¶ Common mistakes in using pain in sales, including checklist mentality and lack of curiosity.
Hey everybody, welcome to the How to Succeed podcast. This is how to succeed at understanding pain with Emily Shaw Sandler trainer from Indianapolis. I am Mike Montague, and coach at Sandler. And you can find it St. learn.com. We've made it real easy for you. If you're looking for leadership training, sales, development, customer success or customer service training, we are Your peoples, you can find a
local office or reach out to our enterprise team@sandler.com. And as always, we're gonna try to help you get to the top and stay there. This is how to succeed and understanding as Emily, welcome to the podcast. Tell me a little bit about this concept of pain. And what are we talking about today? Yeah, so
it feels a little silly for me to tell the head coach at Sandler about pain. But I'll do my best. So pain is someone's emotionally compelling reason to do business with you or to change from what they're currently doing to something else, right. And I have this feeling. And I've heard it from time to time as pain as described sort of as a qualification tool. And you have to get pain or you have to put
them in pain and no pain, no sale. And it's very much through the lens of how pain impacts the sales person's sales process and in closing, right. And I think it would be better served as a conversation to better understand how pain actually benefits the prospect as opposed to focusing on you know, us as as salespeople.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of common myths and misconceptions here, which is not unusual, David Sandler worked with a clinical psychologist named Aluko back in the 60s to invent the concept of pain and selling and the pain funnel questions that we go through. And I think even then, he had kind of talked about, like a doctor's analogy of, of taking somebody from well to sick to critical and then performing a miracle to put them back together and, and make them
healthy. But even then, I think people misunderstood that as maybe inflicting pain, or you're putting them in pain, like you said, rather than uncovering pain and motivations that they already have. And helping people understand their reasons for buying and helping us understand the reasons for buying so that we can solve the real problem. So there's so much to unpack here. I'm glad we can 25 minutes here. So to do that, let's start with what you think the most common mistakes are with pain
when you're working with your clients. Um,
number one, I would say as the check the box mentality as far as sales process goes. And so it's like, I need to get paid. And so I'll ask all of these very direct pain funnel questions, and not really make them relevant to the prospect or show really any real sense of curiosity. But I'm just getting paid to get paying because I know if I get paid, I'm more likely to close this deal. Sometimes with
that, I don't want to interrupt you there. But they even check the box too early. So we see people go, Oh, they said they want to grow their business. So done, then we got it
moving on. Yeah. Yes. And if we were to truly embody the definition of someone's emotionally compelling reason to do something, I don't even know that it should be do business with you. I think that our our responsibility as salespeople as professionals, should be to help these people uncover a whether they should be doing anything at all, and be what the best solution is for them, regardless of whether
that's us or something else. And I think the tactic and technique would probably be more effective if we honed in on that as its its main outcome and objective. So having these surface level conversations blowing past it too, too soon, is not helping your prospect. That's like if you you know, if your best friend said, Hey, Mike, I know it's noon on a Thursday, but I need you to meet me at the bar, I've got something really
important to talk to you about. Like, okay, this is weird. And you show up, though, because you are a great friend, and you sit down and and someone says, you know, I'm going through a really tough time. I think that, um, I'm going to sell all my belongings. I'm going to just disavow my family, and I'm going to move to the middle of nowhere and Western Africa. And this is the last time we're gonna speak. And you said, wow, tell me about
that. I said, Yeah, well, I made this decision and this is how I'm feeling I'm feeling really overwhelmed is too much and you okey dokey, well, Godspeed on your journey. Like, that's not truly invested in that conversation. You would never do that because you You genuinely care about that person, you would want to know what these motivators were you, you would have some some curiosity about how they got there. You care
about how they were feeling. And you don't have to treat prospects like your best friends, but I do think we should be good stewards of the information that that they are willing to share with us and help them get down the path for clarity. Because clarity brings energy. And if we want people to be feeling equipped to make a decision, we should equip them with clarity to do so.
Yeah, that kind of brings to mind our ethical selling model started by Jody Williams and right that it's unethical to sell somebody something they don't need. But it's also unethical to just let it go. If it's something that's them and change they're older or relieve a pain for them. We have it in our duty to help them relieve that pain and to do everything we can and ask all the questions we can to help make sure they realize it.
And that's a perfect segue into I think the second thing that we probably see most often with with pain and someone's approach to pain is obviously one just checking the box and on Okay, did it I am making it very transactional, but to is knowing that I should go deeper, but choosing not to because that conversation makes me feel uncomfortable. Because what if they don't like the conversation? What if they think
it's weird? What if they think I'm going too deep. And both of those, you know, missteps, when it comes to pain are self focused, not prospect focused, which I think we can tie everything up in a bow and say the the biggest problem when approaching pain is that a seller is focused on self as opposed to their prospect.
¶ Identifying and addressing pain points in sales conversations.
Yeah, I think there's something interesting there that when you get to the bottom of the pain funnel, that's not the time to like, end the meeting and be like, well see you last time, like we do have to put them back together a little, but we got to give them a way out of that pain and, and show them that solution and and check their commitment to doing something about it. Just because people have things sometimes, I think doesn't mean that they want to get rid of it, or they
trust you to get rid of it yet. And there's still a lot of conversation left, right? Yes,
absolutely. And, you know, we could get into how do we actually build trust. And I do think that one of the best ways to build trust in a sales process is to actually get paid. And if you are providing a psychologically safe place for this person to be vulnerable enough with you to tell you they have problems within their business, they have problems amongst their team members, and ultimately how it's impacting them personally, that's the ultimate form of bonding and
rapport. But if you're, you're going to miss the mark on that though, if you're just focused on checking boxes to qualify something in CRM, or avoiding it all together, because you think it's an awkward and uncomfortable conversation. You've done a disservice even to the relationship between you as a seller and then as a buyer.
Now, I'm gonna ask you a hard one here. And and I think we need to clarify the difference between pain and gain. And that that I think another common mistake I see is that people go well, I sell vacations or something like
that's not really a pain scenario. Or I think they don't really realize the that wanting something really bad like growing your business, it can be a pain to or the absence of a gain is a pain and it gets kind of confusing when we start talking about these terms of really what it is, can you help us define maybe a little bit better of how we know when we've gotten to the right level of pain and what to do with it then
or? Or how sometimes this can be hidden from even the buyer. They might not know what their real motivation is, and and how do we handle those situations?
I think first and foremost, we need to be aware of what your pain indicators are as a seller and for your product service, whatever it is right, going in and hoping that the prospect is going to help you figure those things out. Might be a little too much pressure on the prospect. I think you'd be somewhat prepared with knowing what the common reasons are
people buy from you. And the difference between pain and gain the first first thing that you brought up, there's not a lot of difference and maybe it's because we're Sandler trainers that we are able to see the inverse of the lack of gain. But even if someone is selling vacations and and you know they're saying that there's not a lot of pain well the pain is that they're not currently on vacation Yeah, I very much so
right now Yes. Or that they're not going on enough of them or that they're not going On the right kind of them or that it's not catered to the entirety of their family, or their teenagers are bored, or they're wasting money on not having something prepared and showing up and being disenchanted by the vacation that they're going on. So I think it's probably very easy for us to turn that around. Because we talk about it all day
long. I think if someone is listening in wondering, what is the pain that I solved for, and it is, it is what is missing from the equation. Even if you are selling on, on gain or or you are selling, someone can have something in the future, it's not necessarily solving an obvious problem. And you just look at what's what's missing in the loss there. And I think from a from a compelling perspective, you know, we always teach people that pain in the present is more compelling than pain in the
future or gain in the future. So how can you bring the future to the present? Speaking of Sandler and Sandler rules? How can you create that perspective for them so that they're with you in that conversation? Making sense? Yeah,
¶ Finding and articulating pain points in sales calls.
I like that. And I think we've already moved into the behavior bucket here a little bit with pain indicators and those different types of pain. But I always find it interesting to do the right thing at the right time in a sales call. And I think we've already hinted at, this is probably an upfront discussion. Like if we don't get pain, it doesn't matter how much our products or services do or how much they cost or any of those things. If they're not interested, if you're trying to
sell me haircare products. We're not going to get very far right. So can you help us a little bit with the timing of when this conversation takes place? Maybe how long it typically takes place? Or how we make sure we're, we're doing the right thing and spending enough time and energy in vain? Yeah, I
don't know that there's a exact timing for how long it should take, right? Everyone's a little different to the No, we've got multitude of different disc profiles and different ways that people are hardwired, how quickly someone opens up might be longer than somebody else. But I think when someone is talking about how some how their issue is personally and emotionally impacting them, you've gotten there. And I don't think you need to hang up there for very
long. And I don't think you need to talk about every single facet, we don't want someone crying on your sales calls. But I think when someone has expressed to you from a place of authenticity, Hey, Mike. Yeah, that's a great question. Here's how showing up for me, I'm frustrated. They're using words that are have emotional context. They're, they're painting scenes for you and pictures for you. They're giving you examples of the last time they felt that way, or experienced that
feeling. I think it's safe to say you've gotten there, but expecting that it happens at minute 38 For everybody is a dangerous game to play. Because we've got veterans that aren't quite as comfortable with vulnerability as some others.
I like that a lot. And it brings up the question for me, I'm wondering if you have a specific example of either the easiest time it was to find pain or the hardest time you ever had finding pain. I remember one time I talked to a high D leader. And I just said, you know, like, why are we here is my first question. And he talked for the next 45 Minutes did not stop, laid out everything talked about the solutions, the budget, the pain, upset he was with what was going on with the sales team
and all kinds of stuff. And I just kind of sat there smiling and nodding for 45 minutes, and then was like, Well, what would you like to do next? Yeah,
those are awesome. Love when that happens.
I couldn't get them to see it. It was right in front of their face. And I asked every question I could and they just didn't realize that they were the problem or that they had problems.
Well, and and then what we do, articulating out loud that you are the problem can be very challenging for people and and there may be a time when someone is capable of sharing that with you at some point, and you may not be currently in that trajectory of that timeline. Maybe they need six months more of getting these outcomes before they're ready to say, Okay, it's me. Or, you know, they've got more evidence
and impact to share that with you. But I think, you know, and I don't love to pigeonhole this profiles, but traditionally, it's been a little easier to get there with these anions than it is SS and C's in my case. Now, that could be because of my own profile, but are more reserved friends, hold things a little closer to the vest a little longer. And in particular, some some people who are very analytical and data focused don't know rash into conversations about emotional
vulnerability. So it might take a little bit longer. But I think the tendency to want to expedite that conversation because you know, you need pain turns people off, and you have to meet people where they are and walk hand in hand with them. Giving them the illusion, right that they're in control of the conversation, but
knowing where you're going. But, but meeting them where they are, and matching and mirroring and not trying to rush through and check the box and say that you did it is probably a kiss of death for no matter what quadrant you're in.
Yeah, and I think that brings us to technique here, we've mentioned a few that we should probably define, like pain indicators and pain, funnel and, and stuff. And even some of those different types of pains. And I'm thinking also, the levels of pain. So this is complicated. We don't need to teach you everything there
is to know about pain, the calculus of pain today. Yeah,
like, you know, four different 90 minute classes just on this one topic here, but where would you like to start? Where do you feel like we can make the biggest difference for maybe somebody that's never experienced Sandler are good conversation,
I think most simplistically, looking at the levels of what why an impact is probably helpful for folks who don't have the full tool belt of Sandler at their disposal moment. So, you know, it's something that you hear often when you first start with clients, like, Oh, I know what pain is, oh, I know what pain points are. And typically, what people are talking about is the what you referred to it earlier, as this is the problem. Great, I know the pain point, I will now
move on. And Sandler teaches that really, no one takes action unless they have articulated the impact that that problem is
having on them personally. And so there are levels, the first level that's easiest to get to is the what and say 99% of sellers probably get to the what because prospects show up ready to share that as a logical progression to their conversation, why that thing is a problems or why they'd like to fix it, why now as another layer that will say 50% of people likely organically get to, but the impact that situation is having on both the business and that person personally, it seems
to be a very small percentage of people that are doing that effectively, without training and without guidance. And that's really where the actual urgency to take action comes. And I think if we even think about our own lives, if we've had some really challenging decision to make, what was the thing that made you take action, it was that it was deeply impacting you in some emotional context, how we think about other decisions we've had to make, and we've remained on either side of the
fence for six months, we're not sure what to do. And there's confusion, there's like a clarity. Well, it's probably not impacting you emotionally, as much as the other one was, or to your point earlier, you're unaware of how much it is impacting you emotionally, or sticking your head in the sand and not wanting to recognize how much it's impacting you. Because
the decision is hard. And so getting to impact creates just a path for a prospect to say, wow, you know, I didn't realize this was impacting me this much, or I feel much better at least having articulated it to someone I've out loud said, Yes, this is causing me mental tax or dollars, actual tax, who knows. But I'm, I'm done dealing with it. And I'm committed to doing something about it. And thank you for guiding me through this conversation. Because that's very clear to me now.
¶ Sales techniques, including finding and quantifying pain points.
And other than the painful questions and stuff that people get getting the material do you have a favorite way to make it conversational? And and in your, you know, personal selling a favorite question to start the conversation or to end the conversation or, or get a level deeper in the middle somewhere.
Now we're getting into dangerous territory, because I'm bringing another tactic and I think the easiest way to get pain is to have a great upfront contract. My upfront contract starts with, if we were sitting down together, I would say okay, Mike, I appreciate the fact that you've put an hour on the calendar with me today. This is obviously going to come to an end and when you are logging off or walking out of here, and you're thinking while I'm really glad I had that
conversation with Emily, it was super productive. What do we talk about? Or what will make this conversation a productive use of your hour? What's gonna be important for me to cover and and then they just give you all of their pain indicators there. And you just pick one and ask. Tell me about that. Why that one? Pretty simple. So no flashy techniques. Jedi mind tricks over here.
Yeah, I think that's really one of my favorites too. That's what I was thinking the tell me more about that seems to work in my personal life in podcast interviews and sales interviews wherever I am, like, Hmm, that sounds important. Tell me more about that. And people expand until you mourn usually gives you something to latch on to for a follow up question as well, I would say, one of the other ones that's tricky for me. And I didn't learn it until I was watching another Sandler
trainer on a call. But getting them to quantify the pain is another part that's important in the middle there. So if they go, none of my sellers can, you know, close a close the door? They can't sell anything, and you go, Well, none of them you don't have anybody selling anything on your team? Like how many you got? You got 10 people? How many of them? Would you say you're actually bad at that? Or how many deals are falling off the table? And they go, Well, all of them? Well, all of them's
not a number give me like, what, how much? How many? How big are these deals? How often is it happening? And getting really specific, I think in these questions, really helps you sound like an expert that you know what you're talking about, and helps them quantify and think through and I was working with, it was Big Brothers Big Sisters, actually, that I was on a call with one of the other trainers and they work with 1000s of people and leaders and coaches in Big Brothers and Big
Sisters around the country. And you know, well, how many of them? Would you say do a good job of asking questions or, or listening skills or something like that? And you have to start thinking about it then and go a level deeper when you ask the the quantification questions, which is
another form of helping your prospect gain clarity to to determine what it is that they need to do to solve the problem. And so thinking about quantification as another way that you're going to help someone cut through the smoke. Because we can go back to those really big decisions we've had to make in our personal lives. It's pretty easy from a cognitive bias standpoint, to dismiss some information as no
big deal, or I'll deal with that tomorrow. Or we've got this dismissive bias on Well, it's probably only happened a couple of times, and then you go back, like 719 times. Okay, once once you realized that it's a lot easier to confidently make a decision. And when I think about people being elusive, I think sometimes sellers think, oh, prospects just don't want to give me pain, I want to tell me things, they don't want to be vulnerable, that could be for sure. But it could be that this
is a really challenging fix for them. And it's going to require a lot of work, and they've got some hesitancy and concern that they're going to make the wrong decision. Or, or that it's going to take so much or they're going to tax so many people with the overhaul that everyone's gonna be mad at them, there's so many things that can be going on that none of which have anything to do with you as a salesperson likely and how he is a
salesperson. But again, that I just find that that language, even as salespeople focused on themselves again, right, these people don't want to tell them, you know, how could you show up for these people, and help them, you know, get through that for even just themselves, I tell my prospects often, the worst thing for for you to come out of this process with is is not not hiring me, the worst thing for you here is making no decision
at all and doing nothing. So my job is to help you gain clarity enough to make a decision so that you're not stuck here anymore. And if that's me, and I'm blessed enough to help you, great. If it's not, that's okay, too. My goal is to make sure you get what you need, and you're not stuck any longer. I
love that. And I think it's a good place to start wrapping up here a little bit, but I wanted to give you one more shot at it. Anything else you wanted to share today that I didn't ask or could you help us? Help tell us maybe what happens after you find pain? If we've done it?
Yeah, much like you, right? If I find pain, it's just what would you like to do next? I think giving people agency over the decision making process with guidance, right? You gotta be careful with that because sometimes people just don't know
how to buy you. They don't know the most effective way to buy again, this is another place for you to show up and make sure that they are getting what they actually need and you're showing up as their coach, therapist consultant, however you want to look at that helper through that process because a lot of people are trying to buy you or I or anybody else listening to this this podcast in the same manner that they buy things from Costco
or something online. And it's very transactional and most sellers have more complex processes than what we're sort of used to in our daily lives. So you do have to show up and sort of guide them if they make the wrong choice. But definitely collaborate with them on on what those next steps need to be.
Sounds good. Once again, we've been talking about the Emily Shaw, Sandler trainer from Indianapolis. And you've been around the network here for a while award winning Sandler trainer and having success in this business. So congratulations on that. But I'm wondering at this point in your career, how you define success for yourself.
This isn't going to be shocking to you after this conversation. But helping more people. This to me is yes, you have to be cognizant of the numbers and set goals so that you're constantly stretching and challenging yourself. But I think we have the luxury of being in the business where we get to also count number of lives impacted. And that's really the most important marker to me as far as success goes. So that's what the measurement is largely.
I like it. Now. I like to ask the opposite question, was there a biggest failure you are most proud of, or a particularly hard lesson for you to learn throughout your Sandler journey?
So many hard lessons to learn. I'm probably very passionate about this. And in in regard to making it about other people because it was a lesson I had to learn. And when I first came into this business, I'm like, Okay, I need to know more than everybody else need that knows I need to be the expert, I need to show up in training with this sort of flagger and confidence that, you know, reduces someone's desire to ask me a question, because I was so terrified that someone would
ask. And it was so hard. And it was so much pressure. And once I started realizing that if I just made it about helping people, if I stopped making it about what people would think of me or their perception of me if I was an expert, if I was a guru, and all of those things, if I just focused on helping people a it
was much easier, but be it was so much more rewarding. So, you know, I would say that's probably why I'm so passionate about this topic in general is because I had to learn it the hard way.
Yeah, I like that one. I found out about Sandler young and my dad was the Sandler trainer and I passed up the opportunity to work with him in my 20s because I thought like, I'm a 20 year old kid, what am I going to know or prove? Or I'm not a guru, yet I haven't had a professional selling job or anything. And it wasn't until much later when I realized, Oh, that's not the job. The job is helping them realize what they're doing and that they're not focusing on sales. They're
not gurus either, and stuff and how can I help them? And it's an amazing lesson to learn and I think an important one to share with everybody but especially young people. Last one, do you have a favorite Sandler rule concept or thought for us? And
keeping theme with our episode, I'd say sales is a Broadway performance put on by a psychiatrist. It's it's there are many hats to be worn in a sales conversation. But you can create an engaging experience for your prospect with your psychiatrist hat on of uncovering the problem, caring enough about that person and helping them find the solution. Sales is a lot more fun to be a part of.
Yeah, I love that metaphor, too. You're not the star of the play here. Your buyer is the star. You're the director, which is a different environment,
the experience and invite them into it. Absolutely. Emily,
thank you so much for being on the show. If you want to reach out to connect on LinkedIn or go to sandler.com and find her and her location in Indianapolis there. Also you can find her Enterprise team, if you work with the large organization have hundreds of sellers or multiple languages or countries, you can do that there as well. But we also have over 200 local offices, working with individuals and small and medium sized businesses, too. So don't hesitate to reach out, subscribe
to this podcast. If you haven't already. Send it to somebody that you think needs to hear it. And until next time, whatever you are, be a good one. That's what I always say. We'll see you next time everybody have a great week.