Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

Note that this stuff is never as easy as it sounds on paper, but if you put enough effort in, it eventually works (in my experience anyway).

Also note that even if you're not pitching a product for sale (yet) asking people for their time for an interview is still an ask. Ideally you'd like to be able to offer to compensate people for their time somehow. I don't mean paying them cash or anything, but think about how to structure your invitations in such a way as to communicate that you're offering them something in return for their time. That "something" might be "an early peek at a revolutionary new technology for ABC" or whatever you can think of that is a way of giving some value to them. Be creative.

Also, it's not always the easiest thing to go in asking people "what are your pain points" in an extremely open-ended way. You might find that it's easier to start with a hypothesis about a possible pain point, and pitch things in terms of "We've noticed that firms like yours often have to deal with problem $FOOBAR. To that end, we're developing a novel solution for $FOOBAR, and we'd love a few minutes of your time (no sales pitch!) to talk about how $FOOBAR and related problems affect you. In return for a 30 minute interview, we'll offer you $SOMETHING".

He published a PDF guide here: https://thefoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Intro-t...

And there are many examples of him doing idea extraction online. While you can do IE via email/chat, phone calls or even in-person meetings are most effective.

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- Instead of quantity, go for quality. You just need a few good idea extraction sessions. (You may have to cold-call 100's of contacts before that first good session, though...)

I am not a doctor, but my university email was somehow put on a list of medical professionals.

So now my university email is barraged with all sorts of SPAM targeting medical professionals. It's impossible to unsubscribe/opt out. (I've tried, but I keep getting added to new lists. It's like the original list keeps reselling my email address.) I'm sure it's much worse for an actual medical professional.

I'm assuming you're not calling (Even with calls, I personally don't answer calls from unknown numbers due to the SPAM calls. You need to be leave a text if it is important, or be very persistent.)

My cousin was a dietician so she gave me a wonderful session. (I still have the notes.) She also referred me to a fellow dietician. That session did not go so well.

Very small sample size, but it seems there is a correlation between dieticians and a personality type that is not the easiest (for me) to talk with. Either certain personality types are driven to become dieticians, or the arduous journey to become a dietician filters/forms this personality. Not sure about other fields...

I decided to switch niches when I discovered how complex it would be to follow HIPAA regulations.

As others have said, you'd likely have more success leveraging your existing network or attending medical conferences, which may lend themselves more naturally to having these types of conversations (you're right that they're expensive though!).

All things considered, I think a 25% connection rate and a 1% interview rate is great.

They became doctors to practice medicine. Most likely, their pain points have to do with all the non-medical parts of running a small business, including staying in compliance with regulations like HIPAA.

From my coaching practice, people are not very good identifying there real pain point. My back hurts, but my back isn't broken, I just sit too much.

If you want to try different strategies in parallel, I work in sales for a healthcare SaaS and while my product is results/outcomes oriented, I have much better luck talking to people about RESULTS they want to achieve vs. PROBLEMS they want to solve. At least now we're getting excited about something good vs. something they are already sick of talking about, or know they can't fix.

Some of the pains in healthcare are so structurally embedded in the industry, products purporting to relieve those pains are so plentiful, and ACTUAL pain relieving results are so few and far between, that messages looking for honest input on major pains that doctors experience is too clear of a dogwhistle for "I'm going to try to sell you a solution that doesn't work" and will be ignored.

Many doctors, for example, are still nursing wounds caused by the shift to EMR from paper- pretty much every vendor in that space promises an "easy migration" and the reality is that porting to EMR or switching vendors is a massive massive pain in the ass. ANY solution for a pain, or for amplifying/increasing a beneficial outcome, comes at not only a financial cost, but (perhaps more importantly) an opportunity cost associated with the time investment. Time = patients, patients = reimbursement, reimbursement = money.

Edit: Another thing that works for me is seeding the conversation with something like, "Something I hear from a lot of providers in [specialty] is they have a problem with [problem], or they want to do more [thing]. Is that true in your practice?"

DONT include the question in your request. That will Heisenberg results.

DO ask then about /frustrations/, rather than /problems/. Frustrations are externally caused. Many people proudly believe that they are already handling any /problems/

I know you don't want to sounds sales-y, and there are ways to offer this without sounding like a salesperson. Just an idea

there is a hack around this but each industry is different

If you're just generally trying to get an idea of pain points in the industry I think you should get more specific. Here are some for instances:

- Are you trying to make the interface between the doctor and the patient easier?

- Are you going to look at the way the doctors interact with the EHR (electronic health records) vendors?

- Are you trying to make the check-in process easier for patients?

- Are you trying to provide analytics for long term quality of care metrics on hospitals?

- Are you targeting small clinics, hospitals, or ER/minor emergency rooms?

Also for cold calling doctors on Linkedin, I am not surprised that you aren't getting much feedback. Most of the doctors I've known tend not to be into online stuff. You might have more luck reaching out to a local professional organization.

Also you might think about trying to contact nurses, nurse practitioners, or physician's assistants. There might be a local nurses professional organization that you could reach out to who could ask their members if anybody is interested. Just frame it as you're trying to figure out a way to make their jobs easier.

This ended up being a little rambly, but I hope it's useful. Cheers.

They have no reason to trust you. I would think you're just looking for an angle to sell me on no matter what you say.

You might try attending/crashing medical conferences in the area. You could also talk to folks on the periphery of the healthcare industry to look for opportunities.

One that I experienced personally is the difficulty in matching a specific person at a specific point in their treatment to applicable clinical trials. Particularly with cancer where there are so many inclusion/exclusion criteria to consider. The terminology is very dense and not always clear. Then you reach out to the PI and find that the window is even smaller than it appeared at first.

First, find out where your prospects actually spend time. LinkedIn is garbage for a lot of industries. Most doctors don't change jobs much or building "personal brands", so they're not scanning LinkedIn often. Reddit can also be often a better community.

Second, don't cold message people. Put out HELPFUL (not clickbait) content. It can be as simple as a question ("hey, I'm wondering how people solve X?"). Let the community come to you. Then follow up with the people that engaged with your content. They've shown an interest in your topic AND a willingness to engage.

At the end of every call, ask two questions: can you follow up with them with further questions and is there anyone they can think of that would be helpful to learn more? For that second question ask them, IN THE CALL, to write an intro email/message connecting you. Social validation is critical.

Finally, actually follow up. 1-4 weeks later message an update, thank them for their perspective and connection, and again ask if there's anyone they can think of to learn more from.

I've had luck in another field, finding a very popular forum online that those in the field used. I simply introduced myself and offered to do IT work on their offices as a chance to meet people and learn more about the industry. It worked wonders.

[Before, during, and after the session you treat them well, don't waste their time, thank them, etc., which hopefully goes without saying]

Then when you're done with each interview, you ask the participant "hey, this was so great, can you recommend anybody else I should talk to?"

To that last sentence, I often used to add "... I'm looking for the most outspoken, opinionated expert you know, the person with no filter, who just tells it like it is". Chances are they know a person like that, and that person immediately leapt to their mind. That's who you really want to talk to anyway, the person who will tell you exactly what is wrong with everything out there.

In terms of asking people about pain points, the best approach I've used is to get them to list their pain points, then ask them to stack rank that list. If applicable, ask them how much they'd pay for a product that solved each of those problems, or just the top n. You want to know whether they're just brainstorming minor quibbles, or if there is actually an opportunity there.