The Art of Fishing Pain Points

Human truth: People prefer to talk, rather than listen to you. So in the course of the meeting, listen more than you talk. 

Don’t go for sales meeting with set decks and proudly present it, without engaging the consumer in discussions. It is not effective because while you leave the meeting feeling great about yourself you really don’t have any further knowledge of the customers “pain.” Your ready sales pitch might not address every consumer’s concern.

Step 1: Understand your product thoroughly

Ranbir Kapoor is the Salesman of the Year in Rocket Singh. And in this scene, like an expert salesman demonstrates in one breath all the benefits of his service.

• You need to know every detail of the product you’re selling. 
• What does your product do?
• How does it work? 
• Why would anyone use this product?
• What are the benefits that this product will bring in the consumer’s life?
• When will the consumer be most likely to buy this product? – any occasion, season, trend that you can map.
• How much does it cost? How much discount can you give?
• What are the additional benefits you can give?

Step 2: Research the client and the company thoroughly

Listen to Zubair Shaikh, Assistant General Manager, Media Marketing, HT Media explain the importance of research and how to do it.

From the video we learnt that we need to

• Research both on the business and the individual
• Learn about the journey of the brand
• Learn about their competitors
• Learn where the company is in the product lifecycle
• Learn about the journey of the person from facebook and linkedin

Many people forget to include understanding the adoption stage of the consumer during research. In this video Rajiv Tevtiya, Managing Partner & CEO at RML AgTech Pvt Ltd explains why we need to understand the adoption stage of the consumer. We asked him a simple question - a salesman has to hear "No" from the client many times. What are the steps a salesman can take to minimise that?  

• From the video we learnt that we cannot sell an iPhone to a laggard soon after the launch. 
  
• Sometimes the person won’t buy the product cause they are not in the right phase of the purchase cycle.

This article will help you understand the different stages of adoption that the consumers can be in. 

Step 3: Ask questions when you meet your client face to face

• Introduce yourself and give a brief overview of what solution your company provides. 
• If you have cases of other companies using your product present them as stories. Pick out a range of cases with different problems. There will definitely be one problem that the client you’re talking to identifies with. 
• Stress on the problem that most companies in the said client’s industry has. 
• You can then jump to: “Do you see that at all inside your company/department?”
• Often when a customer hears similar problems faced by other customers, it creates a familiar ground. They will then start to open up and have a discussion.
• And you have to agree that a discussion is certainly better than a one-sided presentation. A discussion opens up many talking points. It creates a bond. And as a salesman, building bonds is what you should aim to build. 

In the words of Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

When you’re in a meeting with the client, as a salesman your job is to make mental notes of the pain points that your product can solve. You can then pitch your product by solving those pain points using your product attributes. 

Key Takeaways

1. Listen more than you speak

2. Identifying the pain points is half the sales process done

3. Customise solutions to pain points

Up Next

In the next module we'll learn how to prepare for the big pitch meeting and see how it is just like preparing for a date. Right from reaching out to the one, to pursuing them and following up after you've made the first conversation, this module has tips for everything. What's more, experts from Insurance, Media and Consumer Durable share valuable insights from their rich experience. Go on... Prepare for your first date with the client.