No Pain? Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth
I admire Sharon Drew Morgen. She wrote a book called Selling With Integrity back in the late 90s, and, though much of selling has changed since then, I credit her with one of the biggest insights I’ve had about selling, which I read in her book: the notion that all our prospects will shop around before they hire us. So the question is, would we rather have them consider our competitors when they’re with us, or when we’re gone? I started saying, “What options have you considered?” to my prospects after that, and that’s a good thing to add to most selling conversations.
I also like Sharon’s more recent book, Dirty Little Secrets, which posits that so many selling efforts fail because sellers aren’t attuned to the buying process – or, really, the change process, in their prospects’ organizations.
So liking Sharon Drew as I do, I was surprised to see her blog post “Your Prospects Aren’t in Pain” on Friday. Showing an aging guy holding a bad back, Sharon Drew writes, “If your buyer had pain, they would have fixed the problem already.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
People have all sorts of pain. You do, I do, everyone does.
When I teach “look for the pain when you’re selling”, I define “pain”, in that context, as:
· Things that are going wrong for your prospect right now
· Things that have gone wrong for your prospect in the past
· Things that your prospect is afraid are going to go wrong in the future, or
· Things that your prospect has heard have gone wrong for other people in situations similar to his
…and I teach, further, that pain can be broken into two types: irritant pain and actionable pain. Most pain is an irritant – it bothers you, but not enough for you to spend money or time or effort trying to fix it. Actionable pain is pain that’s bad enough to spend money/time/effort trying to correct.
But even if your prospect has actionable pain, the specific pain he has may not be at the top of his “pain list”! Even actionable pain may not be your prospect’s top priority.
Sharon Drew makes the point that “In order for buyers to buy, they need to manage systemic change”, and that’s true for big-scale pain; she’s also right when she points out that corporate “buyers live in systems of people and policies”, and that, when there are problems, the system often creates a workaround the problem, so it can continue functioning. Such problems’ workarounds may just become “the way we do things around here”, and not be seen as a problem/pain much at that point.
But to go from that to Sharon Drew’s title “Your Prospects Aren’t in Pain” is just ridiculous. Psychology tells us that the most powerful drivers of human behavior are the desire to avoid pain and the desire to gain pleasure (see http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/12/28/avoiding-pain-and-embracing-pleasure/10424.html, for example) – and of the two, the more powerful is the desire to avoid pain. Human beings will do almost anything to avoid pain – and most of us are loaded with it.
So when we’re selling, we do look for our prospects’ pain, and seek to show how we may be able to help them lessen or remove it. Interestingly, we human beings often bury our pain – it’s not front-of-mind, day to day, that we have all the problems we have; it’s a survival mechanism to “back burner pain” mentally. So in contemporary selling, we often work to bring our prospects’ legitimate pain (as defined above) into the FRONT of their minds, so they can be big boys and girls and decide whether they would like to take action to reduce or remove it.
Philanthropy Journal Article
Comments
Posted By Sharon Drew Morgen Jul 27, 11 04:32 PM
LeNann:
thanks.
1. my first name is sharon drew…. it’s real important to me
2. please go back and read my article. ‘pain’ is acute. if anyone is in pain, they fix it immediately.
3. pleases go back and read Dirty Little Secrets: when a system has a problem, it is immediately out of integrity and balance so must create an immediate work around. so all is good enough ‘for now’.
4. you are confusing the problem/need with the ability to make a purchasing decision, which is a change management issue, not something that the sales model resolves.
5. technology has certainly shifted the ability to get information. but it has done little to disrupt, enhance, or mitigate the internal, behind-the-scenes decision issues necessary to get the buy-in from all involved.
6. i have separate out the personal, human, change-directed decision path from the need and purchase. once you re read, you’ll recognize the 2 different activities.
and i repeat, and repeat: if buyers really were in pain, they would have bought already. WE are the ones who think they are in pain. and you forget to separate the offline decision issues from the product purchase.
hope that helps.
sharon drew
Posted By Lenann McGookey Gardner Jul 28, 11 11:02 AM
Thanks for responding to my post, Sharon Drew. But I still think you’re wrong.
It’s simply not true that “if anyone is in pain, they fix it immediately” – perhaps they’d LIKE TO, but it isn’t as simple as that, and particularly not when an attempt to fix the pain is likely to be time-consuming and expensive.
I agree that when systems have problems, work arounds are created. And there is a behind-the-scenes decision-making process that most salespeople aren’t part of.
However, those things weren’t my point.
My point is that the desire to avoid pain drives more human behavior – including buying behavior – than anything else does. So we should be looking for pain when we sell.
To go a step further, the process of spending money CREATES pain – so the pain being lessened or eliminated must be greater than the pain of spending the money!
Of course change management issues are critical, and you’re right that, without considering the decision process in an organization, salespeople are operating blind. Your recent book makes a big contribution to the way salespeople should think about how they approach organizations; I recommend it to everyone.
But underlying all of that change management/decision process stuff, there must be ACTIONABLE PAIN – things that are going wrong in the organization now, or that have gone wrong in the past, or that the principals in the organization are afraid may go wrong in the future, or that they have heard have gone wrong for others in similar circumstances – or it doesn’t make sense to take the time to understand the decision-making/change management issues.
It’s absurd to suggest that “if buyers really were in pain, they would have bought already”. The notion that people in pain are even AWARE of things that will fix their problem is making a leap… but even if we assume they know about possible fixes, there’s the need to investigate their range of options, the associated costs, and the risks. Then there’s the requirement in so many organizations to collect competitive bids. Sometimes it’s even seen as being necessary to create a Request For Proposal – and that, too, takes time.
Of course, people are more likely to invest that time, if they have actionable pain. But the time lag can be massive.