What's Keeping Your Customers Up at Night?: Close More Deals by Selling to Your Client's Pain
What's Keeping Your Customers Up at Night?: Close More Deals by Selling to Your Client's Pain by Steven Cody and Richard Harte is not just for salespeople but also for anyone who has to sell their ideas and budgets, or influence people. I found this book to be very useful and I completed all the exercises. The book describes a four-step process.
- Uncover the pain using audits and assessment strategies,
- Enhance the pain using case studies and published articles,
- Sell against the pain through pain-based questioning and
- Get the commitment or heal the wound by empowering the prospect to move forward with you – you do this by asking “If I can provide you with a solution to your problem, would you be willing to move forward with me?”
Steven Cody and Richard Harte recommend that before you attempt to uncover your customer's pain, that is, embark on step one, you should find out what's keeping you up at nights, both in your personal and professional lives. They further add that your thoughts, feelings and actions are fundamental to understanding your own pain. To uncover your thoughts, feelings and actions, ask yourself: What am I thinking? What am I feeling, and what and am I doing about it? The authors propose that whatever your state of mind, you can improve it. They go as far as to include three scripts – diet and exercise, “show me the money” and my sales script for you to affirm at least three times daily for 30 days. They encourage you to customize the scripts for your individual situation.
I like What's Keeping Your Customers Up at Night?: Close More Deals by Selling to Your Client's Pain because it is loaded with many examples and tools that you can customize for your unique situation. I found the section on reading the prospect to be very useful. For example, if you are meeting with a prospect and he/she unfolds the arm or moves an object such as a pen toward himself/herself, that means that the prospect is reacting positively to what you are saying. However, if the prospect clears his/her throat or dust something away from the surface of the desk, that's an indication that you need to change gears and re-establish rapport.
The book ends with a 30-day process to become a pain doctor. The chapter has great ideas and information on how to do that, but unfortunately, it's not structured. It doesn't tell you what to do each of the thirty days, so you are on your own to figure it out. Despite this, What's Keeping Your Customers Up at Night?: Close More Deals by Selling to Your Client's Pain by Steven Cody and Richard Harte is still worth reading.
