By Mike Schultz and John Doerr

Why is There So Much Pain in Selling Professional Services?
When trying to get at the heart of a buyer's needs, people selling professional services often ask, 'What keeps you up at night?' When a potential buyer answers this question (or variations of it) truthfully, it often sheds light on the core reason the person might purchase the product or service of the seller.

Many sales trainers thus incorporate the underlying idea behind the 'What keeps you up at night?' question into their training. Sometimes the focus is on uncovering clients' core 'problems' while other times the focus is on bringing the clients' 'pain' to the fore. Surely it's anxiety, worry, or fear over a particular component of their business that keeps managers up at night. And if your product or service can alleviate that pain, they'll be itching to purchase it from you.

Since all reputable sales trainers seem to espouse this theory, it has to be correct. Right?

We contend that 'problems' and 'pain' are only half of the story because they only focus on half of the client's needs—the negative half. When selling your professional services, if you focus only on the negative, you are leaving opportunities on the table for expanding your existing client relationships and generating new clients.

Two Core Buying Mindsets
The best way to understand why this is true is to think about how business owners and managers buy professional services. There are two core buyer mindsets you will encounter when selling professional services: problem solving and future seeking.

Buyers are in problem solving mode when something is bothering them or not performing up to expectations. It typically gets to a point where they want to fix it so they seek out products or services to do so. When you encounter this buying mindset, uncovering problems and helping to solve those problems, particularly with your products and services, is your core goal.

When buyers are future seeking, they're looking to grow, make their companies better, or somehow improve their lot, typically in new and innovative ways. In other words, maybe what's keeping them up at night is not a problem in their business at all, but the passion and excitement that stem out of innovation and possibilities.

What does this mean? Consider this following example. You are a partner at an accounting and business advisory firm. You have a meeting scheduled with the owner of a medium-sized business because he is not happy with the tax services he has been receiving from his CPA firm.

Through a series of questions, you have uncovered several problems this business owner has with his current accounting firm, including missed deadlines, impersonal service, and a suspicion that the firm wasn't fully keeping up to date on the latest tax regulations. He's nervous that any one of these three issues may come back to haunt him if he doesn't change firms.

Because you know your firm specializes in his industry, and because of your dedication to exceptional client service, you know you can stack up well against his current firm and have a good shot at winning the business. You ask him "What keeps you up at night?" get a straight answer about his problems, and now you know how you can help. You continue the conversation, proposing next steps on how to move forward with a potential new relationship. You feel fairly confident in how you managed the sales conversation and believe that a new relationship could be in your future.

You are just about to say goodbye when he says, "I'm meeting my company's legal counsel for lunch. You two don't know each other. Want to come?" Not wanting to pass up an opportunity to further the relationship (and because he eats at expensive French restaurants), you are happy to oblige.

You get to lunch, exchange pleasantries all around, and sit down to eat. A few minutes into the conversation the lawyer asks your potential client, "So what's going on at your company lately?" Other questions follow such as, "What do you want to get done in the next year or so?...What are your stretch goals for the businesses?...What do you think you need to do to get these things done? What don't you know yet that you need to find out?"

These questions are focused on situations and context—not problems. According to some major selling methodologies, situational questions are merely helpful for 'warming up' a conversation so you can get to uncovering and solving problems and pain. Yet, you are amazed by some of your potential client's answers.

You find the client has opened up, going on for good chunks of time about the major initiatives at his company, and some initiatives he has not yet even launched. As you listen, you realize there are at least three areas within these strategic initiatives where your expertise is a perfect fit and your firm can greatly help him. One such initiative—valuing a niche company he's contemplating acquiring—is your personal expertise and passion! And the size of the contracts in these areas are likely three times as large as what you just talked about in your meeting an hour before.

Capturing Missed Opportunities
What happened? How did you not uncover these opportunities earlier?

During the initial sales meeting, you focused on uncovering and soothing the client's 'problems' and 'pain'. You did a good job of learning about the buyer's afflictions and found how you could help.

During the lunch meeting, the lawyer focused not on the buyer's afflictions, but on his aspirations. And by doing so, he uncovered a whole other set of needs that you neglected to surface at your meeting merely an hour beforehand. He focused on the second half of your client's business needs—the positive, the future, the possibilities.

So the next time you are preparing to find the areas of the buyer's pain and problems that you can fix, try focusing on his aspirations as well as his afflictions. You'll find the conversations to be richer, your relationships deeper, and your business development success greater.