Client Pain Tip #3:
Finding Pain Does You Absolutely No Good If You're Making This (Ultra-Common) Mistake
Today I'll share with you a scenario you will absolutely, positively run in to at multiple points in your career.
The more you can avoid making this mistake, the more time and frustration you will save yourself. Guaranteed.
A Real-Life Example Where I Screwed Up
Once upon a time I had a prospect I really connected with.
He was fantastic: smart, intuitive, a good businessperson, serious about investing in his company's website so that they wouldn't fall behind their competition. Our phone calls and email communications were great.
The fellow was going to be taking over the company at which he worked from his Uncle in the next 5 - 6 years, and he wanted to make sure the company's online marketing was strong and effective by the time he took the helm.
During our initial conversations, this fellow assured me the decision about who they'd choose as their web agency was his—so long as the overall budget didn't exceed a specific amount. He insisted the company's CEO (his Uncle) didn't want to have anything to do with the process, and that the responsibility of building a new web presence and messaging strategy was entirely up to him.
During our initial conversations, I also found strong pain in this prospect. Stronger than any other pain was the fact that his company had lost multiple contracts (likely in the tens of millions each) due completely and entirely because of their unacceptable website presence. The company wasn't prospering; it was falling behind the times and losing money because of its website.
If this fellow didn't turn things around on his own, the company could be in a very bad position when it was time for him to take over.
So this fellow and I came up with an Action Plan that fit within the general budget we'd spoken about. I finalized and documented the plan, and he loved it. It was custom-designed to solve all his pains, which was exactly what he was hoping for—and is exactly what every recommended plan of action should do for your clients.
After reviewing the final proposed Scope of Work together, and after sharing how absolutely delighted he was and how excited he was to move forward, he told me he'd get back to me the next day after he ran it by his Uncle to confirm everything was fine.
Can You See Where This Is Going?
We didn't get the project.
At the end of the day, despite the nephew's insistence that it was his decision to make, it was the Uncle who wrote the checks. The Uncle saw the Scope of Work, saw the price, and said "I don't want to spend this money, it's not happening."
The Uncle didn't have pain—or if he did, he wasn't aware of it and I'd not helped him discover it.
Instead, I'd wasted my time working with someone at the company who couldn't make the FINAL decision.
I wasn't talking to the check-writer, so I'd spent time unearthing pain from the wrong person during the entire sales process. I wasted a tremendous amount of time and effort.
What I Should Have Done
During the first call with the nephew, after he shared with me that choosing a web agency was his decision to make, I should have pushed him.
- I should have asked if HE wrote the checks.
- I should have asked if there was anyone else involved in the decision making process.
- I should have asked if anyone besides him would be reviewing the Scope of Work document I'd put together if we decided we might be a great match.
- And starting with call #2, I should have been talking to the Uncle. I could have learned immediately if it was a waste of everyone's time to continue talking, or if the Uncle had any pain that would motivate him to invest in working with our agency and become a good client.
But I didn't.
I took the nephew at his word.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the nephew had no veto power over his Uncle—a man who had run the company for year after year after year without a good website, was going to be retiring soon, and saw no reason to invest in a new one.
As much as the nephew liked to think he could make decisions, he didn't write the checks.
The Moral Of The Story Is...
When you look for pain, make sure it's the final decision maker's pain. (Or the decision makers' pain, plural—because often times there's more than one decision maker.)
If you don't, you're pulling the wool over your eyes. If you don't, you aren't addressing the problems of the person who has the final say.
And if you're not spending time looking for the decision maker's pain, you're spending time with someone at your prospect's company who ultimately doesn't have the power to choose you—no matter how much pain you find and no matter how much he/she wants to choose you.
I encourage you to learn from my mistake. Start finding out who makes the final decisions when you're talking to prospects. It took me many, many times to learn from many, many repeated mistakes, all because I was nervous about asking questions related to decision-making when I started out.
After wasting so much of my time over the years though, I finally ended up learning from my repeated mistakes and now don't think twice about learning who the decision makers are very early in the sales process. It saves me hours upon hours upon hours of time, and prevents me from writing Proposals or Scopes of Work that would never have had a chance from the beginning.
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Email me at [email protected] if you have questions at all, or say hello to me at @timeforcake on Twitter.
Otherwise, I'll see ya next time with another tip on using client pain to better your business.
Make it an outstanding day,
Erin Pheil
[email protected]
On the web: www.ErinPheil.com and www.TimeForCake.com/blog |
