There are two universal truths in selling.
1. People buy from you for their own reasons, not for your reasons.
2. Not everyone is qualified to be your customer.
There are only so many hours in a day, and you can waste a lot of time trying to sell to everyone.
You want to qualify your prospect quickly to discover if your prospect has a need for your product.
Pain and pleasure
There are only two motivators that cause people to do anything, including purchasing decisions—pain and pleasure.
These two motivators are exact opposites of each other. We want less pain and more pleasure.
They can be further broken down into the following four factors:
1. Pain in the present
2. Pain in the future
3. Pleasure in the present
4. Pleasure in the future
Pain in the present
Pain in the present is the most compelling motivator. It’s the most immediate and obvious.
If a water pipe bursts in the upstairs bathroom and starts flooding the first floor, you need to get it fixed NOW, regardless of the cost.
Because of the immediate need to remedy the problem, pain in the present usually commands the easiest close and biggest budget.
Pain in the future
Pain in the future is also known as fear. While fear is a motivator to buy, it’s not as strong as pain in the present. In order for this to be compelling enough to change behavior, the future must seem near and the pain inevitable.
Life insurance is a good example of a product that relies on pain in the future as a motivator.
Pleasure in the present
Pleasure in the present can also be referred to as instant gratification. This can be a very powerful motivator unless overridden by pain in the present.
For example, buying a new 70” 4K smart TV to watch the big game can be pretty compelling, but you’re not thinking about a new TV when water is raining down from your ceiling from a burst pipe.
Pleasure in the future
Pleasure in the future is a bit harder emotion to sell to unless your prospect has a history with you and knows you can deliver.
A stockbroker who has made profitable recommendations in the past can use pleasure in the future to sell new positions, but the prospect must strongly believe the future gains will occur.
Salespeople can mistake interest or curiosity as motivations to buy, but these will only get you so far. Interest can prompt someone to explore what your product has to offer, but the results of this inquiry must connect with one of the four motivators above to actually close the sale.
Since pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin, we will use the term “pain” to refer to all four motivators for the remainder of this article.
Uncovering their why
To qualify your prospect, you need to uncover all the problems and reasons that may motivate them to buy from you. Only once you know and understand their issues can you help guide the prospect to discovering how your product impacts their unique situation.
Their are three levels of pain that you need to walk through with your prospect:
1. Surface problems
2. Business reasons
3. Personal impact
Surface problems
Surface problems are the issues your prospect will openly share with the outside world. They are the what that needs fixing. However, these are the symptoms of deeper problems.
Examples of surface problems would include things like:
- Need to lower employee turnover
- Need to lower customer attrition
Business reasons
The business reasons are the why beneath the what. These are the underlying causes for the surface problems.
Looking at the first example in the above list, the high employee turnover might be caused by issues with the hiring process or problems with the on-boarding process and employee training.
The business reasons behind the high customer attrition might be due to poor customer service, issues with product performance or customer education.
While this is getting closer to why the prospect wants or needs your product, these reasons are still in the logical and intellectual realm.
Too often salespeople stop digging at this level and launch into spouting features and benefits.
People buy based on emotion and justify the purchase intellectually. This takes us to the next, most critical level of pain.
Personal impact
Personal impact is how the surface problems and their underlying business reasons will personally affect the prospect.
Continuing the turnover and attrition examples, the personal impact might be not receiving a bonus they are counting on for their family, or they might even lose their job.
The personal impact might not always be this dramatic, but you will know when you get to this level of pain when your prospect’s answers to your questions become more emotional and personal.
They may start talking about their anger, despair or other emotions.
The next section will cover how you lead the prospect through all three levels of pain.
The pain discovery process
Determining the real pain your prospect is facing is accomplished by asking questions, listening to the answers them following up with additional questions designed to get beyond the the surface problems to the business reasons, and ultimately, the personal impact.
You begin by asking questions to help identify the surface problems. Then you follow up with the series of questions below.
- Tell me more about that…
- Can you be more specific? Give me an example.
- How long has this been a problem?
- What have you tried to do about it?
- How well did that work?
- What do you think this has cost you?
- How do you feel about this?
- Have you given up trying to deal with this problem?
This series of questions will help you uncover key information about all three levels of your prospect’s pain that you will use to define how your product will solve their problem.
Initially, you will find out the specific details of their problem. Is this something your product will solve? This allows you to quickly qualify or disqualify the opportunity.
You will also learn the length of time the prospect has been experiencing this problem.
Additionally, you will gain an understanding of what they have already tried to remedy the problem and why their previous efforts haven’t worked.
You will uncover what this problem has cost the prospect and their company. Keep in mind there are other intangible costs besides money such as status, reputation and leadership in their industry or community.
Remember to look at the personal costs to your prospect such as missing out on a promotion or bonus. Could this problem lead to losing their job?
While uncovering this information takes time and patience, you will now have the information you need to be able to speak directly to their pain.
Set yourself apart
The last thing you want to do is come across as being just like your competition.
When you simply recite your features and benefits, you look and sound very similar to your competition to your prospect. Most company advertising and literature proclaim the highest quality, best customer service, latest technology, best value, etc. Your prospect doesn’t care about your latest and greatest—unless it will remedy their pain.
Stop doing what your competition does. Do something different.
Now that you understand your their pain you can focus on their specific needs instead of rattling off a laundry list of features and benefits that are meaningless to your prospect.
Three things to remember about pain
No pain = no sale
No one is going to buy a product or service unless it solves a problem they have, either now or in the near future.
The initial problem is never the real problem
The pain issues the prospect will openly share with the outside world are the symptoms of deeper problems. Sometimes they aren’t even aware of the underlying problems.
It is up to you to use the questioning process to reveal those business reasons and personal impact so you can address their real pain.
People buy emotionally and justify intellectually
This is why it is critical to reach the potential personal impact to your prospect. It will likely be the most emotional part of the discussion.
You must determine, then reinforce what the prospect will personally lose or miss out on if they don’t buy your product or service. What are the monetary and emotional costs if the problem isn’t solved.
Connecting with a strong emotional reason can overcome any intellectual objection.
Try digging to uncover your prospect’s business reasons and personal impact in your next sales meeting, then speak specifically about how your product cures their pain.
It’s not always easy, but if you can get all the way to the emotional pain, you will like how the rest of the meeting goes.
I work with sales professionals every day, helping them learn and implement an effective, efficient selling system that delivers career-changing and life-changing results when followed every time.
If you’d like to find out more about building rapport and how it fits into this selling system, send me an email at frank.Gustafson@sandler.com.
We can schedule quick Zoom call so we can talk about your needs and see if what we do is a fit for you or not..
There’s a popular Chinese proverb that states, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Here’s to your success!
Frank Gustafson
P.S. I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments below. Feel free to include your experiences whether you were shut down after reciting features and benefits, or you were able to discover the prospect’s emotional pain, show them how you could fix it and hit a home run.
