Two Dissatisfactions

You spot a user on social media telling us they don’t like this piece of software they use.

Is there a product here?

You hear of another person making an effort to piece stuff together, trying to make something work, and then something comes to destabilize their plan. Their pieced-together options won’t cut it no more.

And here, is there a product you can make?

There’s more a product to be made from the second dissatisfaction, only because it happens further along in the story. There’s more momentum, there’s more clarity, more urgency, real trade-offs.

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Here’s a typical structure to most purchase stories.

An initial thought comes in the mind of the person.
“Maybe I should do something about this.”
This builds a bit of momentum. No dissatisfaction yet.

Something happens to kick up the momentum, start looking more seriously. They fall on a piece of software.
“Oh, I really don’t like this.”
This cranks up the momentum.

This was the first dissatisfaction you saw online. It doesn’t mean anything just yet, because although they might complain, they’re not far enough into their thinking. It’s reactionary.

They’ve been trying a few options over a few weeks, piecing things together. And then suddenly there’s a real urgency.
“Oh, this won’t work for sure.”
They might look at the original piece of software, or look for a much simpler option with just the right features. They know more about the hole where the solution will need to fit.

They make a purchase.

That second dissatisfaction had some real tug. Not as much idealism nor criticism. Maybe they even paid way more money than initially planned. Maybe they didn’t wait for these extra features. The second dissatisfaction was more mature.

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A buyer complains about price, and ends up paying way more, happily, in the end.

A buyer complains about missing features, and ends up picking that software despite the missing features, happily.

It pays to listen carefully for that second dissatisfaction, the one closer to reality, when planning the product to build. It pays because that’s where they told you, more clearly, where they wanted progress.