Episode #257: You Need Pain In Sales

When you contemplate this title you are probably thinking about heroic sales efforts, massive privations, sacrifice, striving, discipline, patience and forbearance. Actually I am not talking about any of that mighty stuff. I am talking about your client. The really irritating thing about sales is trying to get someone to buy who doesn’t need what you are offering. You know they should have it, but they don’t know. That makes it really hard to persuade the buyer to activate.

We know we should be running the sales conversation along the railway track progressing through the sales continuum. That track follows this order-build the trust, get permission to ask questions, uncover needs, perfectly match solutions, deal with any push back and ask for the business. When we get to the discovery part, there is nothing so painful as finding out they don’t have any significant pain. The client is happy with their current supply arrangements. They can’t see the need to encompass dealing with the angel (you) they don’t know, when they are comfortable and safe and sound with the devil (your competitor) they do know. Not all is lost though. We can try all manner of things to break in, such as suggesting some form of trial, also some other very low friction starts to the relationship such as elongated payment terms, etc. We can try and introduce something better at a small scale to try and pry open the jaws to new business.

Japan is a place where once you get in, the client tends to want to stick with you, because you are a known factor and so the risk element has pretty much been homogenised and dealt with. A new supplier is painful for the buyer because now they have to go through that whole risky process from the start. Here the buyers are super risk averse, so it is easier to say “no thank you”.

The other pain point is no perceived need. We deal with a lot of large companies, particularly multi-national companies who have devolved their own internal solutions. This is a big irritant. The local boss feels there is a solution that works already in play. So there is little pain requirement there to elicit any change or to introduce something additional. This is the point. When they don’t feel any pain and significant pain right now, you can’t gain the new business.

I was speaking to a potential client and knew they had an internal solution. The reason I knew it is because I have been trying to break into their company for a number of years. Every time I saw the boss, I would hit him up about doing something together. I had a very steady response rate: no, no, no and no, for the last eight years.

Well that old boss just retired and bingo we have a new face running the show. So of course, I am thinking here might lie some pain relief against this permanent rejection I have been suffering. Valiant efforts to excite the new broom on the possibilities were made, but that spark of interest wasn’t burning in his eyes. I am dangling tasty morsels in front of him, but he is not salivating in anticipation. His eyes are dull and disinterested. He is polite, which I like, but I can’t see any buying signals, which I don’t like. Why? I can see that what I am offering, in the way I am offering it, is not demonstrating a big enough pain gap between where they are now and where they want to be. He thinks they can do it themselves, so no sale.

There is always an issue with industries which are booming. The money is rolling in, so the idea of doing anything new or different isn’t a contention. Ironically when things go bad, they are trying to cut costs, so they are hell bent on reducing the supply of various external solutions. So when is the happy time to make the sale?

I was thinking about what could I have done better, to demonstrate the differences our solution could have brought. I had tried a few well tested ideas that have sponsored some interest previously, in other similar situations, but the eyes were not shining. I could see the passivity inside the mind. I just wasn’t hitting anything interesting enough to inspire a test or trial or any of the usual door openers.

Sometimes the gap is not big enough to squeeze through. The amount of pain being experienced, is being dealt with sufficiently from within. They have invested in a solution already, it works, so “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it baby” reigns supreme as an ideology.

I think I didn’t do a good enough job on painting the word pictures of what the brave new world with us would look like. Reflecting on the conversation, I was mightily aware of the sunny uplands of our solution, but I failed to get that image into words that inspired action.

So unless your client feels pain or is shown that pain is coming their way, there will be no gain for the salesperson. We have to keep trying and we don’t always hit the ball out of the park, but we have to keep swinging.