257: You Need Pain In Sales

<p>When you contemplate this title you are probably thinking about heroic sales efforts, massive privations, sacrifice, striving, discipline, patience and forbearance.  Actually I am not talking about any of that mighty stuff.  I am talking about your client.  The really irritating thing about sales is trying to get someone to buy who doesn’t need what you are offering.  You know they should have it, but they don’t know.  That makes it really hard to persuade the buyer to activate.</p> <p> </p> <p>We know we should be running the sales conversation along the railway track progressing through the sales continuum.  That track follows this order-build the trust, get permission to ask questions, uncover needs, perfectly match solutions, deal with any push back and ask for the business.  When we get to the discovery part, there is nothing so painful as finding out they don’t have any significant pain.  The client is happy with their current supply arrangements.  They can’t see the need to encompass dealing with the angel (you) they don’t know, when they are comfortable and safe and sound with the devil (your competitor) they do know.  Not all is lost though. We can try all manner of things to break in, such as suggesting some form of trial, also some other very low friction starts to the relationship such as elongated payment terms, etc.  We can try and introduce something better at a small scale to try and pry open the jaws to new business.</p> <p> </p> <p>Japan is a place where once you get in, the client tends to want to stick with you, because you are a known factor and so the risk element has pretty much been homogenised and dealt with.  A new supplier is painful for the buyer because now they have to go through that whole risky process from the start.  Here the buyers are super risk averse, so it is easier to say “no thank you”.</p> <p> </p> <p>The other pain point is no perceived need.  We deal with a lot of large companies, particularly multi-national companies who have devolved their own internal solutions.