B2B Sales Part 4: How to Uncover Your Prospect’s REAL Problem To Get The Close

No Problem = No Sale. 

In part 4 of the B2B Sales series, we’ll discuss how to get to the REAL pain and problem your prospect is facing. The reality is people don't get on sales calls just for fun, and as a salesperson if you don't uncover the real problem or challenge your prospect is facing, you won't get the close.

This is an easy, step-by-step way to uncover your prospect’s true pain and challenge (not just what they say on the surface) so you can effortlessly position your service as the solution and close the deal 💸

In this episode, you’ll learn:

00:00 – Intro: Why mastering the problem is everything
01:34 – Step 1: How to open with the “right now” question
06:11 – Step 2: The 3-word probing questions that do all the heavy lifting
09:04 – Step 3: Asking impact questions that unlock urgency
10:23 – Step 4: Labeling the problem and getting full agreement
12:42 – Bonus: What to do when they say, “No problems here”

Listen to The 5-Part B2B Sales Training Series: Start with Part 1 here.

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About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Why mastering the problem is everything
• 1:34 Step 1: How to open with the “right now” question
• 6:11 Step 2: The 3-word probing questions that do all the heavy lifting
• 9:04 Step 3: Asking impact questions that unlock urgency
• 10:23 Step 4: Labeling the problem and getting full agreement
• 12:42 Bonus: What to do when they say, “No problems here”

Transcript

00:00
Welcome to the B2B sales training series. We're going to have five fast focused episodes to help you close more deals this year, this month, this week, whether you're a founder, a sales leader or a sales professional, this is your shortcut to a tighter pitch and a faster. Yes. New episodes drop every single week on Thursday. So be sure to follow. And if you're tuning in mid series, I highly recommend starting from episode one. let's dive in.

00:28
Welcome to the Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate  every area of life  and business. Let's get with it.

00:37
In cells, there is no factor that matters more to closing the deal than your ability  to understand the problem and the pain that your prospect is dealing with  in its full scope and its full entirety in its full impact.  No other factor matters more than you understanding that and then positioning your pitch, your service, your offer as the  perfect solution to solve that problem, that pain and the impact of all that pain.  Now, here's the problem most cells people make though, is they go,

01:06
What's your biggest challenge? Maybe they get a surface level answer  and then they move on in the sales call thinking, oh, I know what his problem is. I know what her pain is.  I understand these things.  And if you do not dig into, probe into, create impact around, create doubt around, create cost around and create, have a full understanding and ultimately get a label on the problem and the pain,  you are going to struggle to get deals. But if you can get really good at problem, probe, labeling,

01:34
every single call that you were ever on for the rest of your sales career, you are going to instantly start closing more deals and you're going to have a predictable sales career or predictable business that can grow month over month, year over year because you are becoming an expert at finding and solving  prospects problems. So today I'm going to give you four critical steps that you have to make to fully unearth  and get agreement on what the full extent and impact of that problem is.

02:02
And if you stay to the end, I'm going to give you a bonus training on what do you do when when people come on the phone and they're a little ambiguous. So you don't really have any problems. Just  wanted to see what you kind of do.  I'm going to show you how to in 60 seconds might take you two minutes. So don't quote me on that 60 seconds. But in 60 seconds to two minutes  on Earth, what the real problem is. So let's go ahead and jump in. Step number one, how do you start the call? And people make big mistakes on this all the time.  I want to start the call off with a little bit of rapport, but

02:32
Really, I want to quickly get into the problem that I'm here to solve.  And then I'm to spend the rest of the entire sales call and the pitch and the offer  solving that problem, digging into that problem. So if I can start the call off by, what is your biggest challenge with your ad structure right now, with your social media, with your team's performance right now? Whatever you're selling, I want to be specific about what's your biggest challenge with.  Insert the thing that you solve.

02:58
Then I'm going to spend the rest of the call really talking about this problem and my pitch is going to be set up as the solution to this problem. Now let's think about when I start the call, I want to get a little bit of rapport, but people do this wrong. What I want to do is maybe 60 seconds, two minutes, three minutes tops of rapport. What you don't want to do is you don't want to do the old, hey man, I see you went to CU Boulder,  go Buffs.  How about that weather up there?

03:23
I don't want to do any of this cheesy stuff that really turns people off. So I want to get into it very, very quick. I am going to mirror their energy. I have somebody that's coming in with a lot of cells resistance and they're high, high, and they're very straight and dry and cut forward, I'm going to mirror that. Hi, how are you? How's your day going? Okay. Well,  awesome. Oh, well, you ready to get started? Or if they come in, hey Tim,  I really like your content. I was looking forward to talking to you today. Oh, hey man. Nice to meet you too.  What were you calling in from?

03:52
Oh gosh, I'm down here in Miami. Have you ever been? Oh yeah, man. I come all the time.  Party, pleasure, or what for?  Oh, I have family down there. Okay, great. That's awesome. Well, hey, let's go ahead and jump in. Are you ready to get started? You see, so whatever energy they're bringing in, I am going to mirror that, but then I want to get straight into the problem that is as simple as this. Tell me, what's your biggest challenge with blank right now? What's your biggest difficulty with blank right now? That could be whatever you're selling, social media services, ad services. It could be consulting. It could be...

04:21
Streamlining operations, could be IT, could be a cybersecurity, whatever it is that you solve. I want to ask that right at the beginning. So I'm going to walk you through an example as if I'm like a Facebook ads guy. I don't, you know, we're not a Facebook ads company. We're going to walk you through what that would look like. So John, tell me what's your biggest challenge with your Facebook ads right now? There's a couple of things that can happen here. What's going to happen here a lot, and this is a mistake that I see a lot of amateur salespeople make when this happens, is that they're going to start telling you about things that happened in the past. Oh well.

04:50
You know,  we ran with this one agency for a while and the performance was good for six months and then it kind of dipped off and then  we started doing it in-house and we were getting better results in-house but then,  you know, when that new iOS change happened, it started to become difficult so we tried out this  new platform and blah blah blah. They're going to tell you all these things in the past. I'm going to acknowledge that but I don't want to stick in the past. I want to know what their problem is  right now. Write those words down. Right now. Because what's the problems that I solve?

05:19
the problems that are happening right now. What do people pay to solve problems happening  right now? So I want you to burn that in your brain. When I get the problem, I want to understand first before I dig into anything else before I... What if you try to solve that problem? Whatever the things are you considering to solve this problem? I want to know what the problem is right now because that's the thing  I can sell my service to solve. It's the right now. So if they tell me, well, I tried this thing and this didn't work and we tried this thing.

05:46
Great, thank you so much for that information, sir. Now, just curious, what's your biggest challenge with your Facebook ads right now?  Now, here's where I'm gonna go into the second phase. So,  before we go into the next step,  really focus on your first goal is to get the problem right now. If you've accomplished that, you've accomplished step one.  Step two, once I've accomplished the goal of understanding what their problem is right now,

06:11
I want to probe into this problem. Here's the mistake that most amateur salespeople make is they ask probing questions that are like  super long. They go, problem with can't scaling? mean, how long is that problem without not being able to scale and been affecting your ads and your income and your profit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they go on and on and on on and on and on. And they're trying to like almost force the answer to a question.  Great probing  is super,  super simple. I promise you, it's going to seem like

06:39
Like no way, man,  it's gotta be harder than this,  but the best salespeople  are really good at asking one or two or three  worded questions  and getting the prospect to do all of the talking.  Quick reminder, this is part of our five-part B2B sales training series. If you haven't listened to the others,  hit follow and circle back when you're done with this episode. Each episode builds on the last so can master the entire B2B sales process from start to close.

07:10
I'm gonna give you three of my top probing questions. The first one is just repeat what they said. So in this case, if the guy says to me, oh, we just can't scale. I'm gonna say, can't scale? Oh yeah, well it's, yeah, it's just, scaling's been a problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can keep probing on that. Another simple, write these three words down. Tell me more. So you see, so I go, they told me I can't scale, and I go, can't scale? Yeah, well this, that, and the other, that, that.

07:39
this and it goes up and it's down and da da. Tell me more. Oh well, you know, gotcha, this, that and the other. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now write these words down. Did you just say blank? That's five words. I know I went a little past what I told you before. Did you just say blank? Dude, did you just say that sometimes your sales guys have full calendars and they're overloaded and then sometimes they have no calls coming in from the day because of your ad funnel?

08:05
Then they're going to go on, yeah, well, it's this and the other, da da da, da da da. You see, so I asked three incredibly simple questions. In fact, the first one wasn't even a question. I just repeated back to them what they said.  And within those three simple questions,  I understand a lot about their problem, but I'm going to keep going. I'm going to say,  how long has that been going on for?  So now I'm understanding how long this has been a problem. Well, it's been going on ever since we've been running ads, man. Honestly, we've tried a couple of different agencies. It's been up and down.

08:35
We've had good times where it was consistent and then a change happens and then it's kind of frustrating.  So now I understand that their ads are up and down. Sometimes their sales guys have full calendars. Sometimes it's under.  like their numbers are all over the place.  I now understand it's been going on as long as they've been running ads and I'll say how long has that been? Two years. So now they know this is going on for two years. Now I'm going to run into the next phase. So just to clarify, you've seen me accomplish goal one, which was to get the problem right now.

09:04
You saw me use about three or four, maybe five probing questions to get the full extent of the problem.  Now I'm going to move into phase three, which is impact question. This is going to be like, now that I understand this two year problem that's been doing this and creating this up and down, I want to understand what this prospect sees as the impact of that problem by simply asking what impact is that having on the business?

09:31
So now they're going to tell me,  it's because of this, it causes this. We don't know what our client acquisition costs. All these different things. Now, a couple other examples of impact questions could be as simple as what other areas of the business is impacting. Maybe they give you some information and the answer, well, yeah, it's letting us do this and it's hard because we can't hire more people.  I might dig into that. You can't hire more people. I want to understand the full impact. But at this point,  I've...

09:56
understood their problem right now. I've gotten the full context of their problem right now. And now in this third step, I'm understanding the impact of the problem. And that moves me into the fourth and final step, which is  labeling the problem.  Now I'm going to label that problem by using the prospects words. I'm going to say it back to them, the full context, the impact of it and get them to agree. Now the goal of this fourth step is to get them to agree  on that

10:23
full context of the problem because when I can get agreement on the full context and the impact of the problem,  I am going to spend the rest of this call diagnosing that problem and creating a solution for that problem. And I promise you, if you can accomplish this well, you're going to see the rest of your call. This person is just going to be melted and put in your hands. Now, not every single time, but you're going to see the majority of your calls completely shift  from people being resistant to having self-resistance to once you accomplish this goal.

10:53
you're going to have almost no sales resistance on the rest of your sales call. So a label looks like this. So John, from what I'm hearing, it sounds like, you know, ads has kind of been up and down. Some months your teams has full calendars and things are great. Other months, your client acquisition cost goes really weird. Sometimes you're actually having trouble keeping salespeople because the call volume is so up and down. And this has been going on for two years. And because of that, you guys are pretty capped at your current revenue rate of X amount per year. Now,

11:23
Did I miss anything or does that cover it all? And if I can get John to say, no, that covers it all, I literally just got my label. That's my seal. Now I've got him to agree to this full context of the problem.  And now I'm going to spend the rest of the call digging into this problem. What if you try to solve this? What are other strategies you're considering besides our conversation? Now, when you do fix your ad problem, what's the goal? Where do you want the company to be?

11:48
If you accomplish this well, I promise you, you're going to see your prospects. The shift is going to happen in them. Even the most resistant prospects where they just start opening up to you,  the rest of the call is going to just be them being honest as could be to you.  Now, here's the bonus tip. And it's very important if you start the call  and the person says, I don't have a problem. No problem. Now, how do you handle that? Well, we have full circle question. You can go through the training on that. There's a

12:13
a link in the description, you can go out of the description and get our full training on the full circle questioning. But I'm going to give you one simple technique that's going to flip the script. In most cases, this one technique will allow you to just flip it, get into the problem, dig in and get this full problem probe label process. And that is, well, is this as good as it gets? That's it. That's the technique. Ask them, is this as good as it gets? Right. So you go, hey, no, no real problem right now. know, things are pretty good. Gotcha. No worries. Well, I mean,

12:42
Curious, is this as good as it gets? Oh no,  it could always be better. Okay, gotcha. Well, what could make it better? Well, you know, it's the volume is a little bit capped right now. If we could somehow scale more.  Oh, volume's capped? What's going on there? You see what I did? So by me just asking,  is this as good as it gets?  Nobody's ever gonna say, yes, this is as good as it gets. It's never gonna be better. So they're gonna say, no, it could always be better. Then you go.

13:08
Well, what would make it better? Then they're going to give you the answer, which is the problem you probe into, which should either be the quality of leads is low or our volume is low or scales low or our reps are closing enough. That's going to allow me to then dig into the problem with the full problem probe label. So the more tools and techniques you have around probing into and getting the full context of the problem, the better closer you're going to be.

13:34
Thanks for listening to this episode of the B2B sales training series. Now make sure to apply what you've learned today  on your calls to keep the momentum going.  Next week's episode is going to drop on Thursday, so make sure you're following the show so that you don't miss out when we're dropping new episodes. And if this helped you out at all, make sure to share it with somebody else that could benefit from leveling up their sales games, whether an entrepreneur, sales professional, or a sales leader.