Why score every pain twice?

Because how often a pain is mentioned and how much it hurts are different signals. The wince is the one that matters, and a single score hides it.

Are the example scores real conversations?

No. The worked example inside the tool is invented and labelled as invented. Your own conversations are the only real data in it.

Tool

Customer discovery questionnaire scorer for consulting founders

Run the ten-item pain list across your own conversations and score every pain twice.

The methodThe Wince Test

Ships with Customer discovery questions for a new consulting business, and is available on its own.

The pain questionnaire scorer is an interactive tool that takes the ten-item pain list from the playbook, runs it across your own customer discovery conversations and scores every pain twice: once for how often it was raised, once for how hard it landed. What comes out is a ranked list of what actually hurts the people you want as customers, produced before you have built or productised (productized) anything.

You enter each conversation as you have it: the person's role rather than their name, the context questions that let the same pain be sized differently in two different companies, and a score against each of the ten items. The scorer keeps the two scores apart and shows where they disagree, because a pain that is mentioned often and never makes anybody wince is not the one to build a consultancy on.

The outputs are the ranked pain list across all ten conversations, the gap between frequency and intensity for each item, and a first line for your proposition rewritten from the pain at the top. A worked example is loaded so you can see a scored set before entering your own. It is invented and labelled as invented on the page.

The method is the one I used to test propositions in the business that became DevOpsGroup, a services company that helped other businesses build and run software, which Steve and I started in 2013. The scorer is in development and comes with its playbook, Customer discovery questions for a new consulting business. The waitlist is open.

What you will get

01The ten-item pain questionnaire, ready to run in a conversation.

02Two scores per pain, frequency and intensity, held separately and compared.

03A ranked list across all ten conversations, with the gap between the two scores shown.

04A worked example, invented and labelled as such, so you can see a scored set first.

Who it is for

Founders with an idea, no customers yet, and a habit of pitching instead of asking.

Consultants about to productise a service on an assumption they have not tested.

Small teams who want market research that costs ten conversations rather than a budget.

Questions

Is the scorer available now?: No. It is in development and comes with its playbook, Customer discovery questions for a new consulting business. Join the waitlist and you will hear when it is ready.
Why score every pain twice?: Because how often a pain is mentioned and how much it hurts are different signals. The wince is the one that matters, and a single score hides it.
Are the example scores real conversations?: No. The worked example inside the tool is invented and labelled as invented. Your own conversations are the only real data in it.

Terms this tool uses

Runs with

Customer discovery questions for a new consulting business