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PROBE FOR
PAIN
By Tom Reilly, author of Value-Added Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2003)
When you go to the doctor and tell him that you don't feel well,
he will ask where it hurts. Most people don't go to the doctor unless they hurt.
Pain is nature's way of telling us that something needs to be fixed. Whether
it's a pain in your belly, a backache or a sore tooth, pain motivates.
Pain motivates customers to buy. When the pain of something is greater than the
gain of holding on to their money, people buy. Pain also plays a major role in
deflecting price objections or relegating price to an end-of-the-sale detail.
Where is your buyer hurting? What keeps her up at night? What does he fear more
than paying a little more than he anticipated for something? Buyers who feel
pain are motivated to do something about it. The greater the pain, the greater
the motivation to act.
Probe for pain. Dig for what makes them hurt. Drill down to find root-canal pain
that will make the buyer eager for a solution. Ask these questions:
-What is your biggest headache on this project?
-What's keeping you up at night?
-What concerns you most about moving forward?
-What is the one thing you would like to fix that would make your life instantly
better?
-What is giving you the most grief at this point?
-What is the biggest pain in the neck you face with this project?
-If you could solve just one problem what would it be?
As a salesperson, your job is to be a pain specialist. First, you probe for the
pain. It's an important part of your diagnosis. You want to know what makes the
buyer hurt. Dig for the hurt. Identify the motivation for why the buyer will
budge.
Second, prescribe the correct medication to fix the problem and make the pain go
away. If you don't have the medicine in your bag, help the buyer find it even if
it means sending him down the street to another supplier. Your job is to make
the pain go away. He'll remember that you were the one that pointed him in the
right direction.
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