I have spent the last 25 years selling. I’ve completed many formal sales training courses. I have even taught a few. I’ve been both an individual contributor and a sales manager. I have sold products nobody knew they needed and I’ve sold products everyone wanted.
In a previous posts I described selling as a 3 step process. The 3 steps being PAIN, MONEY and DECISION. These activities embody every successful selling effort.
All 3 steps must be completed in the sequence as defined. You can not skip a step to complete it later. Without pain, money doesn’t matter and without money someone wanting to buy doesn’t matter. This post discusses the first step of the selling process I call pain.
The post, Selling is a Process, defines the sales process as three steps which is a simplification to make understanding “how to sell” easy to learn and to execute. In this post my focus is on the first step, pain. Specifically “finding pain“.
What exactly is pain and does my prospect have any? If so, how do I find my prospect’s pain? Do I mean physical pain or mental anguish?
What amount of pain is necessary in order to compel a prospect to buy and what level of pain is is required to create a sense of urgency about the purchase? All important questions don’t you think?
Let’s start by answering the first question, “What exactly is pain“? The word pain means different things to different people. In selling pain is synonymous with terms like wants, needs or requirements. As sales people we use the word pain because it describes emotion and we all know buying is usually done emotionally.
Now let’s answer the question “How do I find pain“? Specifically, “What pain does my prospect have which can be resolved by using my product or service“?
Start with understanding how customers use the product or service you provide. How does your offering help a business? It is helpful if the customer examples are in the same market as your prospect but that is not an absolute necessity.
“How do you know if you’ve discovered enough pain“? Only experience can answer that question for you. After loosing a few 
sales you’ll start to know when you didn’t find enough pain.
A prospect with business pain which can be resolved with your goods or service is what we as sales people hope for. But since hope is not a sales strategy work with any prospective sale to discover every pain point possible. Don’t take for-granted your customer is in enough pain to buy.
When your prospect is in enough pain they’ll ask “Can you help”? Your answer should be “I don’t know”. Closing the sale will be the easiest part of selling. When you’ve discovered enough pain your prospect will ask to buy from you. Imagine?
