Feeling the Pain

Here’s a thought exercise that might make you better at sales. 

Imagine you and a prospective customer are sitting at a table with a bottle of poison in front of you. You both desperately want to solve the prospect’s problem. But in order to make any engagement happen, someone needs to drink the poison.

It’s highly unlikely that the poison is going to kill you. But it will be painful. 

Who is going to drink the poison? 

You may think this is a far-fetched exercise (perhaps even inconceivable!). But pain does indeed exist in every sales process and someone needs to feel it. 

For the client prospect, pain appears in the form of responding to a message from an unknown seller or taking a meeting that may end up being a complete waste of their time. In other words, the client’s pain is the risk of lost time and/or financial investment. 

Frequently, we ask the client prospect to absorb the pain in the sales process. We do that by sending poorly targeted messages, positioning ourselves broadly, or hesitating to share our expertise. We pass this pain onto the prospect because we don’t want to feel it ourselves. 

Well-written, relevant messages take time but may not receive a response. A tight positioning means giving up some areas of potential focus. And sharing our expertise takes time and real thinking.  All painful.

When you think about the sales process as an exercise in pain, it really isn’t surprising that many agency leaders find it so difficult to book meetings and close prospects. You’re asking your clients to drink the poison while you, the dread seller, walk away scot-free.

You are going to drink the poison. 

Your job at the beginning of the sales process is to feel as much pain as possible for the benefit of your prospect (their time will come later). If their fear is wasted time and money, your marketing and sales has one goal: prove, before they've spent either, that you're worth both.

What can you share in the earliest stages of a relationship that guarantees no time is wasted? How do you make every interaction useful even if they never become a client?

This isn't giving your thinking away for free. In fact, it should be an opportunity to improve your craft. Maybe it’s proprietary research that only you have, or a tool that’s going to help them regardless of an engagement. You invest upfront, so it’s easier for them to invest in you. 

Your prospects were never going to volunteer to drink first. So build the thing that makes it hurt less when you do.