- April 11, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When I was in the hospital for a week in February, my discharge was delayed by two days because each time they asked me to walk up a flight of stairs, my blood pressure crashed. While I didn’t do anything wrong, I still had an undesirable outcome, and there wasn’t anything I could have done differently. The same thing can happen to salespeople.
Good salespeople know that the key to a sale is uncovering their prospect’s compelling reason to buy. Period.
It’s not the only thing they must accomplish, but nothing else in the sales process will matter if they don’t uncover the compelling reason to buy. For even the best salespeople, uncovering the compelling reason to buy (and buy from you) is not very easy. How can salespeople determine what is actually compelling? Is it compelling to the prospect? Is it compelling to the salesperson? Do those two determinations have equal value?
Typically, stronger salespeople are better at eliciting compelling reasons, personal impact, emotional reactions, and ultimately, urgency. Weaker salespeople often fail to uncover compelling reasons, believing that the surface level business issues they discussed were compelling.
When salespeople learn about a business issue, they must also learn how it affects the company, and from a personal perspective, the person responsible for the business issue. We encourage salespeople to uncover the prospect’s emotional reaction, as in, “How does that make you feel?” The question about feelings is inappropriate if asked at the wrong time or in the wrong context. For example, if the salesperson failed to learn how the problem affected the prospect, a question about feelings could elicit either an expressed or repressed response like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” or, “What’s wrong with you?” If the answer to how it makes them feel is, “Stressed out,” the problem owner will prioritize a solution to ease their stress over a solution that simply provides the company’s product or service.
That brings us to our undesirable outcome. What happens when a strong salesperson believes the Discovery conversation with his prospect was a good, but he is frustrated over failing to get the prospect to share any emotion. In this actual case, the CEO stated that revenue had dropped from $42 million to $24 million and when asked, admitted that the significant decrease in revenue put a crimp in his personal lifestyle. The salesperson was frustrated because the problem was stated as a matter of fact but without emotion. The salesperson is concerned that without emotion, the prospect may not buy.
Is the lack of emotion predictive of a loss?
Perhaps. If there isn’t a compelling reason, a salesperson will certainly not observe an emotional prospect, but it’s the lack of a compelling reason that would be predictive of a loss.
In this case, there was a compelling reason. The question is, without the expressed emotion, is the compelling reason by itself enough? The prospect mentioned a significant drop in revenue was affecting him personally. It could be enough, especially if the salesperson asks one or more of these additional ten questions?
- Are you worried about not being able to reverse the negative momentum?
- What have you already tried to fix the problem?
- What if you don’t reverse the declining revenue?
- Who else cares about this?
- What have you personally had to give up?
- How does your wife feel about the sacrifices?
- Which business purchases have you postponed or cancelled?
- Is your team worried about how this might affect job security?
- Are you in danger of running out of cash?
- Have you thought about selling your business?
Discovery calls do not necessarily need to result in a five-alarm fire if the compelling reason is strong enough. While there is always another question that can be asked, failure to get the prospect emotional is not necessarily a deal-breaker. That said, even the strongest salespeople need help in this area and most salespeople are pretty bad at it.
When salespeople fail to uncover a compelling reason to buy, the following six outcomes become much more likely to occur:
- Qualification becomes more difficult
- A value sale becomes a sale based on price
- The opportunity stalls and the salesperson gets ghosted
- The proposal is not grounded in reality and could be ignored
- A Delayed Closing
- Lost Business
Although I just provided justification for lack of emotion, let’s not dismiss the five biggest advantages of an emotional prospect:
- The salesperson is differentiated from all other salespeople because their conversation is unique
- The prospect realizes the salesperson understands their situation better than anyone else
- By sharing emotions, the prospect bonds with the salesperson
- The salesperson knows what and why that prospect will buy and can work that into a presentation and proposal
- There is a better chance that because of the emotions, the prospect has urgency to get the problem solved quickly
There are a number of things that can be done do to improve in this area:
Evaluate the sales capabilities of your team (or yourself) in all 21 Sales Core Competencies
Read: Baseline Selling
Enroll in (Self-Directed Learning) Baseline Selling Advanced Selling Skills (44 recorded, unscripted coaching role plays)
Start live, virtual, interactive, Baseline Selling training for your sales team. Request a call.
On May 6, at 3pm ET, I am hosting a 30-minute walkthrough for CEOs on What Your Expectations of a Sales Leader Should Be. Learn More/Register
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