Pain Pays, and Sales Gains

In Raj Kapoor's 1985 movie Ram Teri Ganga Maili, a song called Ek Radha, Ek Meera distinguishes between the love that Radha had for Lord Krishna and the pining that Meera shows for the Lord. "Ek Prem Deewani, Ek Daras Deewani" goes the song. The two women epitomise the two ways to reach the Lord - one through Love, and the other through Pain. Some of the rituals and methods (followed until this day) to reach out to God in all religions have pain as an essential ingredient.

In natural psychology, there has been an irrefutable oft-mentioned axiom:

Everything human beings do, they do for one of two reasons: either out of their need to avoid pain or their desire to gain pleasure.

It is too pat, as theories go. But studies and research in multiple situations seem to bear out that the intrinsic motivation driving human actions can be mostly explained by just these two sentiments - Pain and Pleasure.

The large drug companies all over the world spend billions of dollars in R&D to come up with medicines that claim to cure sickness and maladies. They profess to set right disorders, and assert that they can get rid of viruses and bugs. These are prescribed by doctors, to be taken whenever we fall ill. These are post-facto interventions.

Then there are a number of health supplements and nutritious substitutes for the otherwise toxic food (not to mention air and life in general) that we consume. We are told that by having vitamins and calcium, for example, we can prevent a number of illnesses from afflicting us. Some of us do take these diligently. These are possible preventive measures. However, most of us wait to get sick, and then pay for the medicines as the remedies for all our woes.

An essay written by an analyst on the global pharmaceutical industry posed this interesting question: What could be the multiples of sales volumes for drugs and medicines we consume to cure ourselves of illnesses as against sales volumes of health supplements that can prevent us from falling sick? On a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, this analyst reckons that it could be 55 to 70 times. For every dollar of preventive intervention (pleasure of not falling sick), the pharmaceutical/medical world makes up to $70 of post-disorder (pain) medicinal intervention revenues.

A professor decided to subject a mouse to both pain and pleasure, and see if the maxim holds true in all circumstances. The mouse had to traverse a complicated maze to get to a very inviting piece of cheese. However, whenever the mouse went on to the maze, a huge electric shock was given, causing the mouse to be thrown back violently. The mouse tried to navigate the maze from multiple entry points and different routes. The shock and pain happened every single time. It happened at random, and never at the same places on the maze, or at the same intervals of time. After a dozen or so attempts, the mouse simply gave up, and never ventured on to the maze.

The moral of this story is stark and clear – people, like the mouse, will pay more to avoid pain than they will ever pay to enhance pleasure.

Herein lies a seminal lesson for our salespeople who believe that customers do come as Meera (Pain) or Radha (Pleasure), and we only need to change the narrative accordingly, to make a successful sale.

The fact is that a customer in pain will pay more, and buy quickly.

We in Sales want to think twice about dishing out all that talk on how our product/service will open doors to a new paradise for the customer. We will do better if we were to invest our time in determining the factors/reasons causing discomfort, dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the way things are, at our customer places.

The pain maximises at a particular level in the hierarchy , and/or with a certain function, and/or with an individual of the customer organisation. Find that pain area.

Good salespeople dig that pain out, articulate that pain by empathising with the customer, and then, and only then, present their offerings.