Search Results for: pain

Pain is the essential element of the compelling reason to move forward in the sales process. However, pain exists blow the surface. Too many salespeople are satisfied with finding out what the prospect wants or needs and then moving on. Wants and needs are not pain. The pain exists in the answer to the question why they want it, or why they need it. The real answers to those questions take longer to uncover and if you move on after only discovering the wants or needs you will not have uncovered the actual compelling reason to buy. The result of that will become clear when the deal stalls and you can’t close it. Over time your pipeline becomes bloated with unqualified and uncloseable deals, your forecasts become unreliable and you waste a lot of time chasing dollars that never materialize. The solution is to linger in the pain step of the sales process until you are sure there is either a compelling reason to buy or are convinced there is not now a compelling reason and will never be one so you can close the file and move on.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

You can transmit information by email. You can answer a quick question which does not require a complicated answer by email. And you can even submit a proposal by email. But you can’t find pain by email. One of the primary reasons is that people are reluctant to admit to emotional issues in writing unless it is in a diary and most of those are not meant to be seen by anyone. Another reason email pain finding does not work is that you cannot read the tonality and the body language of the prospect in an email. You cannot see how the prospect reacts to tough questions in an email and you cannot be sure that the answer you get by return email was crafted by the author and not by a colleague they conferred with. You are limited by how much you can say (that the prospect will read) in an email and you cannot insert your own tonality into the words to either soften the delivery of a tough question or to imply assuredness or any other modifier to the words you transmit. There are many other reasons but those mentioned herein should be enough to get you to pick up the phone and call the prospect.

Sales calls sometimes get bogged down and go nowhere. Did you ever lose the thread of a conversation and end up having the conversation go in a direction that was not helping to move the pursuit along the way it should have? One way to combat that is to become a pain seeking missile. Just follow the pain where ever it leads, even if it seems like it is going nowhere. When you get to the real pain the prospect is more likely to act. Once you can get the prospect to open up and discuss what is really bothering them (at the deepest level) you will accomplish two things. First you will know what problem to work on solving and the prospect will more than likely move the ball forward. And second you will discover that you have a closer bond to the prospect. And the bonus is that if your missile fizzles without finding any pain, you can move on to a prospect who does.

Salespeople who only focus on the problem the organization is having can miss the factor that is most likely to motivate the prospect to take action or to authorize purchase of your product or service.  Prospects are motivated by personal pain more than merely a problem that needs to be solved. Personal pain can be defined as how the prospect feels about the problem at hand. The first step is to understand the problem of course. the second step is to uncover how the problem affects the person you are talking to. but the most important step is to get the prospect to share with you how he or she feels about how the consequences of the problem affect their life. A company may be less efficient because of an outdated CRM. However consider two separate situations one in which the VP of Operations is focused on upgrading the manufacturing equipment and another in which the President has just informed him that the slow CRM is costing thousands of dollars in lost sales and told him his job is on the line if he doesn’t get it fixed. In which case does the CRM salesperson have a better chance of making sale? Yet most salespeople fail to uncover the real motivation and focus on show how good the CRM system will perform. The winner will be the one who gets to the real issue – the VP’s job security.

The world is a dynamic place and things change from day to day. Just think about your own company and your own life today compared to last quarter or last year. If your life and your perspective changes so much why would you think that the prospects life and perspective would be any different? When things change in the prospects life, their view of your product and the urgency to make a purchase will also change. When their situation changes, that change will have a major impact on whether you can close the sale and how and when you should close the sale. The fact that the situation can change mandates that you stay abreast of the latest developments. When you go in to make a presentation or have a follow up meeting, make sure that you verify that things haven’t changed dramatically since your last meeting before you proceed. You can read more about it here.

If you want insight into the thought process of the prospect, then ask them “What do you attribute that to”. Or you can ask “What, in your mind, caused that”. You would ask this question when they told you about a situation or problem they are facing. The normal course of action would be to say, “tell me more about that”. Or maybe to ask another question delving into the details of the problem. The value of asking “what caused that” is that it gives you an idea about what the prospect thinks the real problem is. It might also give you a clue as to how to solve the problem. But the real value is in giving you more information about how the prospect thinks and what the real pain is. You can always go back and get more details about the problem with follow up questions.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Predators pounce on their prey. They lie in and wait for the prey to come by, then pounce on them and have their way. Obviously, the prey tries to escape the clutches of the enemy. That is what it feels like to a prospect when you leap in with a solution at the first mention of a problem. Leaping in with a solution is what I call “pouncing”. Even if the prospect does not instinctively recoil, you will lose control of the conversation. Oh, you may think you have control because you will be talking. You will be explaining your solution and answering questions. But all further progress toward uncovering the prospects pain and compelling reason to buy will come to an abrupt halt. The prospect will have a solution (or at least an approach to consider) and you, the salesperson, have nothing and have lost control of the conversation. The better approach is to acknowledge the issue and ask for the prospect to elaborate and give you more detail. At the appropriate time you can propose a solution. By that time, you will have uncovered the compelling reason to buy and otherwise properly qualified the prospect.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Salespeople worry about differentiating their product or service from that of the competition. Meanwhile, they use the same Me-centered sales process they all use. They superficially discover the need and then start talking about the things they think will differentiate their product. However, the best way to differentiate yourself is to focus on the prospect and really drill down into not only what they say they need, but why they need it. In other words, what pain do they have and what is the real issue they are trying to solve or that they worry about. The fact is that you tell more about what you know by the questions you ask than by the statements you make. So, ask questions your competition does not ask, dig deeper, challenge the prospects assumptions (gently) and they will see you as someone who is different than all the rest. Isn’t that what differentiation is all about?

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan