The natural reaction to pain is to avoid it and the average seller does this in an attempt to be nice. Progressive sellers on the other hand have no qualms stretching the buyer’s pain
In the counter terrorism hit series 24, protagonist Jack Bauer uses pain to acquire information. When a villain has a wound, Jack pierces, twists and inflicts further pain until it sears right through the terrorist’s body.
Pain focuses the mind
Nothing focuses the mind with the precision with which pain does.
The natural reaction to pain is to avoid it and the average seller does this in an attempt to be nice. Progressive sellers on the other hand have no qualms stretching the buyer’s pain. They make him vividly visualize his pain by painting a picture.
3 illustrations: Selling a 2-way lift
Say I’m selling elevators and specifically want a hospital to buy a two door one (also known as through way as it opens from either side).
One
The statement, “it will allow staff to exit the lift without having to turn the stretcher” is bland.
Two
“In the event of an emergency, your staff will save time as they will not have to turn the stretcher to exit or enter the lift”, is much better as it zeros in on a pain spot for the hospital – emergencies.
Three
Yet, it can still be improved to, “Based on the design of the hospital, and our observations, in a life-threatening situation, it takes an average of seven minutes to wheel a patient from the casualty on the ground floor to the theatre on the back side of left wing of the first floor.
Time is of the essence when saving a life and the hallmark of your hospital is its ability to save lives. Reducing seven minutes to four, could be the difference between saving a life-or not.
From our statistics, you have seven emergency cases every day, and as such the opportunity to lose a life is compounded seven-fold every day. This is because of the time it takes to wheel a patient whose life is in your hands from casualty to theatre.
Loss of life is irreversible; more so when it happens in a hospital and when one feels they could have done something to prevent it. How has your experience been?”
Stretch it till he responds
Stretching the pain until the buyer contributes to the episode by way of an example, or squirming in his seat, has him at his most receptive moment to open up to installing your through way lift.
How would you like it to be?
When he agrees that a problem exists requiring an emergency solution, you ask the billion shilling leading question: “How would you like it to be?”
The response lends itself to allowing you to show how your through way elevator will save lives.
You need to do your homework
To effectively stretch the pain, the seller must have done his research into the specific pain in question.
Adapt the pain
Notice how detailed the third response is. It follows, therefore, that the pain in a hospital is not the pain at an airport though the product is the same.
For instance, the pain for an airport is the unending queues of persons who enter and exit the same lift door to go to different wings of the same floor. Long queues means irritated travelers. Long queues means pulling staff off their roles to assist, thus lowering productivity, sales and, therefore, profits.
Irritated travelers means screaming children, agitated adults tweeting and posting their frustration on Facebook and Instagram about your s-l-o-w airport and a global destination receiving global negative publicity.
Stretch the buyer’s pain
Stretching the pain is not lying; it is painting a vivid picture of how things are; or, how they can be, if not addressed. And it is driven by a genuine desire to want to help.
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