NO PAIN - NO DEAL

What is pain? The consequence of doing nothing when disaster strikes

Along with Economic buyer, Pain is one of the 2 most important things to focus on when using MEDDICC? to increase your chances of winning the deal.

Pain is a problem so big that the consequences affect the organization financially directly or indirectly. The pain can be acute, happen in the foreseeable future or exist as a risk. The pain is the driving force for the customer to prioritize the investment. It must affect the customer in terms of time, cost, risk or revenue, if not resolved within a certain time frame. Each decision-maker perceives pain in his own way. You start from your own perspective.

Examples of pain:

- The shops must be closed because the cash register systems have stopped working

- The company is losing money because operating costs have doubled

- The organization cannot maintain its level of service because they have lost competence

- The company loses revenue because they have lost a customer contract

- The company risks ending up in a legal process because they violate legal requirements

- The company risks losing market share because they do not have time to launch new products as quickly as the competitors

The pain is the tip of the iceberg: below the surface of the water is everything that caused the pain - it is the causes of the pain that your product and service must cure. If the management does not perceive the problem as urgent, history is full of examples of this, the investment will probably not be a priority right now.

Exampel of severe pain:

A software company had signed a contract with a customer to deliver a solution before the end of the year. The contract was a breakthrough, they had won their first major deal in an area that was expected to grow strongly. The CEO had even said that this deal was the company's ticket to the future. At the end of September, the testers discovered that some of the reporting functions had serious bugs and they searched and searched among the lines of code but could not find the root causes. Delivery was at risk of being delayed. Normally, this would not be a problem, but the company's lawyers discovered that the agreement with the customer contained two things: First, a penalty clause with heavy fines for associations and an opportunity for the customer to cancel the contract free of charge. Both of these clauses posed a real threat to the economy, the company had invested a lot of money which they now risked losing. The development team needed more resources but did not have time to recruit new staff. They needed to bring in expensive expert consultants to solve the problem. It was something the company had never done before. Faced with the risk that the delivery was delayed and the customer canceled the contract, the CEO chose to sign a purchase order to buy in the expensive consultants.

In this example, the problem was discovered by the developers, people far down in the customer's organization. Their pain was that the product did not work as it should. The reason was bugs. The management's pain was different; they were at risk of losing revenue or incurring high costs. The reason was that the delivery would probably be delayed. I call this a chain of pain. A problem, pain, in one part of the organization causes a knock-on effect that can be extremely serious.

I would like to give an example of how a disaster occurred because the manager in charge did not see the consequences of failure.

An international hotel chain had a business system where all customers' information was stored in one place, a database. There were names, credit cards, e-mails, addresses and invoices. The hotels were modern with high-tech solutions for heating, lighting and a lot of cool features: when the guest checked in, there was a personal greeting on the TV. A consultant specializing in IT security accidentally discovered a strange offer on the Darknet, the part of the Internet that requires special browsers. Someone offered to sell a complete customer record complete with name, address and credit card data. The payment was to be made in bitcoin. The consultant raised his eyebrows when he saw that the size of the register corresponded to what he estimated was the hotel chain's customer base. "There was something that made me wonder, it said in several places that the customer register was from Scandinavia." The consultant did something very unusual, he called the hotel chain's IT manager and told him what he discovered. The IT manager did not believe the information and hung up. A few months later, the IT manager received an email that caused him to put his morning coffee down his throat. The email was brief: “You have been hacked. Pay 1 million bitcoins to get your data back. More information to follow.” Later investigations showed that someone had managed to hack in via the company's advanced ventilation system and step by step reached the business system, copied all the data and placed malicious code in many different places. The hotel did not pay the ransom but was forced to shut down its operations for several months

They lost a lot of money in the coup. If the IT manager had taken the threat seriously, the hacker attack could have been avoided, the cost would have been minimal. Why didn't the IT manager spend a few hours investigating whether the consultant was right? Probably the manager did not believe the consultant's claim, perhaps he was perceived as a salesman.

The example above is unfortunately quite common.

I have coached many salespeople who have seen that the customer was able to avoid problems, was able to increase their income and reduce risks, but failed to convince anyone to address the situation. Without a strong champion, management won't see the pain. To convince managers that the pain is both real and costly, you need to have strong arguments, facts to show and examples of customers you have helped. Come up with some short reference stories that you can tell quickly to get the customer's attention. Don't be afraid to show step by step how you came to the conclusion that the customer can get great value from your solution. If you don't get through to the first person you talk to, don't give up, find someone in another department until you get through. Make sure you adapt your message to fit the person's role. Show how the problems can propagate in the organization and what consequences this can have. Then you create an opportunity for the person to become a hero, that's when they become your champion!

Sit down and draw up the customer's organization. Find the department where your solution can do the most good. Write down the problems, pain, that they can solve with the help of you and your offer. Then draw arrows to the departments that are negatively affected if "your" department cannot solve their problems, write down which problems they may suffer from. Continue the exercise until you get to departments that are suffering financially. Summarize your analysis by making a simple calculation: what will your solution cost and what will it bring in profits. This exercise will help you understand the prospect's pain, how you can help solve it, what the pain chain looks like, and the value of solving it. You need to help the customer see how the pain has consequences for the business and what they look like. Identifying pain helps you qualify the opportunity to understand if and how you can sell to potential customers. Helping your customer solve a serious problem that would result in further pain if left unaddressed gives your business a reason and a timeline.

3 types of pain that make the customer prioritize a solution

Financial pain: The organization either loses revenue or has higher costs related to the pain.

Efficiency pain: A pain that occurs because something prevents the organization from being effective or efficient.

Risk pain: A pain that can arise due to risks in working methods or and agreements contracts. The pain can occur as a consequence of changes in the outside world.

People pain: Pain that affects the people in the organization either through productivity, morale and culture, skill or capability.

Questions you can ask to find the pain:

? What problems do we and our offer solve for you?

? How does it align with the company's initiatives and how is this prioritized by management?

? Who in your organization cares about the pain?

Why is solving the pain important to you and your business?

? What is the consequence for you and your company of not doing anything about the situation?

? How does the pain affect your business?

? How can the effect of the pain be measured?

? What are the causes of the pain?

? Who in the organization experiences pain and how do they experience it?

Summary

Pain drives the client to make a change. But people at your client have different images of the pain, they are also affected in different ways. Too often, the insights about the pain get stuck far down the organization or with managers who don't have the power and money to solve them. To sell, you need to get your customer to take the pain seriously and open avenues of contact to those who have the power and influence to make the investment necessary to solve the problems. Then you will win the deal.

Jens Edgren, MEDDICC?Master trainer

www.meddicc.se [email protected]