They see the problems. They still won't buy. Here's why.

I was reviewing a sales call last week from someone selling IT services.

They'd run a network exam during the sales process—looked at the entire infrastructure, found all sorts of problems. The IT was a complete train wreck.

They brought these findings to the proposal call and presented everything. The prospect saw it all. Didn't argue with any of it. Just nodded along. "Yeah, I get it. That's all accurate."

Vulnerabilities. Security risks. Redundancies. Inefficiencies. All laid out in front of them.

And at the end of the call, they still thought $2,000 a month was too expensive.

The seller was baffled. "What gives? They clearly have problems. Why aren't they buying?"

Here's what was missing.

When your prospect sees that they've got problems and they still don't want to fix them, you've identified problems—but you haven't identified pain.

Let me give you a different example.

Say I'm riding my bike down a hill and I break my shoulder. That's a problem. That's a fact. That's what happened.

But the pain?

The pain is that excruciating feeling in my shoulder when it happened. But it's also emotional. Maybe I've been training for an Ironman for three or four months. I've put in hundreds of hours. And now I look at this broken shoulder and realize I'm not going to be able to race.

I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed. I feel like I've wasted months of training.

Physical pain. Emotional pain.

The problem itself—the fact—is different than the pain.

And in the business world, this plays out all the time.

As a seller, you go through discovery and you identify all of these problems: cracked passwords, too many admins on 365, vulnerabilities, no employee training on phishing scams. Shit all over the place.

Great. You've told me what the problems are.

But you haven't clarified how that impacts me. You haven't helped me understand the business impact of that problem. Why should I care? What pain does that create for me?

If you tell me I've got too many admins or cracked passwords, but it's not obvious to me what symptoms I'm going to experience as a result... if I'm not complaining about those things... then you've got to help me connect the dots.

How does that problem create pain? How does it manifest itself into a symptom that I'm actually going to experience? Something I want to go away.

Because if I don't understand how that problem creates pain, it's not going to be a priority for me to fix it. And I'm not going to want to spend money to fix something I don't fully appreciate is causing me any pain.

This is why you end up with prospects whose situations are complete train wrecks—and they're still not motivated to move forward.

If I don't feel the pain, I'm not motivated to invest money, invest time, deal with the cost of switching, or deal with the perceived risk of trying something new.

Once you connect the problem to the pain, the decision gets a hell of a lot easier.

Now, most sales advice—including a lot of my own above—says you can't really close a sale with a prospect that doesn't have any pain.

No problems, no symptoms, no pain they want to go away? There's no reason to invest time, money, or energy into making changes. Painkillers are a hell of a lot easier to sell than vitamins.

Which is true.

But there are two exceptions worth knowing.

Sometimes there aren't any symptoms, but in your discovery process, you identify something that's asymptomatic but has severe impact.

Here's what I mean.

You go to the doctor for a physical. The doctor says, "Hey Ray, your blood pressure is 130 over 85. It's slightly elevated."

Am I going to immediately change my lifestyle to fix that? Start training for a 10k, cut out junk food, eat nothing but broccoli and kale?

Probably not. That's not enough of a pain. It's slightly elevated. Sure, I could be better. But it's not worth the effort.

But suppose the doctor tells you that you've got a heart condition—high-grade arterial blockage, 80 to 90% blocked.

Would you make some changes then?

Most of us would say yeah. That's enough to start making some serious life changes.

Prior to that exam, you were walking around doing just fine. You weren't experiencing any symptoms. But this latent pain that was identified is significant enough—the impact is severe enough—that you're still motivated to make the changes necessary, even though you're not feeling it.

The same thing happens in business.

If you find a severe latent pain for somebody, and they understand what the impact is—as long as they believe the severity of what you've identified—then even if they don't have the symptoms today, they're still going to be motivated to change.

People buy stuff to make pain go away. But they also buy because they have a desire for some future state. Not necessarily because they have pain they want to go away today, but because they simply want something.

And if they want it bad enough, that desire actually creates a sense of pain internally.

Here's what I mean.

You go to the car lot looking for a Camry. Nice family car. Nothing against Camrys, but you're probably not going to break the bank or make poor financial decisions to take home a Camry.

On the other hand, you go to the Porsche dealership and you're looking at that 911 you've wanted since you were 13 years old. You test drive it. And you're like, "Oh my God. This is..."

For decades you've wanted this car.

Man, you start justifying some shit really quickly. You're like, "I could probably move some things around. Maybe it's not such a bad decision."

I'm not saying sell stuff to people that they don't need.

What I'm saying is that when the desire is intense enough—when someone says, "I want that thing so much that not having it creates a sense of pain"—people are motivated to take action. They're going to start spending money. They're going to make changes. They're going to invest their resources.

The vast majority of the time, if you have no pain and no symptoms, you're not going to have a deal.

But understanding these two exceptions—latent pain with enough severity to motivate action, or desire so strong that it creates its own pain—gives you a more complete picture of what actually drives buying decisions.

Either way, the foundation remains the same: Problems are facts. Pain is feeling.

And pain sells a hell of a lot more than problems.

Adios,

Ray