One of the key aspects of the sales process is pain discovery. Today I want you to know a little bit more about what true pain looks like, so that you have a better feel for when you're there and a better understanding of what it's going to accomplish in the process. Most people spend time on problem identification but it's the intellectual stuff, it's the surface issues, and they don't get below the surface as to what the real issues are. One of our rules is "pain is personal and emotional".
Curiosity is the level that most sales people sell to. They sell to this whole "yeah they have some interest" but then they get a lot of think it overs, and they don't get motivated people to take action to fix their problems. When we're in the sales process I want you to ask yourself the question, 'am I getting to the personal and emotional level'?
There's a few levels to that. When I say personal, you might be dealing with a company that has a company pain (I'll pick something generic like quality issues), then you have to drill it down into the department. What's the department's pain? If you're selling into a quality department, or the procurement department, or operations, or whatever, your world looks like, they have a departmental consequence to what that company pain is. If there's a quality issue as a company, shipping and logistics has a much different view of that pain than someone in procurement, or someone in brand management would have.
So, we start with the company pain, then departmental pain, and then for each department, what is their personal impact or consequence as a result of this overall quality issue. If we're not talking to people that have a strong enough pain related to that overarching pain, they're not going to be motivated to make changes and we're going to keep getting 'think-it-overs' and they won't be motivated to take action.
When you're looking at the process, look at the company issue and the departmental issue but most importantly get down to the people. What's their true motivator? On your next few sales calls, take it to that level.
Ask yourself the question am I getting to the personal and emotional pain?
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