Take Away Your Customer's Pain

Smuckers makes a really inventive product called Uncrustables. It’s essentially a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the crust. There are 4 sandwiches in each box, and I paid almost $5.00 for just one box. That means I’m paying more than $1.00 per sandwich! So what is it that we can learn from Smuckers Uncrustables? Here are a few things I came up with:

1. Find something that makes your potential customers mad! There are obviously a lot of people who don’t like the crust on their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Smuckers used that to their advantage. Their customers would rather pay $1.00 per sandwich, than cut the crust off themselves.
2. It’s all about convenience. It would be a lot less expensive for someone to buy a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and a jar of jelly and make their own sandwiches. However, customers are willing to pay more for convenience. Smuckers identified their customer’s pain and came up with an idea to resolve it. So now they have a fun product that they make a huge profit on and they have happy customers.

Now how can we apply this idea to your company? You just need to find out what causes your customers grief. If you can find a way to solve these problems, they will be willing to pay you more money. From issues about setting up websites to getting loans, and everything in between, this concept can apply to all of your products and services.