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Selling Strategies - Solving the Pain or Creating a Gain

Written by Stu Schlackman

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4 Secrets To Selling Value Versus Price

You've told your prospects in so much detail about all the great value they will receive but they just don't seem to get it. You know that if only they could see the value in your products and services then price would not be such an issue.

Do you find that your prospects are focused on the price of your products and services and often pressure you to give them discounts?

Here are four secrets, if learned and applied, will guarantee that your prospects will see the value in your products and services so that price is no longer the issue. These four secrets are commonsense and obvious once you know them but in selling what is commonsense and obvious is rarely applied.

Secret #1: Forget about selling and trying to get your prospect to buy your products and services.

The common trap, that you don't want to fall into, is to start selling your products and services from the very first conversation with your prospect. Instead, you want to forget about selling and trying to get your prospect to buy your products and services. Just have a conversation and ask the right questions so you can understand their problem and determine, if in fact, you can help them. I call this initial phase the 'Discover Phase' and it is where you should be spending the majority of your time in the sales process.

Secret #2: Have your prospect tell you the value (instead of you tell them).

If you tell your prospect about the value you offer, they may or may not see this as relevant, of interest or of value. However if you ask the right questions so your prospect tells you the value of solving their problem, they will then see this value as relevant, of interest and of value. The big difference is that they have told you (and themselves) the value as opposed to you telling them.

Secret Number #3: Have valuable conversations.

The conversations you want to have with your prospect should include so much value that they actually thank you for speaking with them and, in fact, look forward to having more conversations with you. How do you have such conversations? It's easy really. You see probably no one has asked your prospect powerful questions which help them get clarity around their problem and what it is costing them. This sort of clarity and information is of great value to your prospect. They will see that you have a valuable skill and they will want to have future conversations with you to continue gaining clarity in other areas. They will see having conversations and having a relationship with you as valuable.

Secret #4: Add your value to their value.

Once your prospect has told you the value they will receive from solving their problem, they will be receptive to listening to how you can add even more value. Not only will they be receptive to listening to how you can add more value but they will also be appreciative of the additional value you can add. This is because, at this stage, they will have effectively sold themselves on taking action to solve the problem and the more value they can see that they will receive; the easier it is for them to justify buying your products and services.

In summary, as a consequence of not selling while you ask the right questions, your prospect will see both the value in solving their problem plus they will see the value in having a relationship with you. You are then in a position to help them justify a buying decision by adding more value to what they have told themselves. This all leads to a decision based on value and not on price.

Customers make decisions emotionally and back them up with logic to justify their decisions. Our goal then is to ask the key questions that get to the heart of the decision maker and build trust and confidence leading to a long term consultative relationship. We need to be a partner to the customer and not a vendor.

Of course the answer is “it depends.” The more important question to the customer is “when it comes to investing in the solution, what’s most important to you?” That will more closely address which is more important, solving the pain or creating a gain.

Customers make buying decisions based on needs. As Miller Heiman mentions in their model, customers take action when they are in “trouble” or “growth” mode, not “even keel” or “overconfident.” So the need is generated from a problem or challenge they are facing or the potential growth or gain they are looking to achieve.

Customers also buy for both business and personal reasons. The business reason is tangible and objective, the “Result.” It’s to increase productivity, decrease operation expenses, improve market share or their competitive position. The personal reason is the “Win.” This is the intangible and subjective result which says what it will do for the decision maker. Will it give them peace of mind, a promotion or a bonus? Both business and personal reasons drive the decision, but understanding which reason might move the customer to decide is key.

In Rick Page’s book “Hope Is Not A Strategy” it says this about pain. “Pain doesn’t come from the business problem; pain comes from the political embarrassment of the business problem.” I believe this is so true. Customers don’t make decisions until the pain hurts to a point that it must be alleviated, which includes their own embarrassment for not taking action. Pain needs to be heightened from both the business and personal perspective. We need to explore with the customer which need is hurting the most. Pain is a present existing condition, which is easier to address than exploring potential gains, which is a promise in the future. Rick also says that to create a sense of urgency to close business, we must creatively take the invisible costs and make them visible and politically painful. In other words we must put a price on the customer’s procrastination. Giving out more price cuts or discounts doesn’t create a sense of urgency to buy unless it’s for a stereo system on sale just for the day! With complex sales situations emotional issues usually override cost justifications.

I agree with Rick Page that emotional and political problems drive buying activity more than logical ones. That’s why we scratch our heads when our pipeline forecasts look like a cloudy weather report. Customers make decisions emotionally and back them up with logic to justify their decisions. Our goal then is to ask the key questions that get to the heart of the decision maker and build trust and confidence leading to a long term consultative relationship. We need to be a partner to the customer and not a vendor. Vendors sell hot dogs. When we become a trusted partner the promise of the “gain” in our solution becomes a reality to the customer based on their confidence and our track record to deliver.

We should always prepare questions prior to our meeting with a customer which can gain us credibility and earn us the right to continue down the path to winning the sale. Most sales people don’t ask the tough questions since it will ruin a perfectly good forecast. Some example questions that I like to use to engage the customer are:

How have these issues impacted your business?
What are the critical success factors you expect from the solution?
What is most important to you for this project?
What other impacts might this problem have on your business?
What do you see as the benefits in solving the problem?
For you personally what’s most important?

These are some examples of some pain and gain questions that can help us to dig deeper into the real issues the customer is facing from both a business and personal perspective. Asking our customers better questions gives us better answers and a leg up on our competition.

Good selling!

Stu Schlackman
		About the author:
		Stu has spent over 25 years in sales management, sales and sales training with world class companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, Cap Gemini and EDS. His focus is on “the application” of the skills and techniques he shares. He is the author of Don't Just Stand There, Sell Something and Four People You Should Know. .