What beats What…

We played Tripoley with our dear friends Pat and Monica recently.  Ever play?  Tripoley starts with betting your poker hand.  Since we don’t play poker very often we always have to ask, “What beats What?”  Thankfully, our hosts had printed a helpful reference:

Playing Tripoley reminded me of a common discussion I have had throughout my sales career centered around “What beats What?”  I still coach sales reps on this topic, today.  Every time I hear a sales rep; sales manager; trainer; or coach talk about “selling to pain”, I think of the sales-poker hand.

I’ve known Tony Marabotti for decades.  My friend, mentor, and former boss, he had this view on the question at hand:

To a prospective customer evaluating vendor products or services, to quote a poker term, here's “What beats What”: 

·         Better features beats lesser features

·         An existing business relationship beats better features

·         Saving money beats an existing business relationship

·         Pain trumps all

What do you think?  Does “pain trump all”?  I was taught to sell that way “back in the day”.  But that was literally last century. 

Today, I believe the Modern Buyer has a different view; a different ranking.  During the final 10+ years of my career as the Master Sales Enablement Advisor at Oracle NetSuite I would coach my sellers specifically not to sell to the alleviation of pain.  Would you like to see my sales-poker hand?

First, a little context.  (BTW – I also coach my sellers that in the modern marketplace of this century, context is a killer app!)  Contextually, selling to pain might still work for small, less-risky purchases.  Pain-alleviation is closely associated with convenience and who doesn’t like convenience, HaHa! 

However, in a Business-to-Business setting; meaningful, expensive, risky, business purchases… alleviating pain no longer trumps all.  Truth be told, too many times I see sellers describing pain alleviation as “automate manual processes”; “save time & money”; “eliminate duplicate data entry”; and other light-weight, feature-based, sales pitches.  This tactical selling technique does not resonate with strategic business decision makers.  It’s analogous to selling technology: 

Selling technical benefits to strategic buyers is like dogs watching TV - they sit there and nod, but you know they can't possibly be understanding any of it. 

Madeline Ossit 

In the case of selling to pain, Strategic Buyers understand the sales pitch; they simply aren’t motivated by it.  It’s because manual tasks; duplicate data entry; and almost every other business pain sellers gravitate to are not pain points felt by the Business Owner or Executive Team.  Worse, if that’s the extent of the seller’s justification the seller actually invites a change of context to “price”.  With price-based decisions, the Modern Buyer is motivated … to get a lower price aka Discount!  We do it to ourselves! 

I like Anthony Parinello’s reference on how to sell to strategic buyers in his book Selling to VITO ©.  I believe Very Important Top Officers live with business pain.  Since they don’t feel it personally, we have to sell differently to motivate today’s VITOs. 

How?  Sell to goals.  I like to say: 

Goals are the dog; Pain is the tail.  Sell to the dog, the tail comes with. 

 With respect to my friend Tony and all of the dogs, here is my sales-poker hand ranking: 

·         Seek to alleviate pain

·         Better features beats pain

·         An existing business relationship beats better features

·         A lower price beats an existing business relationship

·         Selling to business goals trumps all 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.