But wait, did you take your own shoes off?

It takes empathy to understand your customers’ pain points.

During business school, marketing classes were full of topics about understanding customers’ pain points, however, it didn’t teach me what it takes to really understand customers’ pain points. When I started my career and went for my first observational research trip to two big pharmaceutical organizations on the East Coast, I was pretty confident, I knew what their pain points were. Quite frankly, I was only seeking confirmation of what I have been able to derive based on my business school knowledge, anecdotal info, and reading of some marketing research reports. However, when I started hearing directly from the customers, they were telling something very different, shattering what I thought was the problem. It was an uncomfortable feeling. It was hard to accept that I was wrong and my assumptions were way off.

Before I took my next trip a few months later, I spent some time reflecting on this. I came across a beautiful quote, “To understand your customers’ pain, you have to get in their shoes, however, before you get into their shoes, don’t forget to take off your own”.

This was an eye-opener for me and accurately captured what I experienced during my first visit. On my next visit, I had to constantly remind myself to be open-minded while hearing from the customers. I had to stop myself from rushing to any judgment and hasty conclusion. I learned that the key was to ask open-ended questions and observe keenly. The mantra was to talk less and listen more.

Surely, it was not easy to practice this, but being deliberate about this paid off. I was able to develop a better value prop and narrative to connect the solution and the pain points. Case in point, our sales team was constantly telling us that they were losing the deals because our system had a smaller field of view (FOV) than the main competitor. Customers wanted a bigger FOV for better workflow. The logic was intuitive and made sense. However, when we conducted the observational and market research, it turned out number fifth on the list of ten key important factors. It turned out, large FOV was not so critical. Users were more interested in some key accessories and other 3rd party instruments which were needed to conduct the study but were not standardized and not available from a single provider. This revelation helped us to drop the new product development idea and focus on our efforts to find a super vendor to consolidate multiple small vendors.

Over the years, I have now become humbler and more mindful that my customers are not interested in the nails that I am selling. They are interested in hanging the family photo in the living room.

Taking my own shoes off before I get into customers’ shoes is hard, but it gives me an insight that is invaluable. As a marketer, it empowers me to create value for the right customer with the right solution. The reward is worth the pain.