Addressing B2B customer pain points is arguably the most important element of the whole customer strategy process. Buyers today are more knowledgeable, more conservative with spending, and more likely to abandon companies if they don’t meet expectations (minimal responses, vague pricing, the feeling you’re not aligned, etc.). Customers will explore competitive options almost immediately if they feel slow to respond, vague pricing or hard-to-understand pricing, or unsatisfactory contact alignment and communication. To win in the B2B realm, businesses must have an ongoing understanding of their customers. It’s now no longer an option; it’s a must.
By customer pain points, we mean any level of issue that makes an overall client experience less than desirable. It could be a lengthy onboarding process, inconsistent communication or return on investment. Every time you can identify and resolve a customer pain point quickly, you demonstrate to customers you are a contributor who hears, pivots, and delivers.
The best-in-class B2B companies leverage B2B customer profiling and target audience analysis tools to discover the pain points. They don’t guess what customers want; they consider proven data and steward feedback to fuel innovation.
What are Customer Pain Points?
Customer pain points are impediments to obtaining goals or realising full value in a product or service. In B2B marketing, pain points are typically more financial, operational, technical, or emotional in nature.
A customer might feel it was expensive, hard to use, or needed to be more flexible. Sometimes, the issue isn’t even the product; it’s the trust that was broken due to a slow response time and/or miscommunication.
In order to address those situations accurately, you first need to identify the ideal customer. That starts with developing your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona.
An ICP refers to the kind of company that gets the best benefits from what you are selling – characteristics like size, industry, budget, and buyer behaviours matter. A Buyer Persona focuses on the person behind the decision: role, goal, struggles, and motivations.
Bringing both together, you learn not only about the company, you learn about the human being behind the purchase decision. The biggest benefit of how to create an ICP is alignment – the entirety of your company, from marketing through sales through customer success, has a common view of who your best customers are and how you serve them the best.
Five Most Common B2B Customer Pain Points
Each client will vary in uniqueness; however, there are five specific pain points present throughout most industries.
- Financial Pain Points occur when the buyer does not see tangible results. Your client wants to have the exact time and/or money saved from what your service provides. It can be hard to build loyalty without clarity on a positive ROI.
- Operational Pain Points happen when your “solution” makes the buyer’s work harder (which your service is not supposed to do). Most organisations still work with antiquated systems and non-connected tools. If your “solution” complicates the buyer’s process, it is perceived as another challenge, not a solution.
- Technical Pain Points arise when your solution doesn’t have smooth integration or downtime. Just a minor issue can lead buyers to believe you are unreliable and second-guess their financial investment.
- Personalisation Pain Points arise from choice-free communication. Buyers want to feel unique and valued, not another transaction. Individual support, along with personalised conversations, greatly improves loyalty.
Relationship Pain Points arise mostly from a lack of communication in a timely manner. In this age of technology, even the speed of a text or email is what buys you time. Daily communication/updates and an overall sense of transparent communication are necessary. Ongoing, interactive communication builds trust, confidence and accountability.
Identifying “Friction” in 2025
Identifying pain points comes down to seeing, hearing, and consistently following up over time. Schedule ongoing check-in calls with your customer. The follow-up discussions could be either formal or informal. Always ask open-ended questions, such as “What’s working?” or “What could be better?” The pain points will then appear that will never appear in reports or surveys.
You can examine support tickets, chat logs, and customer feedback to discover common pain points; if a handful of customers share the same one, it is definitely a pain point. Promote collaborative teamwork; sales, marketing, and customer success will typically experience various issues advancing to the same challenges.
Leverage metrics to identify trusted consumption behaviours – a drop off in usage, a holdup in the onboarding of a product, or low engagement are simply symptoms of friction. Use this information to profile your audience and leverage analytical measures to establish the path towards creating memorable moments. If at all possible, use the analytical measures to not solely depict what has transpired, but provide context as to why.
Creating a Good ICP
To boost your client engagement, think about enhancing your ideal customer profile (ICP). Making an ICP isn’t difficult, but it is a very valuable process. The hard work pays off with long-term results of higher retention, better alignment between teams, and a smoother sales process.
First, start with your best existing customers, and look for what they have in common, ie, company size, industry, and specific problems solved. You may also want to reach out to your sales and support team and ask which customers get the most success from your product and have continuous renewals.
This is how to create a proper ICP and keep it evolving as the market and buyer personas are always changing. After some time, your ICP will allow you to target better, market more efficiently, and develop customer engagement. The long-term benefits of an ICP, in theory, is higher retention, better team alignment and a more detailed sales strategy and process. One of the best strategies to eliminate friction and build lasting B2B relationships.
The Ortus Club’s Solution to B2B Challenges
At The Ortus Club, there is no relationship built solidly on business until we learn who your client is, and they discover for themselves who their clients are. Through our executive conversations and thought-leadership roundtables, we support organisations in ultimately uncovering their own clients’ challenges, discussing solutions to those challenges, and building on relationships.
That’s their own process of discovering their buying persona, curating an ideal customer profile, and analysing the features of the targeted audience, more than just marketing, an actual foundation to build upon to create connected business relationships for outcomes. When you listen and respond thoughtfully and communicate, that’s when business shifts from a vendor relationship to an ally you can trust. If you would like to develop your customer clarity, customer relationships, and business relationships further, join The Ortus Club’s executive roundtables and gain insights that drive real business growth.