Build Trust With Pain

Finding pain is the ultimate tool of building awareness and a call to consciousness of your prospect’s problems. Until your prospect feels it, verbalizes it or re-experiences it, their pain for all intents and purposes does not exist and will likely not be acted on. A good psychotherapist will always claim that unless the client is vocalizing a problem, then it ceases to exist. The more emotional pain a salesperson can get from the prospect, the greater the likelihood the prospect can begin to connect their problems to the salesperson’s solution. By understanding the emotional zone, you begin to understand where your prospect’s true emotions lay.

To be effective, you must honor and validate what prospects think, feel and believe regardless of your own beliefs and agenda. That is why it is important to ask questions out of genuine curiosity and concern as opposed to asking out of self-interest. This is what builds rapport and trust. You allow your prospects to communicate their beliefs without making them feel any pressure. Don’t be exploitative. The prospect’s ego will not admit to its own pain while it senses there is a threat or it has something to lose. It is human nature that prospects will not resist their own ideas, so you ultimately help them help themselves. This is very liberating for your prospects because you provide a safe environment for them to come to their own independent conclusions.

By asking thought-provoking questions, we help prospects find their own guidance and help them self-discover their priorities. Since most emotional pain is not in their active memories but buried in latent memories, we use these thought-provoking questions to prompt our prospects to safely retrieve their pain and to actively feel it in real time.

The pain discovery strategy is a very non-threatening process. The sharing of emotional pain with others is intimate and gratifying for prospects. Once it is shared and acknowledged, prospects don’t feel so isolated. It allows them to better accept the truth of their situation and it helps them get it off their chest. Once the prospect bears witness and re-experiences the pain of their situation, they can then better organize their thoughts and priorities on their own, independent of the salesperson’s agenda. In its purest form it is co-counseling: a mutual experience where neither salesperson nor prospect get caught up in their traditional untrustworthy roles.

As you begin to ask questions that the prospect would want to ask of themselves and you ask questions that could potentially derail your offering, you set the groundwork for a process of equality and trust. Asking questions that could potentially be in your disfavor, you begin to appeal to the prospect’s inner authority and you give them a strong sense of being in control. They now feel safe to see their problems and pains from a different perspective and see it in a new light. This emotional pain discovery strategy works because it asks nothing in return. It is a fair and selfless appraisal and discovery process. It also works because it has nothing to prove and does not have any pre-set agenda. Since it is neutral, unbiased and expectation free when done correctly, the salesperson is not afraid to pose questions that are contrary to their own self-interests. True professionals don’t sidestep questions that would facilitate their understanding of the breadth and depth of the prospect’s problem even at the cost of learning that there is no longer a legitimate selling opportunity. All ideas and perspectives have to be heard from the prospect’s viewpoint. In doing so, you create a safe environment by being the independent observer and witness. However, if at any time you are perceived as selling your own agenda you will just add confusion, denial, resistance and a breakdown of any remaining trust.

This concept will be foreign to most salespeople because they are typically accustomed to asking only safe questions that uncover how big the sales opportunity is, so they can forecast their month, know when the sale will close and find out the specifics of the application so they can put together a proposal and be done with it. You ask emotionally laden questions so you can help your prospect access information and emotional experiences themselves. This information probably wasn’t readily and easily accessible to them prior to your meeting. You help them put all the pieces together and come to their own conclusions. Prospects go through a process where they put together some new ideas and priorities while rejecting others. You simply facilitate this process. You help them look at their priorities and initiatives in a new creative way with the benefit of fresh eyes. You attempt to surface unexposed, unexamined and unfinished problems and pains. You walk them backwards in their pain from the past to the present. All pain is found in the past but most salespeople sell in the future.

When going through the pain discovery process salespeople need to be aware that sometimes the deeper they go to uncover their prospect’s pain, the greater the prospect will deny and resist them. It is basic human nature to hide pain -- first from oneself and certainly from salespeople. As salespeople try to penetrate the layers of defenses, white lies and half-truths, it is only natural to run into deep denial, avoidance and suppression. Initially many prospects will try to withhold what they believe to be incriminating information and emotions. They will sometimes do everything in their power to leave you in the dark and take you down false detours and blind alleys.

When prospects are discussing their needs, they frequently are merely using comfortable, trite, neutral and predictable language to represent deeper and more substantial emotional pain and buying motives. When asking questions, most salespeople stop at the surface where it is comfortable. They accept surface pain as real, legitimate pain when it is not. What they so often find are indications of pain or predispositions. What they need to find is pain that is actionable.

Most salespeople are reluctant to delve into the unknown because they are afraid of learning the truth about the validity of their prospect’s pain. They are afraid to take their conversations to a deeper, more personal level that goes through the maze of their prospect’s natural defenses to discover their personal, emotional pain. But more importantly, most salespeople don’t have a systematic sales process to effectively break through these barriers. What they are lacking are universal thought-provoking questions that reach down into the realm of human emotions where prospects “live, breathe, express, and feel,” says Sharon Drew Morgan. This is the same exact place where they make decisions on whether or not to change or to buy.

Prospects often automatically resist salespeople by diverting their attention away from real problems and real emotional pain because so often it is painful and embarrassing to admit and discuss. They would rather discuss needs, requirements and specifications instead. They keep salespeople in an uneasy, confusing state by feeling one thing, by thinking another, by expressing another and doing still another. To say they are conflicted is an understatement. Our job is to try to make sense of all this disharmony, contradictions and inconsistencies.

By taking your prospect back to the moment of their pain you can witness firsthand the personal cost. A strong inference is that no salesperson who has witnessed their prospect’s pain in an intimate manner would allow it to happen again or would think of taking advantage of it. The salesperson who has the best handle on the prospect’s pain has the greatest chance of earning the prospect’s trust and business. As trite as it may sound, confession is the beginning step toward behavioral modification.

It is important to let your prospect experience the totality of their feelings and emotions. The decision to change is impossible until the prospect’s inner dynamics have shifted. By allowing them to be with their ambivalence it can bring an acceptance from which clarity can spring. In order to allow them to be vulnerable, you need to allow yourself to be vulnerable (asking questions that are contrary to your self-interest).

Ironically, the journey of self-discovery is what will carry the day. It is not the destination, it is the journey that counts. Don’t be seduced toward fixing the prospect's problems prematurely, without thoroughly understanding the prospect’s feelings and emotions because these represent a huge part of their problem. The unfolding strategy can seem tedious and overdone.

When you show that you are not perfect and you don’t have all the answers, your prospect will be more inclined to share their company’s imperfections… like attracts like.

Pain is a crash course in waking up and experiencing reality for prospects. Removing the blocks to the truth is the salesperson’s mandate. Ninety percent of sales is getting to the truth. “You could look at your job as being in the varnish removal business. Since prospects put a high gloss on everything, your job is to tediously remove it layer by layer to the bare wood. Nobody is who they appear and nothing is what it appears. Personal agendas of prospects frequently are deeply hidden and emotional. Listen carefully to what is being said. What the prospect denies or ignores can be very telling as to how they view the perceived emotional cost of changing,” says William Brooks. Most prospects have perfected deeply constructed patterns of denial and ways of keeping salespeople at bay. Salespeople have to walk the razor’s edge of being an authority and not coming across as a know-it-all.

The beauty of asking probing questions to locate pain is that you don’t put pressure on prospects to meet your needs, agenda or expectations. And your prospect in turn is less likely to put pressure on you. Asking pain discovery questions is so effective because it is unrehearsed, spontaneous, non-manipulative, unpredictable, unselfish and truly authentic. It also works well because it is contrarian, non-intuitive and prospects don’t expect it.

Since very few salespeople naturally exude the rare combination of trust, natural leadership, confidence, poise and empathy, these powerful questions can more than make up for it. To effectively execute these questions you must walk the fine line of being clinically detached and being empathetic and nurturing at the same time. You take on a non-selling posture, an independent change agent position that operates from a clean slate, a beginner’s mind, an attitude of not knowing, child-like curiosity and a strong desire to find the truth regardless of its final outcome. This egoless state requires a lot of confidence. You should aspire to be more for your prospect than you are for yourself. Not only do these questions qualify your prospect, they allow you to qualify yourself from the prospect’s perspective.

To truly be a change agent you must have room and be open to every alternative and direction your prospect takes you. By taking nothing for granted, you distinguish yourself from most salespeople who are perceived as not trustworthy and who are always trying to impose their will and ideas upon others.

Prospects don’t resist change as much as they resist being changed. Salespeople fall into the aforementioned trap by putting too much faith and focus on their solutions and not enough faith and stock into their prospect’s business and their problems. Ask thought-provoking questions to help your prospects fully communicate and express their challenges both emotionally and intellectually. When you ask questions that could put your selling position in jeopardy you communicate your impartial position and your desire to help your prospect self-discover their own conclusions. Manipulation is getting prospects to do what you want and motivation is getting prospects to do what they want for better or worse. No salesperson really becomes a fool until they stop asking questions. Remember, in relation to asking pain questions, infinite patience can produce immediate results.

A common mistake salespeople make when asking pain questions is that they probe for positive information. They ask hopeful questions. Salespeople who position their questions with a positive spin don’t build critical trust and rapport. By asking hopeful questions that are intended to elicit only hopeful answers, you are limiting the value, depth and credibility of the answer you’ll receive.

By asking positively inclined questions you are demonstrating your insecurity and lack of confidence. Neutralizing the disposition of your question allows you to get to the truth much faster. Salespeople who are not afraid to ask questions that may jeopardize their sales agenda show genuine respect for their prospects. Your job is to find their pain, determine the cost of change regardless of whether it supports your position or not. When you ask questions that put your selling case at risk you make the first gesture towards goodwill and showing vulnerability. Now the prospect may feel more predisposed to share their own vulnerability by vocalizing their problems and frustrations.

It is as if you take the role of a devil’s advocate. You ask questions that they are afraid to ask themselves and you ask questions that you may be afraid to hear the answers to. By doing so you don’t fall into the assumption trap and you don’t draw conclusions for your prospect. You don’t lead the witness or badger them. You give your prospect the freedom and independence to discover their own answers, which is the ultimate compliment you can pay your prospect.

All problems are equal and neutral until proven otherwise. What that means is, until you have done your due diligence, all problems should be viewed with skepticism. Until you have identified, defined, isolated and outlined the costs and consequences, you are just whistling in the wind. Pain is like an iceberg: only 1/3 is visible, the real impact (2/3) is deeply hidden.

Salespeople should spend 80% of their time asking questions to discover: disparity, motive, urgency, payback, consequences, means, risk, complacency, prioritization, course of action, political will, support and commitment to change. Let your prospect see beyond his problems. Most salespeople go on a surface fact finding mission and just scratch the surface. To be effective you must be an authentic change agent. You need to do an analytical, in-depth and diagnostic overview to really do a thorough job.

A change agent uses universal questions that transcend all industries and all products and services in helping their prospects define their problems and the corresponding consequences. Companies buy products and services, but people buy answers to their problems and pain. Each person you sell is an individual and therefore must be the baseline of your selling strategy.

When crafting your questions, concentrate on the past and the immediate past. The future is where your solution is. But until you reconcile the past, it is premature to bring up questions about the future. You can’t listen to the future. It becomes a problem when prospects are talking about the past and the salesperson aggressively talks about the rosy future. It is a disconnect that is guaranteed to cause distrust and disharmony.

Prospects intuitively know that the way a salesperson defines the problem will represent the way they will ultimately solve it. Since they will build a business case and justification as to whether or not to buy from you, you need to build a solid business case to sell them. Therefore it is important to have a strong working knowledge of their business. Pain locater questions are very effective in defining their problems and an excellent tool to gain situational fluency. Since prospects, a lot of time, don’t even know what problems they have, the pain locator questions can help define and determine if they are actionable. Salespeople essentially build a business by doing due diligence to help the prospect discover if their pains warrant change and action. You sell to their strategic business pains instead of their needs and requirements.

Be aware that their needs are different than their wants. Prospects buy what they want, not necessarily what they need. “Needs are immediate with a high level of awareness related to a specified product or service requirement, whereas wants are represented with a lower level awareness and unrelated to any specific product or service offering,”says William Brooks. The key is to sell prospects early in the cycle where you create want. You will find the margins are high and the competition is low because they are not actively in the market. However your situational fluency of their business must be high because you are going in as a change agent, with no pressing requirements on behalf of your prospect.

Even if you know in advance 100% of your prospect’s story and situation, you need to hear 100% of their personal version and rendition. Prospects are not looking for answers or solutions as much as they are for true understanding and care. You ask pain locator questions to stimulate curiosity and rethinking on behalf of your prospect. 90% of prospects, first and foremost, want to know if you understand their situation and pains. How quickly you get to their pain determines how much trust, rapport and confidence you have with them. Don’t get discouraged if your initial efforts did not surface obvious pain. The mere process of taking them through the pain locator questions can be enough to carry the day. Sometimes they will articulate the answers internally, but will not share with you the answers.

Your biggest competitive advantage, that is sustainable and difficult to replicate, is your ability to out-care, out-listen, out-question and out-strategize your competition. As you rephrase what you hear, it shows you put some thought into what they said and you were able to add additional insight and perspective, instead of just parroting back to them what they said. Prospects buy from salespeople who empower them and let them create their own vision. Salespeople help prospects go beyond understanding what their needs are and help them understand whether they need it, can afford it, what is at stake and what are their most pressing business issues and priorities.

As you get better with the pain locator questions you will have a much better idea as to when you stop searching for pain. I hope you have this problem. It is generally better to fault on the side of too many questions than not enough. But this will always have to be a personal call. You will know when you have gotten enough pain is when your prospect is willing to put some skin in the game. Get them to commit to investing in their solution. You will be able to get them to invest money faster when they see some political gains. Economic costs will always be trumped by political costs. Companies get results, but only people win. Prospects buy for subjective personal reasons.

If the prospect has justifiably put you fairly and squarely in a low strategic importance where your offering is readily substitutable, then the pain locator questions will be neutralized and have limited impact. If your prospect has a procurement attitude then your offering will generally be appealing to the emotions of a spreadsheet or a slide ruler. Your impact will be severely restricted with transactional prospects looking for a one-night stand, instead of a serious dating relationship. Approximately 20% to 50% of your prospects will fit into the sweet spot of probable to highly probable prospects who value your ability to be a change agent. The balance will be questionable. Your job is to disqualify those who don’t fit your sweet spot.

When executing the pain locator questions you will sometimes need to use nurturing statements to soften the impact of some of your deep exploratory questions. For example:

• “Do you mind if I ask…”
• “I’m not sure if this is applicable...”
• “Can I ask you a personal question?”
• “I’m a little awkward asking you this…”

Whether or not you use these statements to soften your questions, it is always effective to ask your questions with a lower tonality, a slower delivery and with a caring and understanding demeanor. The only aggressive behavior that is acceptable at this juncture is aggressive listening. Sometimes you will want to ask your questions in an orderly fashion and other times you will be better served to go with the flow and randomly ask questions as the situation demands. Sometimes your questions will be macro; other times they will be micro. Some prospects will answer all your questions with one answer, other times you will have to deliberately, patiently and painstakingly ask volumes of questions. The key is to have a very flexible process; give and take, leading and following, speaking and listening and fast and slow pace while always maintaining a neutral, balanced and non-selling posture, free of expectation and not being invested in the outcome. And if your prospect gives you resistance to answering your question simply ask the following:

• “How important is it for you, and is it worth your time for me to learn as much as possible about your issues and their causes, their costs, their payoffs and roadblocks to getting them fixed?”
• “Is this important enough to you to extend me the courtesy to ask you some questions to learn whether or not I can truly help you?”

Obviously you know by now that if you get a negative response you are really in deep trouble because you have no rapport, trust or give and take.