[E89] Q&A Week: What if my prospect doesn’t have pain I can solve?

Sometimes you follow your discovery, probing questions exactly as they should work.

And you don’t get back any useful information from the prospect.

In this episode I address the question “What if I ask the prospect my discovery questions and they don’t seem to have a pain I can solve?”

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Episode 89 – Transcript

What’s going on. Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutters, so glad that you’re here.

This is episode 89 so excited to be approaching a hundred episodes, which was my goal for this podcast was to do 100 episodes. See how I was enjoying the process, see how it was going so far. I’m loving it. This is so fun. Going back and forth between answering questions and topics for the weeks and special guest’s interviews.

Hopefully you’re enjoying this. If you’re new to the show, make sure that you subscribe. You can do that in all the places that you can find podcasts. If you’re a regular listener, you’ve been listening to a lot of these episodes over the last several months.

Thank you for that. I appreciate what that means in the fact that you’re on the same path and same mission with me to help affect the way that sales is done, the sales experience, and the reason why I do this and the reason it’s called the sales experience is for you the salesperson.

It’s for you, the manager, for you, the owner, to make sure that you create the greatest sales experience from your side where it overcomes that standard question. When people ask you what you do, you say you’re in sales and sometimes people will say, how can you sleep at night when you build the right sales experience?

There is never a doubt when you put your head down in your pillow because you’ve done everything you can for the people you help. You have given them all that you could. You tried to solve as many problems as you could and you didn’t sell something to somebody who didn’t need it, want it or couldn’t afford it.

So on the other side, your prospects appreciate that as well because they’re getting a wonderful experience turns into raving fans, which will hopefully lead to referrals and long-term thing. So let’s get into today’s episode.

Today’s question. I see a lot. It’s interesting because I have a lot of times I’m working with sales teams where reps will ask me this, especially after a phone call or when we’re going through discovery questions or setting up new process.

So the question really comes down to what I do when I asked the prospect all of my questions and it doesn’t seem like they have any pain or problems for me to solve. So the answer to this is really simple and a lot of salespeople, managers, owners are blown away when I go into this process with them because they don’t realize that this is the fundamental truth.

Even though it is, they don’t like it. Because as salespeople, you’re conditioned to always sell to every single person and anytime you don’t sell a prospect that feels like a failure. The answer to this question about when a prospect has no pain, no goals, no issues, it doesn’t seem to be in need of what it is that you’re selling.

Don’t sell to them. That’s it. Like if they don’t have a need, there’s no reason to do it. Somebody goes to the doctor and they’re healthy. There’s no reason for the doctor to prescribe pills or a surgery or an issue.

If somebody goes to the doctor and they have an issue and then the doctor goes through everything and the person says, that’s not a big enough issue. That’s not a big enough problem. My leg hurts, but I’m not going to do anything about it. It’s not a big deal.

You can’t do anything about it. That doctor just can’t like tie them down and force them to get surgery or force them to fix it or do physical therapy or whatever that might be. There’s the doctor can do same thing for you.

If your prospect has no pain, has no issue, has no motivation or desire for themselves in order to buy your product or service, then you just move on.

Give them your information, make sure they’ve got it, their situation ever changes in the future. Have them call you or email you or send you a message or come into your store or whatever it might be, and you move on and let them move on because the thing is is you can’t sell to them what they aren’t interested in buying for their reasons.

Now, here’s what I’ll tell you. [inaudible] the bad salespeople out in the world who use manipulation will try to convince that person anyway that they should buy. They will use [inaudible] all kinds of terrible manipulation tactics in order to get that person to buy on the spot instead of just walking away.

What generally happens then is buyer’s remorse kicks in when somebody buys, and not for their own reason, but because of pressures from the outside, whether it’s a salesperson, peer pressure, whatever that might be.

Then buyer’s remorse kicks in and it could be instantly, as soon as they hang up the phone or walk out of the store, it could be at two in the morning. They wake up in a cold sweat realizing what they just bought and they realized it was a terrible decision and they totally got tricked into buying and they totally fell for the sales person’s tactics and they regret it instantly.

So either they’re the type of personality who’s going to fight it and try to cancel or do a charge back and get their money back at, stop the process. Or they’re the kind of person who doesn’t like confrontation and they’re just going to accept it, pay for what they paid for, never use it, and maybe if they bought it, they put it on the shelf if they signed up for it, they’re just not even going to use it.

If it’s a service and literally they’ll move on, but that’s not what you want. That is not what you should have as your goal, and you don’t want to be signing up people who don’t want it for them. Obviously you could push lots of people into buying, but that’s not what it’s about.

If you’re trying to be a real true sales professional, your goal should never be to close 100% of the people that you speak with, not 100% of the people that you talk to on a regular basis. Long term will be qualified. We’ll be interested or we’ll be your ideal client.

It’s just not possible. If you’re in a professional sales role. Now, if you’re selling a commodity, you’re selling something that’s just a small widget and people could buy it.

Still, you’re not going to sell 100% but you could sell a higher amount, but if you’re doing a consultative sale, if a company has you as a salesperson and your job is to pre qualify, determine if someone’s a good fit and then sell them something that matches their needs, wants goals, issues, struggles, whatever that is, you’re not going to close a a hundred percent so back to this question, when you have someone where you go through all your stuff and it seems like they don’t care, it seems like they don’t need it.

Even if they called into you, even if they picked up the phone and called in off direct mail off of them, something they saw on the Internet, they found your website, they clicked on a banner ad and then I ended up talking to you.

Whatever that is. Even if they made that initial step and they don’t seem to have any problems, then they’re just not interested or, and I just want to throw this in at the end. It’s very possible, especially if that person picked up the phone and called in. If they reached out to you, I’m not talking about you cold calling them.

I’m not about you chasing them down on the street in order to try to have a conversation with them. I mean, they reached out, they made an inbound inquiry and you go through your questions and they don’t seem to have any issues.

It’s also very possible that it’s about you and you didn’t ask the right questions or they didn’t trust you enough to give you the correct answers. They might in fact have some pain that could be solved, but they just didn’t see you as the professional who is going to solve it.

May be you sounded sales, maybe you sounded unprofessional or maybe your questions didn’t dig deep enough. Just because your company gives you a sheet of questions to ask doesn’t mean that should be the full limit of your question.

You need to actively listen, hear what they’re saying and not saying, and then respond appropriately and dive deep while at the same time being a professional at the same time caring about them. If you get off the phone and somebody didn’t have any issues and they called in. Also take time to reflect on the fact that it might’ve been you.

You might’ve been able to do more. Make sure get with your manager, listen to the recording, have them give you some feedback and coaching so that you can identify where you might have missed an opportunity and with that being said, back to my original response, sometimes people just don’t have an issue that they want solved where they think is big enough and you’re not going to close them off.

All right. I hope that helps with your discovery process, with your sales process, with what you’re doing on a regular basis with your prospects, converting them to customers. If you own or manage a sales team and you’re looking for some help in identifying areas where they’re not the most effective, could improve and could help the whole team win more.

Make sure to reach out to me. [Inaudible] consulting group.com you can send me a message through there, my information, email, phone numbers all on the site, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

Send me a message through there and let’s chat and set up a time where we can talk about how I can help your company. That’s it for this episode.

Always, remember that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.