Sales Force Effectiveness

Sales Force Effectiveness: Pain-based Selling

Businesses are faced with a clear imperative: To maintain growth in an uncertain economy, they must establish a way to better, more effectively determine and address the needs of their customers.

Sales and marketing staffs must deliver. But all too often, incompatible goals set these divisions against one another; they unwittingly work at cross-purposes. The hidden value of a truly shared mission--staff that bears deep understanding of their own corporate messages and the ways in which those messages directly address the perceived needs of their sales targets--has, until now, gone without notice.

Peppercom's Pain-based Selling (PBS) offers companies a unique solution by providing a method for members of even the most experienced, independent sales staff to access the tools they need to move beyond the traditional, limited sells of price, features and benefits. It enables them to connect with their customers as they never have before.

PBS empowers management to qualitatively identify the pain keeping prospects up at night and transform it into a breakthrough sales tool. PBS leverages Peppercom's proprietary corporate positioning process--for years a proven, defining strength--for the benefit of a company's sales management. Armed with this powerful new information, sales forces can connect with their prospects in a unique, emotional way, while at the same time reinforcing their company's brand by echoing its approved corporate messages.

For this service offering, Peppercom has partnered with Dr. Richard Harte, an experienced strategic consultant and behavioral therapist who has helped strengthen the sales operations of such global companies as Estee Lauder, Motorola, Gannett Outdoor USA and Mutual Beneficial Life Insurance.

PBS provides clients with a comprehensive investigation of the business problems faced by current customers, as well as an in-depth analysis of the problems and issues within targeted prospect organizations. We then incorporate our findings into a two-day Pain Doctor workshop in which sales executives are trained to sell against the pain. Later, we implement a Sales Accountability Tracking program to ensure success. PBS is explained in-depth in a book co-authored by Richard Harte and Peppercom co-founder Steve Cody: What's Keeping Your Customers Up at Night?

Taken together, the information uncovered by Peppercom's proprietary audits provides the basis of a truly innovative corporate sales strategy. Pain-based Selling enables organizations to move beyond the standard, static approach, based on comparisons of cost, features and benefits, and unlock the emotional connection that will help ensure success in even the harshest business environment.