Sales Hacks: Know Pain and Know Gain

February 20^th, 2023 (Two-minute read)

 

Last week, we wrote about the importance of questions in sales.  There is nothing new there, of course.  The idea that questions are helpful in selling is quite old – as old as Socrates, in fact.  We will take this up at SKO in May and in future Hacks, so stay tuned.

 

For this week’s Hack, though, we will return to last week’s STAR Session and the topic of Buyer Needs. 

 

Although Needs play important roles throughout the Buying Cycle®, they are most important in the Acknowledge Needs phase.  In this phase, the Buyer tries to answer the critical questions of Why Change and Why Now.  Needs are the catalyst that gets them moving forward.

 

Drawing on the research of behavioral psychologist Neil Rackham, there are two distinct categories of Buyer statements that we broadly call “needs”.  One contains problem-oriented language, which we call PAIN Needs.  The other expresses solution-oriented language, which we call GAIN Needs. 

 

PAIN Needs sound like:

·       We’re struggling with…

·       I’m not happy that…

·       One problem we experience is…

·       X leads to hassles…

 

GAIN Needs, on the other hand, sound like:

·       We’d like to…

·       It would be great if we could…

·       One fix that would be nice is…

·       Another way Y could help is…

 

Both Need categories are essential for answering the Why Change and Why Now questions Buyers ask themselves, but only GAIN Needs correlate with successful sales outcomes, according to Rackham’s findings.

 

 

Rackham’s observational data is backed up by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s ground-breaking behavioral economics studies, published as “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk” in 1979.  Acknowledged with the Nobel® Prize in Economics in 2002, the research demonstrated that humans ascribe significantly more weight to losses than they do to gains, as portrayed vividly in what is now called Kahneman’s curve.

Prospect Theory, in combination with Rackham’s findings on PAIN and GAIN and their correlation with successful sales outcomes, demonstrates at least two important truths for Sellers who want to win.

·       Finding “pain points” is only a starting point for building forward momentum with a Buyer and is insufficient to build a compelling case for change.  You need GAIN to win.

·       However, focusing only on GAIN, at the exclusion of PAIN, misses a huge opportunity to establish for the Buyer a compelling case for change.

 

In future Hacks – and future STAR Sessions and other venues – I hope we can continue to delve into these concepts and their implications for us and our Buyers. 

 

Remember: Know Pain and Know Gain.