Pain Relief Technology – term used to describe certain products or technologies that are typically only understood, or perceived as useful, when you have a problem. When used, they ‘relieve the pain’.

For example, many people do not understand Web Acceleration or Application Acceleration until they have a bandwidth or performance problem. As part of searching for the solution they discover a whole marketplace of web acceleration and caching appliances that can solve their problems. Before this time, they have never really considered how the technology works or what it can do for them.

Many vendors of niche technologies will tell you that the best customers are those that are ‘having pain’ becuase they will take the time to understand the technology and or find the money to buy the equipment. Its a much easier sell when the customer has a problem and they need a solution.

Selling Pain Relief Technology on a proactive basis is much more complicated.

See also Distress Purchase.