Parts of this post adapted from the Solution Selling Fieldbook (2005, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0071456074 by Eades, Touchstone and Sullivan).

Selling a solution to someone that doesn’t think they have a problem is extremely difficult - in fact, it is virtually impossible.  Until the potential buyer admits that they need to change in some way, they will remain happy with the status quo, and simply carry on as they always have.

Getting customers to admit that they have a business issue that needs to be addressed - or a potential missed opportunity if they fail to act - is the first major step towards a successful sale.  How do top performing salespeople help buyers recognize their critical business issues - their pains - and begin the process of trying to solve them?

If you have stimulated the curiosity of a potential customer with a business development prompter, and then shared a suitable reference story (sharing pain to get pain), you can expect prospects to respond in one of five ways:

1. “I’m having that same problem.”
2. “I’m having a different problem.”
3. “I don’t have that problem”, but the prospect is friendly and talkative.
4. “I don’t have that problem”, and the prospect is NOT friendly and talkative.
5. “I have that same problem, and we’re already working on it.”

If the prospect gives you one of the first two responses, congratulations! They have admitted pain (or admitted a different pain than the one you thought they might have), and are ready to move forward towards a potential solution. If you get the first response, you obviously did your homework, and postulated correctly about their business challenge.  If you get the second response, you were not exactly on target, but you have still demonstrated some situational fluency (understanding of the customer’s situation) and therefore earned some credibility, so the prospect is willing to steer you towards the right issue.

If you get the third response - no pain admitted, but the prospect is friendly and talkative - then you need to focus the conversation on a potential pain that you can address. The best way to do this is to ask situation questions to help direct the conversation towards the most relevant pain.  Situation questions are open - they allow prospects to answer freely, and invite further conversation and exploration.  Some examples of situation questions are:

• Today, when your customers want to place an order, what do they do?
• How do your customers get notified about new products or promotions?
• How do your salespeople get referrals from existing customers today?

The fourth response - no pain admitted, and the prospect doesn’t want to share any more information - is certainly the most challenging.  Basically, the prospect is saying, “Stop bothering me, and go away!”  Try to empathize with the prospect, and make it easier for them to respond by offering up some potential pains to which the prospect may relate.  A menu of pain approach may prove useful.  An example of a menu of pain question is: “The top three difficulties we are hearing from VPs of Sales like you are: (1) missing revenue targets, (2) increasing cost of sales, and (3) inability to accuracy forecast sales revenue - how many of these issues, if any, are impacting you today?”  If, after asking menu of pain questions, your prospect still does not admit pain, then it’s probably best to politely disengage.

If you hear the fifth response - agreement with the pain, and they’re already working on it - warning alarms should go off in your head, telling you that this is an active opportunity, and the customer already has a vision of a potential solution.  In other words, you are late entering into this opportunity!  In this case, you should first participate in your prospect’s vision, by asking what they are doing to solve their problem.  Then you can determine if you can re-engineer their vision with additional capabilities - those that favor your solution.  (We’ll cover vision re-engineering dialogues in more detail in a future post.)

Good luck and good selling!

Parts of this post adapted from the Solution Selling Fieldbook (2005, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0071456074 by Eades, Touchstone and Sullivan).

The ability to stimulate the interest of prospective buyers is the lifeblood of sales and marketing professionals. Those that can’t master this ability will always find their sales pipeline wanting for more. As important as stimulating prospect interest is to sustained success in business, it continues to be one of the most pressing challenges for everyone.

A survey commissioned by Sales Performance International and conducted by Equation Research polled sales professionals about the most critical job challenges they faced on a consistent basis. Over 50% of those surveyed said that “prospecting for new opportunities” was one of their top barriers to success.  In a separate survey of sales executives, CSO Insights found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of sales teams need improvement in generating new leads.

Sales Teams’ Ability to Generate New Leads
(Copyright 2009, CSO Insights, used with permission.)

Many sales professionals hate prospecting. They call it all sorts of different names – “business development”, “interest creation”, “demand generation” – because just the mere mention of the word “prospecting” causes people to become uncomfortable.

People who find prospecting to be a challenge usually do so because of one of four factors:

1. They don’t properly define prospecting in the first place. Prospecting should be viewed as the ability to create and stimulate interest. Calling a buyer and asking “Are you looking to buy what I’m selling?” isn’t stimulating interest, that’s polling.
2. They forget “No pain, no change”. Their message doesn’t target a potential pain of the prospect but rather focuses on the selling organization’s product or service.
3. They create tension, not interest. If their goal is strictly to sell something instead of earning the right to have a conversation, distrust and discomfort arise for both parties.
4. They have a fear of rejection. Some rejection would go away by avoiding the three factors just mentioned. However, some rejection simply comes with the territory - not all prospects will be interested in your message or your offering.

Levels of Buyer Need

You will find buyers at one of three different levels of need. By recognizing the level of need of your buyer, you can determine the best tactics for developing the opportunity.

• Level 1: Latent Pain - The buyer is not actively attempting to address their pain, and may be unaware that a potential solution even exists. They may have failed at previous attempts to resolve the pain and therefore have rationalized other solutions as too expensive, complicated or risky. In other cases, they may simply be ignorant that they have a pain.
• Level 2: Admitted Pain - The buyer is willing to discuss pain, difficulty or dissatisfaction with their existing situation. The buyer admits their pain but does not know how to address it.
• Level 3: Vision of a Solution - The buyer has admitted their pain, accepts responsibility for solving it, can visualize the details of a solution, and understands how it will address their pain.

Effective Prospecting Messages

To stimulate the interest of your prospects, you must incorporate their pain into your messages. Consider whether your approach stands up to this Business Development Checklist:

Do your initial messages to prospects:

• take less than 30 seconds to deliver?
• avoid sounding scripted and insincere?
• target a pain the prospect might have or can relate to?
• imply that you have helped peers of the prospect resolve a potentially similar situation?
• avoid a detailed description of your company history?
• avoid in-depth descriptions of your products and/or services?
• exclude asking the prospect to buy anything or to schedule a meeting?
• avoid asking the prospect to admit an assumed pain?

A simple way to ensure that your messages meet these critieria is to use an effective template for a prospecting telephone call, as follows:

This is __________________ (your name) with __________________ (your organization). You and I haven’t spoken before, but we have been working with __________________ (target industry) companies like yours for the last _____ (#) years. One of the chief concerns we are hearing (lately) from other __________________ (job title similar to prospect’s) is their frustration with __________________ (job title’s likely critical issue / pain). We have been able to help our customers address this issue. Would you like to know how?

Note several things about this simple template, which is called a Business Development Prompter: 

• First, it telegraphs that this is a sales call: “You and I haven’t spoken before…”.  This is deliberate - too many salespeople attempt to fool prospects into listening by obscuring the reason for the call.  Our research shows that this rarely works.  Better to be honest and straightforward, and get to the heart of the matter.  Real prospects appreciate this - the one thing buyers abhor the most is salespeople who waste their time with pitches that aren’t relevant.
  
• It provides a basis for credibility: “We have been working with companies like yours.”  If you have the relevant experience, use it as the basis for your prospecting calls.  In fact, if you specialize in a particular industry niche, you should say so - it explains clearly why you are calling the prospect.
• It focuses on a customer business issue - their probable pain: “One of the chief concerns we are hearing…”.  If you’ve done the proper pre-call research, you can make a good guess about what this pain may be, and greatly increase the relevancy of your call to the prospect.
• It provides a benefit for speaking further: “Would you like to know how?”  You are offering useful information in exchange for further dialogue - a fair trade.
  
• It is designed to stimulate curiosity.  Note that it does not ask for a meeting or further commitment from the prospect.  It only asks of the prospect would like to know more.  This is a much easier step for a prospect to agree with - it is certainly easier than to take the “leap of faith” that most salespeople ask of prospects with a meeting or further commitment of valuable time.

This kind of customer-focused, solution-centric message is much more effective than the usual, product-oriented, hard charging “sales pitch” used by most salespeople.  And it makes an effective script for voice mail messages, too. 

If you find that you are having trouble stimulating the interest of potential prospects, then perhaps your messages need to be more focused.  Use the Business Development Checklist, and the template for an effective Business Development Prompter message, and see how your success rate improves.