Pain In Sales, The Most Misunderstood Concept In Sales.

Recently I read a blog post of a popular sales guru titled “Pain-free selling. What a find! Are you pain free?”

In the blog he wrote:

“But “finding the pain” is not a bit funny in sales. In fact it’s somewhere between sad and manipulative. Somewhere between negative and dark. In short, if you want to find pain, become a doctor – people will come to you with pain by the thousands. If you want to make it in sales, there are other things to find.”

He went on to say;

“Chances are, if you go looking for pain, you’ll lose to someone looking for a positive, meaningful, engaging, value-driven relationship. One that not only leads to an order, it leads to a relationship, testimonials, and referrals. Those are pleasures. Find those, and you’ll get rid of the pain in your wallet.”

This sales guru is also known for saying “Looking for Pain” in sales is so “Seventies”.

The sales guru is not completely wrong.  He is correct that people want to buy, not be sold. He is correct that sales should be a career full of fun and excitement, and it is. He is also correct when he says the focus should be on value and not price.

But he is sorely incorrect when he says that sales is not about finding pain.

I am not advocating being manipulative or using some sad technique to fear your clients. I am not advocating operating from a negative or dark space. I do not take pleasure, nor is it my life’s work to find pain, but if I truly understand what motivates people, I will quit talking about the ROI and start listening to the compelling reasons and the consequences of not taking action.

As far as I am concerned, the best doctors are salespeople as well.  And the best salespeople follow the same protocol as the best doctors. In fact, if all salespeople operated like great doctors, there would never have been the stigma of deception the sales profession carries today.  Great doctors ask questions first to better understand the symptoms, then implement different tools that correctly diagnose the problem, finally they write the prescription and/or issues orders.

In contrast, most salespeople walk, full of hope, into the prospects office with the prescription first, as if it were some magic drug that cured all of the prospects ills. If they can just get the prospect to understand all the benefits of this magic drug, the prospect will surely buy.

What those hopeful salespeople don’t understand is that writing a prescription without a diagnosis is malpractice.

Salespeople and sales managers should not be cheerleaders, and those who think they are, never seem to manage their sales forces or their opportunities correctly. These same hopeful salespeople are the ones who have pipeline bloat, the condition that occurs when you don’t remove “never” or “maybe”prospects from the pipeline because you are hopeful that one day they will see the light and finally buy from you. Of course pipeline bloat is the cause of inaccurate sales projections, underachieving salespeople, loss of market share, missed opportunities, and frustrated CEOs.

I have helped thousands of people at some level or another change their perspective, not by appealing to what they can gain, but rather focusing on the consequence of not changing. I call this “Looking for Pain.”  It’s not that people don’t want gain, it’s just they are more willing and will do more to move away from pain than move towards gain.

Maybe the sales guru’s understanding of pain is different from mine. He talks like an exploration of pain is a sadistic need on the salesperson’s part. As if the more I twist your arm the more likely you are to buy.

I don’t need to use pain. I don’t need to generate pain. The prospect already has pain and will tell me about it if I know how to listen for it. The prospect’s pain is the very reason we are talking. Sales is one of the most mistrusted professions in the world, why would anyone subject themselves to a salesperson unless they were in some sort of pain? Why would they meet with sales people unless they couldn’t handle the problem on their own?

I am no exception to the rule.

I avoid pain more than I move toward gain.

This reminds me of an instance in the past when I had a broken molar.

I don’t like the dentist, not only the pain involved, but having someone in my personal space working on my mouth is not very comfortable. Unfamiliar sensations, so close to the center of my perceived identity does not help either.

One day as I was eating, I broke a molar. I felt and removed pieces of it in my mouth, but there was no pain indicating a problem, so I did nothing.

A couple months later, swelling started above that tooth and it throbbed in pain.  I was in pain and could only think about the pain that pulsated from my mouth. I called the dentist to make an appointment and they indicated it would be another 6 weeks before they could fit me in. They called a prescription in for me for some antibiotics and after a few days of taking the pills, my tooth felt better. Five weeks later, I cancelled my appointment, having more important business to tend to, or so I told the receptionist, actually, it was the dread of the dentist’s office that kept me from the appointment.

This cycle of events happened about 5 times.

Now I knew then that it was a bad idea to have a broken tooth in my head.  All kinds of health issues can arise from a broken tooth.  Short term issues are infection, headaches, tiredness, bad breath, and digestion issues.  Long term issues include heart and liver damage as well as some people believe that cancer can be derived from having a broken tooth.  I knew all of this.  These were facts established by the scientific community, but yet I did not respond to the facts.  I responded much stronger to the dread of the dentist’s office than I did to the logic of fixing the tooth.

Then one day cupid struck.

I met a girl quite by accident, and kept bumping into her around town. Fate was at play and I could feel it, and the very afternoon I decided I was going to ask her out on a date, knowing my breath stunk because of the tooth, I went straight to the oral surgeon's office and had the tooth removed that afternoon.

Why did I get it removed?

If you said so I could get the girl you would be wrong.

I had the tooth removed because I knew my breath stunk, and the fear of being rejected because of my bad breath was greater than the fear of the pain that removing the tooth would cause. In other words, because of the perceived and imagined pain of rejection, all the pain associated with the fear of the dentists office paled in comparison.

Two lessons this story illustrates;

The first is that I had to perceive a pain greater than the one I was fearful of to move me past my fears.

The second is, that emotional pain will always trump and be feared more than physical pain.

I know it makes a lot of salespeople feel better to read the sales guru’s post, but I am not in sales to make friends, nor am I in sales to influence people. I am in sales to assist people obtain what they need and get paid well doing it.

Diagnosing sales forces is difficult and there is a lot that can be misrepresented if not understood correctly. Sales management fails most times due to lack of accountability, lack of effective training, and using the wrong personnel. Need for approval, excuse making, money issues, and lack of desire are the biggest reasons salespeople fail, do you know how to tell if your sales force is suffering from any of the above?

Passion, forget what you think it is.

Passion is tricky.

It seems that so many coaches and self help gurus toss the idea around as if it is easy to discover, easy to cultivate, and easy to live.

Many people I talk with have become convinced that they must have passion to be able to move forward with their lives after listening to these well meaning self help gurus. They often believe a necessary ingredient to life is passion and when one feels it lacking in their life, one can be left to feel as if they are lost. Even though they keep looking, spending time journaling, contemplating, and other activities to 'discover' their passion, it remains elusive.

Passion, like so many other inner qualities, needs to be cultivated. When someone comes to me looking for help finding their passion, we may discuss their interests, what they liked as a pre-teen. or some other thing to discuss. Money either has to be removed from the search, or if money is the passion, it must be owned, not justified.

All the above is great, but rarely creates results because passion is not a destination.

If one has attitude issues, those must be addressed first. If one has issues with willingness, this must be addressed. Both desire and commitment are necessary ingredients to passion, if one lacks either one, passion will be impossible. Passion is not a single idea, but rather many ideas, attitudes, behaviors, that when seen together are often identified as passion.

I tell people who are struggling with discovering their passion to start with what they like. It does not have to be what they love, it does not have to be altruistic or grand, it just has to be something that are willing to commit to and have enough desire to carry them through the difficulties of seeing it come to fruition. As long as they have the willingness, and as long as they practice the behavior, they will develop the skills it takes to turn likes into loves, and they will create the neural pathways that support the habits that not only passionate people possess, but successful people as well.

Disappointingly, I have discovered that most people don't have the willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to create the changes that support not only success and passion, but true wealth creation and personal freedom as well. As Morpheus said in The Matrix, "there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

This video is a rare example of passion and the kind of desire and commitment it takes to make your passions become realities. I have adopted a line from it that really resonates as true; "The difference between the poor man and the rich man, the poor man plans for the weekend, the rich man plans the next four years."http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Fighting-your-passion-Inside-Look-4788872.S.251801863?qid=2d96cc09-1eda-4c8c-9d4a-84d3daa6df66&trk=group_most_recent_rich-0-b-cmr&goback=%2Egmr_4788872 

I have found that most of passions did not come to fruit until 3-5 years after I embarked on the journey. Patience is one of the other ingredients often over looked.

The Power Of Words, Turned Outside In.

The video above is touching.  It contains a great message, that often times it is not what we say, but rather, how we say it, that makes the difference.  I watched this video several times, thought about the implications when creating marketing to deliver a particular message about a particular product or service and wondered how many great products, services and ideas never saw success because of a poorly worded message.  I imagine the number is in the millions.

How many messages do we process on a daily basis?  Some studies indicate that the number is in the thousands.  What if each one was worded as well as this one, each one had an effective impact?  What if the most important messages we process through the day could have this impact?  What are the most important messages we process through the day? The ones we tell ourselves all day long, they have the most impact on what manifests in our lives on a day to day basis.

Our self talk is the single most important thing to be aware of.  Our self talk not only reveals our mindset, it determines how we are going to react throughout the day and it is what makes it possible (or impossible) for us to recognize opportunity when it comes our way. If you have never observed your self talk, it may be surprising.  We are our harshest critics, we manipulate the past to make it feel better, and we project into the future our worries and concerns. We have imaginary conversations that will never come to pass.  We use language with ourselves we would never use with anyone else. We misinterpret other people's reactions, we assume the wrong answers (though often times we delude ourselves into thinking we are mind readers), and we filter everything that comes to us through our self talk.  If our self talk is negative and debasing, what we experience will be negative and debasing, but if our self talk is healthy and supportive, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.  Our challenges become rewarding, and life's twists and turns become a source for excitement. Gratitude replaces regret, accountability replaces victim hood. The key to all self improvement begins with an inventory of and changing of your self talk.

What the hypnotist told you...

  Imagine together we go to a hypnotist's stage show.  As we sit in the audience, he calls you up to the stage to participate in a demonstration.  He points you to a chair to sit in, and after you sit down, he proceeds to hypnotize you. While you are hypnotized, he sets an instruction in your subconscious that anytime you hear him say the word 'duck' you will stand up, start to flap your arms as if they were wings, and loudly quack like a duck.  After this, he instructs that you will have no recall of the time while you were hypnotized.  As you awake from the hypnotized state, you have no recall of what just happened and he instructs you to take your seat in the audience.
     After a few minutes, the hypnotist starts to talk about duck hunting, and as he does, you can't help it, you stand up, start to flap your arms like wings, and loudly quack like a duck, the whole time thinking to yourself "what am I doing? I am going crazy!" One of the interesting things about human behavior is that as we become more and more stressed, we fall further and further back into our subconscious programming, so as you stress about flapping and quacking, you fall back to your subconsciousness more and more, making you flap faster and quack louder. Needless to say, you are embarrassed and become very self-conscious at that point.  After leaving you on the hook for a couple of minutes, the hypnotist quits saying the word duck, and you are able to sit down and allow the stress to subside, though the confusion never really leaves.
     We all have been hypnotized. We had parents, grandparents, siblings, other family, other authority figures all show and explain the world to us.  Just as your capacity for reason is suspended during hypnotism and it cannot filter out/re-contextualize anything before it reaches your subconscious, a child's capacity for reason is non-existent at first, so a lot of the first beliefs you heard your parents talk about, became a reality for you.  Without exploring and questioning these "realities" we have carried since being infants, we cannot discover which ones are healthy for our development nor can we discover the ones that interfere with our goals and inspirations for ourselves.
     Now let's imagine the above story a little different.  Let's imagine that when you came off the stage and sat back down next to me, I leaned over to you and told you that he had hypnotized you, I then proceeded to tell you the instructions he placed in your subconscious.  Then when he starts talking about duck hunting a few minutes later, you now have a choice.  Your reaction/inclination will be to stand up, flap, and quack, but because you now know about the instruction that was placed in your subconscious, you are able to make a choice to do something different, mainly because your awareness of the instruction allows you to look at your behavior without stressing, without intensifying the instruction. Awareness eventually leads to change, but first it provides the confidence one needs to move forward and try something new.
     We have helped lots of people learn what the hypnotist told them.  Are you ready to learn what your early hypnotists told you and how it is limiting your life?  If you have the courage and the want to produce real change into your life, call us today, we will help you discover what the hypnotist told you. 520-329-1969

The progression of knowledge

I over heard an instructor with his student the other day talking about they way we learn.

He commented at first we are a unaware-incompetent, you don't know that you don't know. Then we become aware-incompetent, we know that we don't know. After that we can become aware-competent, we know.  And finally we become unaware competent, we no longer have to think about it, we just know it.

1. Unaware/Incompetent
2. Aware/Incompetent
3. Aware/Competent
4. Unaware/Competent

Do you invest in training to discover what you don't know?  Are you even aware that there are things about yourself you are not even aware of? Do you want to discover what stands in your way to unlimited success? It all starts with the awareness of your incompetence.  Once you know that you don't know, then the training can begin. Are you courageous enough to take that first honest step and discover exactly how limited you are?  If you would like to get to know yourself better than ever before, give us a call, 520-329-1969

Cleaning the Cobra Pit

When I first saw this video, I was amazed at how relaxed the man was, moving those cobras around like they were dead limbs from a tree, with no emotion whatsoever.  I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t think of a price high enough you could pay me to take his job.

As I watched the video, it started to parallel what I witnessed in professional life as well.  The people who could manage the most of amount of snakes without getting bit always seem to have the most amount of respect. The snakes being the stressful situations businesses find themselves in, and not getting bit means turning those situations into winning moments for the business, rather than losing the business, deal, and/or client.  The guy or gal who can handle those snakes and move them around the cage wherever they want them to go, is always the one who commands the top dollar and importance in a company. I don’t know how much the man in the video gets paid, but I do know this, effective snake handlers have longer careers than ineffective ones!

What can clearly be assumed from this video though, is that the man is TRAINED.  With training, you too could handle the snakes this man is handling.  With PRACTICE,  he built the confidence needed to be relaxed when he is handling the snakes.  And with PERSISTENCE, he mastered the skill well enough, he no longer had anything to be scared about either.

If you consider yourself a snake handler or want to be one, what are you doing so that you do the job more effectively?  Are you receiving training?  Are you practicing what you learn, everyday?  Are you performing your job relaxed and with confidence, or do you feel like your about to get bit by the cobras?

Have A Fantastic Week!

Matt


520-329-1969
TPPDC.com