No Pain - No Sale!

While on a Sales Call this week, I was reminded of THE Rule of Sales:  NO PAIN - NO SALE!

This particular prospect had plenty of "Pain Indicators" - signs and signals that there are things happening in the prospects' business that could be done better.  BUT, the prospect was not able to correlate those Pain Indicators to some significant impact on the business.  Said a different way, there was no compelling reason for the prospect to invest capital to address something that's not broken.

"Pain" has a negative connotation, but "Pain" can be:

• An Opportunity to increase business volume
• A Customer Service Committment
• A Positive or Negative Financial impact on the business
• A Law, Regulation or an Outside Influence
• Increased Operating Cost
• Quality Issue

People or Companies buy for 3 reasons:

1. Eliminate or Avoid Pain
2. Capture a Business Opportunity
3. Meet and Emotional Need

Rarely does #3 translate to an actual sale!

So, back to this particular sales call, there were many opportunities to do things better than they were currently being done, but nothing was so bad that it was having a significant impact on the business.

• Production Lines were not being shut down
• There were no safety events or issues
• Labor costs were not out of control
• The current conditions were not preventing the business from growing or doing more

When pressing the prospect for a compelling reason to invest significant capital to do the things he "would like to do", he could not give one.  "If you were to do this, how would it improve your business?",  "Impact Your customers?", "Help the business meet its Stragegic Goals?".  We were certainly capable of doing the things he was asking for. The prospect could not share a compelling reason why the business would invest six-figures to implement a solution that would be difficult, if at all possible, to justify.

An amature sales person would have walked away from that meeting quoting 2 - 3 projects that have little, if any, chance of moving forward.  As a Sales Professional, our Sales Engineer agreed with the prospect that further investigation needed to be done with other members of the prospect's team.  Members who might know more about the impact, if any, the "Pain Indicators" are having on the business.

Until then:  NO PAIN - NO SALE!