The popular stereotype of the career salesperson is still shaped by the image of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. You remember Willy, the doomed hero of the play Death of a Salesman, whose livelihood seemed to depend, for most of his career, on smiling relentlessly, slapping backs, keeping his shoes shined and striving endlessly to be “well-liked”. Interestingly, Willie Loman never once spoke in Miller’s play of how his customers actually used his product or even what his product was! Who needed information like that? In his prime, Willy could apparently charm customers into submission.

The media’s image of the professional salesperson, by and large, is still that of the fast-talking “company person” who takes over conversations, presents a relentlessly smooth image to prospects and customers, delivers a generally unvarying sales pitch and cheerfully takes down orders. Whether or not this model was appropriate during the 1940s and 1950s, it’s certainly not appropriate today.

There is every indication that today’s highly competitive, technologically driven economy will, in the years to come, leave less and less room for salespeople who have fallen behind the times. Those are salespeople who still follow Willy Loman’s lead by making recommendations before developing any meaningful understanding of what people actually do or what they need.

The successful professional salesperson of the 21st century will look and sound a lot more like a doctor, who diagnosis before he prescribes, than a carnival pitchman who has a good “pitch.” Those salespeople who fail to adopt a consultative, information-centered approach to their work are likely to find their career prospects very dim indeed.

The salespeople who prosper, or survive, in the economy of this new century will assume responsibility for in-depth account development with their prospects and customers. They will focus not on the shallow “numbers-game” of selling that requires little or no interviewing skill, but rather on asking questions and gathering more pertinent facts than the competition about the experience, objectives and history of their prospects and customers.

Regardless of the products or services you hope to sell, if you wish to succeed as a salesperson in the 21st century, you must be sure that your work is geared toward asking the truly thoughtful questions that set the stage for the most appropriate product/service offering. Although such a goal seems to reflect simple common sense, it is ignored by a huge number of salespeople and, indeed, by most of the traditional selling strategies used in formal and informal corporate sales training.

You know the drill. You meet with a prospect and immediately they want you to spill your guts about what you do, how you do it, whom you do it with and how much you do it for. They want you to do this and yet they are unwilling to share with you what their problems are, how much money they have budgeted and how they go about making decisions.

Why does this happen and more importantly how do you prevent it from happening to begin with? The why parties is easy to explain. Ignorant managers have taught salespeople that “sales is a numbers game” and that the more proposals they give the more sales they make. Consequently, they run all over the planet puking, vomiting and pitching product information to anyone who will fog a mirror. The result of this is that prospects have been conditioned that they should receive and are entitled to a “free education” from salespeople. So when you show up they expect you to jump through hoops and spill your guts like the last incompetent peddler.

How do you stop this? First you must make a decision to stop doing it. Secondly, when you meet with a prospect establish some Rules of Engagement. This amounts to setting an agreed to agenda as to what will be discussed and in what order it will be discussed. As part of this process you must tell your prospect that you are not there to pitch product, give a quote or give a demo or presentation.

You tell them that you are there to conduct an evaluation of their situation much like what a physician would do and that like a physician you don’t make diaganosis or write prescriptions until you have done a thorough examination. If your prospect resists letting you conduct an evaluation and insists that you give them a “quote or proposal’ you politely get up and leave. That way you avoid wasting your time and theirs. It takes guts to do this but in the long run you will be better off.

Psychologists tell us that while there are three major buying motives, (pain, fear, pleasure); by far the most common reason people buy is to eliminate psychological pain. Something is wrong in their personal or business lives that they want fixed and they are prepared to pay to fix it.

The best sales professionals never really sell anything; they offer solutions to their prospect’s problems. They uncover pain and make it go away. Why? Because the best sales people understand that while people make decisions intellectually – they buy emotionally. This fact is best illustrated by the following exercise.

Take a single sheet of paper and draw a line horizontally across the middle. Think of something that you thought about buying recently but decided not to. Below the line, list your reasons for not making the purchase. Now think of a recent purchase that you made. Above that line list your reasons for making that purchase.

Notice that the reasons you listed for buying are almost all emotional reasons (e.g., you wanted it, it made you feel good, etc.) The reasons for not buying were almost all intellectual reasons (too expensive, wrong size or color, etc.).

Once you accept that fact that people buy emotionally, you will quickly realize that selling features and benefits does not work. Feature and benefit selling elicits a “think it over” or price comparison response, whereas finding pain will get you the order.

How do we find this elusive pain? We do it by telling stories and asking questions. Usually it takes three or more questions to get to pain. Prospects will not tell you the real reason up front; they will usually give you an intellectual smoke screen. People buy for their reasons, not yours, and until you uncover those reasons or pain, your chance of doing business is slim.

The dictionary defines pain as suffering or hurt, but in sales, pain is something that makes your prospect uncomfortable, is personal, and gives you leverage in the selling process. The salesperson’s job is to find someone who has pain, is committed to eliminating the pain, is willing to pay to get rid of it, and is in a position to make the decision. You cannot create pain, because that is manipulation. Instead, you help the prospect discover his or her pain by gently asking probing questions.

Pain will get you the sale; price will not. So become a Doctor of Sales and learn to uncover your customer’s pain and the sales will follow!