One of the things I keep repeating and repeating in my sales training, is the importance of understanding the Pain/Pleasure principle when we interact with clients. I see evidence of this concept at play everywhere, but nowhere is it as dominant as when our clients are trying to make a buying decision.
Let’s review the core elements of this principle.
1) All humans, make ALL DECISIONS for one of two reasons: To avoid pain, or to seek pleasure (aka gain)
2) We make many more decisions to avoid pain than to seek gain (about 70% to 30% according to the science)
3) If all things are stacked equally, we almost always defer to avoiding pain over seeking gain.
I recently read a book on stock trading, and in it, the author gives an example of this concept as it applies to losing money in the stock market. His premise is that when a position is winning (going up in value), many investors will cash in too early, fearful of losing their gains. Even if all technical indicators point to that stock continuing to rise, the fear of losing the win overrides the potential gain. On the flip side, when a position starts to lose money, bad investors hang on to it, based on the hope it might come back, so powerful is the urge to avoid the pain of a small loss. In their minds, a potential large loss tomorrow, is worth it to avoid the pain of a small loss today. As a result, even if they pick a winner 8/10 times, they lose 20 times on the loss what they gain on the wins.
If this seems familiar, it’s because you are thinking of all the times a client failed to buy something that seemed like an obvious win. You sat there frustrated at losing a sale that seemed a sure thing. What you didn’t calculate or plan for, was the potential pain or risk perceived by the client as a result of buying.
Buying involves parting with money, on a calculated risk that it will provide a benefit. The risk comes from the chance that the solution won’t work, and hence the money will be lost.
Losing money is one of the all time pains we try to avoid. We absolutely hate it. We’ll even risk losing more money to avoid admitting we lost money.
What this means for you as a salesperson is that two things must be inserted into the conversation to help your customers buy. Two things that are often left out.
– The cost (pain) of NOT buying or taking action
– The cost of the risk of taking action
When you insert those two concepts, more people will buy because they will default to the lower pain. If you compare avoiding pain to seeking gain, people will usually choose avoiding pain. Make it a pain versus pain decision.