When Dorothy landed in Oz, she wanted to go home and was told by the Munchkins to see the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. “But how do I find the Wizard?” she asked. “Follow the yellow brick road.” “And the best way to start is at the beginning.” And that is also valid for the Sandler System. Begin at the beginning.

The initial step in the Sandler sales process is to establish a bond and a relationship with your prospect. Once he has built a good relationship with this person, he can make a contract in advance about what he will discuss, usually his and your agenda, with a specific outcome in mind. This up-front contract should guide you down the path to revealing some pain. If there is no pain to reveal, then you can shake hands and part as friends, and move on to the next prospect. However, if he does reveal any pain, schedule a next meeting where you can delve into the prospects’ problems and pain.

THE PAIN FUNNEL IN ACTION

Let’s look at a sample story that shows the pain funnel in action. In this story, our salesman works for a contractor who builds navigation systems for fighter jets and has an appointment to see Henry Jones. Henry has an engineering background and is very technical in nature. Watch as the salesperson begins to use the Sandler Pain Funnel questions to better understand his prospect, and then slowly moves Henry through the funnel toward a sale. The questions are broad at first, but then become more specific and are designed to make the perspective more emotional. The idea is to understand Henry’s problems and lead him to reveal how the problems affect Henry personally.

Henry begins by asking the seller, “Can you design a system that easily fits our F-16s so that rewiring isn’t a problem?” As you can see, this is a very technical question for a very technical problem. The salesperson can try one of two things: answer the question directly and talk about the features and benefits of the product, or try to find out the true intent of the question and ultimately whether there are any downsides. In this example, the salesperson uses the Pain Funnel to find the pain behind the prospect’s question. The seller responds “You know, that’s a great question. Can you tell me more about it?” Henry replies back, “Yes. We’ve had some experiences retrofitting F-16s with different types of equipment and we ran into some challenges. It takes a long time to rewire the system, and that becomes problematic when you have to disconnect the harnesses. cabling and many other systems that are related to whatever we’re installing.” The seller probes, “Can you be a little more specific? Give me an example.”

Keep in mind that each and every question the seller asks comes from the Pain Funnel. Although the questions are in order, you can tell that he offers a very smooth arc to the overall conversation. If you’ve internalized the questions and the process, you won’t feel uncomfortable guiding a prospect through the Pain Funnel in exactly the order prescribed.

Henry continues, “Well, recently we had to fit replacements on planes. We had to take out the ejection seats and remove some of the navigation systems. We even had to get into the hydraulics. So what we originally anticipated would be a 25-hour trip.” The job turned into a job that lasted close to 200 hours. It’s not so much the hours that really bother us, but the amount of time the fighters have to be out of service to be able to do it.” The seller continues down the pain funnel, “How long has that been a problem?” “It’s been two years that we’ve been dealing with this,” Henry replies. “Okay. What have you tried to do about it?” the salesman asks, following the pain funnel method exactly.

Henry replies, “We talked to a contractor to see if there was a possible solution and they came up with some recommendations.” The salesperson moves on to the next question in the pain funnel: “And that worked?” Henry replies, “The only potentially viable solution they could come up with was to redesign the entire system. That would actually put the planes out of service for longer.” The seller asks, “Do you have any idea how much it would cost you?” “Much. But it’s not just dollars. It also puts people’s lives at risk. Every day that one of those planes is out of service, we run the risk of not having a jet ready to protect people”, says Henry now more excited. “How do you feel about that?” the seller sincerely asks. (Or alternatively, the salesperson could ask, “How committed is he to seeing if there’s a way to make sure this problem doesn’t happen again?”) “Honestly? We’re really upset about what’s going on and we have to fix it. We need solutions that minimize the amount of time these planes are down. Do you think you can help us?”pleads Henry.

IS THAT HOW IT WORKS

In our scenario above, the salesperson did indeed discover Henry’s pain. What’s next? Discover even more pain. An effective Pain Step means discovering 3-5 elements of pain that the prospect is dealing with. However, don’t use the same approach every time, vary it a bit to keep the prospect unaware of what he is doing. A classic piece of sales wisdom is, “The best presentation he’ll ever give is the one the prospect doesn’t see.” Since the prospect has revealed to you what to present to win the sale, you’ll want to further the sales process by offering direct solutions that ease their pain. However, don’t do it right away. First, make sure you have uncovered three to five problems and have done a good job on the budget and decision steps. In other words, stay within the Sandler Seven Step process. At this point, you are ready to present the appropriate solutions in the Compliance Step. Also, if you’ve done your job correctly, like Dorothy did, and followed the yellow brick road to Oz, all you have to do is click on the ruby ​​slippers and the deal will close itself, and you can even take it to some other place. The Rainbow!