Vitamin? Pain-killer? What’s your product do for humankind?

The other day, I was yacking with Ken, an old friend and colleague,and he mentioned he was working hard to make sure that, when he’s communicating the value of his company’s products, he makes it a point to focus on the “painkiller” features, rather than on the “vitamin” features.

I wasn’t familiar with this nomenclature, but I instantly got it.

• Vitamin = nice to have
• Painkiller = gotta have

Grrrrrrr.  How many hours have I spent over the course of my career trying to convince someone that the expensive horse pill I was trying to get them to gag down was actually going to save them some pain? As often as not, it was just a vitamin - easy enough to do without. And as often as not, the customer had another way to take care of whatever my horse pill vitamin was going to do for him (or to him). Mostly, he could keep on wolfing down a Brussells sprouts on Wonder Bread sandwich each day and end up in the same place vitamin-wise. Now, I might have looked at that Brussels sprouts sandwich and known with absolute surety that my product was better all the way around. But, of course, when you factored in price, there was seldom any comparison. Brussells sprouts on Wonder Bread was, invariably, nearly free. Plus, it was the way things were always done. Folks had even acquired a tolerance, if not a taste for it. Why start paying big bucks for my horse pill?

Anyway, I went to The Google and found that the vitamin vs. pain-killer argument is that of Microsoft’s Don Dodge. You can check out Don’s full (and excellent) post here.

Naturally, we’re better off when our products are painkillers, i.e., solve a problem that is not of the elephant on the table variety, but is a bona fide elephant standing on my foot problem. Get that elephant out of here, and give me something for my damned foot!

One thing that Don points out is that many products fall into the vitamin category - until disaster strikes. Then, all of a sudden, they’re a painkiller. Backup is an example that he gives - although, when you think about it, if you only start using backup after you’ve lost all your data,it’s more of a prophylactic than a painkiller - unless it can be used to restore the lost data, in which case it’s painkiller plus prophylactic. (Two mints in one!)

In any case, even if it’s imperfect, the metaphor is apt.

And there is considerable (additional) wisdom in Don’s post.

You really ought to read the entire thing, but I’ll leave you with this:

Understanding what makes your product a “must have” painkiller versus a “nice to have” vitamin is the key to successful marketing. Identifying the key pain points and how your product solves them in a simple value proposition is job one. There are sometimes “trigger events” that cause these pain points. These “trigger events” cause your product to convert from a “vitamin” to a “painkiller” for customers. Qualifying your sales leads by trigger events and pain points will help focus your sales and marketing efforts and result in much higher win ratios.

Think real hard, right now. Make a list of the pain points your product solves. Make a list of trigger events that cause the pain to happen. Now think about how to identify these “trigger events” as they happen among the hundreds or thousands of potential customers. Get this right and your sales productivity will sky rocket. Get it wrong and your sales people will end up “dialing for dollars” and wondering why they are not being successful.

If I’d truly understood this 25 years ago, I could have avoided buckets-full of pain.

Instead, I spent more years than I care to remember popping a horse pill and some customer’s mouth, and clamping their muzzle shut until they swallowed it. Some of these horse pills, I’m afraid, weren’t even nice to haves. Quack medicine was more like it!

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