reaching new customers.

Does Your Company Come With Less Pain?

Every prospect is most likely doing business with your competitor (company "x"), thus there is a given pain threshold they are willing to bear before even considering switching. Keep in mind because you are in the same industry, the prospect will attribute the same amount of pain to you in addition to the pain of the switching process. This means you always come in as the higher pain option.

Keep in mind the factor keeping you from new business is "perceived pain" NOT actual pain. Your prospect has no idea that you are more convenient or offer better service, and you can't tell them, because their current "solution" told them the same thing.

How To Eliminate Some Perceived Pain

One crucial step to eliminating perceived pain, therefore acquiring new business is to use design as your pain killer. Humans have already been using this strategy since the beginning of time. We do, in fact, "judge a book by it's cover." We judge perceived pain (or risk) using visual clues. Design allows you to consciously and subconsciously communicate to your prospect that you are a lower pain option.

Wrap It Up Already

It should be obvious by now that lacking professional design could be your company's death. If your marketing material is ugly, your website isn't current or your logo is dated, your prospect will only see pain triggers. Without great design, your prospect's brain assumes your company is ABOVE their Merchant Pain Tolerance Threshold.

Are you going to change that?