There are only two things that motivate people to do anything, including buy from you: Pain and Pleasure. You cannot know whether or why your service is right for them until you uncover all the problems (or reasons) that he/she may have for buying from you. In this episode of Money Script Monday, Adam shows you the importance of helping a prospect discover the compelling emotional reason to do business with you.

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Video transcription

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Money Script Monday. My name is Adam Reyna, and our topic today is pain versus gain. What motivates clients to buy?

Before we get started, I want to say thank you for attending another episode of Money Script Monday here, and just to let you know what I was hoping to do today, is keep it fairly light.

This is going to be only for you, the agent or advisor.

I wanted to equip you with some good questions to ask and uncover some of the buying tendencies of your client using pain or gain.

Before we do that, let's talk about the evolution of sales.

There are a lot of studies out there, a lot of articles written about the trends in sales. Back in the '70s and '80s, before I was in the industry, the strategy always used to be selling on gains.

It was that “get rich quick” mentality.

It was the flashy salesmen who were selling high returns in the financial industry. And that worked for a very long time.

Let's transition more towards the late '90s, early 2000s, and especially after 2008.

People are leaning much towards the pain side of the sale strategies.

What they're doing is really kind of putting some salt on the wound, uncovering pains of a client and really digging in there to make sure that that client knows that their strategy is to not let something like 2008 happen again.

The objective today is to show you that you can use either.

Then as we move forward in this Money Script Monday, we'll show maybe which would be the better of the two.

Four types of clients

A question for you as the advisor: do you think you should use the same strategy for every client?

And I hope your answer is no.

There's a client profile that you can use for just about every client, and you're going to see every client lean towards one of four categories.

Category #1: Analytical

The first category is you're going to have your very analytical client.

We all know those, our engineer-type clients which some agents and advisors love, some have a really tough time working with.

But these are your people who are going to look at line by line every single number, they're going to read every word of your report or illustration, they're going to go out and do their own independent research and come back to you with their own buying decision.

It's not your decision, it's theirs.

Category #2: Straightforward

Next, you have your very blunt, straight to the point decision-makers who want to just get all the information.

They're going to take it in and make their own decision.

They're not going to want a lot of fluff.

They don't need presents and flowers on their birthday. They just want to get the information and make a decision.

So, very straight to the point. Those are your CEOs, presidents of companies who are decision-makers that don't have a lot of time.

Category #3: Nurturer

Then we also have our nurturers.

These people are going to be more focused on the greater good.

What they want to do is make their own decision, but what's most important to them is how their decision is going to affect everybody involved.

So, whether it's their family, their team members, everybody that would be affected by their buying decision needs to be considered before they say yes or no.

Category #4: Social

Finally, you have your social people.

These are people who are going to make a decision based on emotions, the way it makes them feel.

They want to gather up the information, make a decision as quick as possible and feel happy about it and feel good about it.

So, the story there is to make sure you understand what type of client you're working with. Obviously, if it's a return client, you should have them categorized and really understand the way they communicate interpersonally.

At that point, we need to talk about the different questions that you can ask, whether if it's a first appointment with the client.

These types of questions that we'll get into right now will help you categorize these people in one of those four categories and then also decide whether or not you want to lean more towards the gain or the pain.

Any good sales training that you've heard, you've probably heard the 80-20 rule.

What that means is you should be listening 80% of the time and only speaking 20% of the time.

But it's our instinct, because we're so knowledgeable about our products and about our industry, that we just want to data dump.

Well, that's one of the worst things you can do.

What you want to do is be good listeners, only speaking 20% of the time.

So how do you do that? By asking the right types of questions.

The right type of question that you're going to want to ask out there is an open-ended question. Never yes or no.

A good one to start off every meeting is, "You know what, Mr. Client? Thanks for coming. Have a seat in the conference room. Just to get a feel for the way this meeting's going to go, why are we here today?"

And let them speak.

“We're here to cover some insurance, annuities, investments, to cover my family.”

They're going to give you a big laundry list of answers most likely.

And then another, more focused question is, "What do you want to accomplish with your financial strategy?"

So, again, why are we here and what do you want to accomplish?

And hopefully they should hit you with one, two or three things that you can use in the future meetings and conversation to really pinpoint what they're looking for.

This is where we can transition after you start having that conversation to uncover whether or not they're going to be more focused on pain or gain.

Selling with Pain

Some good questions to uncover their pains is, "What keeps you up at night?"

Simple question. What keeps you up at night? What's on your mind most often? What are you going to do in the next financial downturn? What happened in 2008? Did you feel the impact of that?

Get them to really kind of sink into their chair and worry a little bit.

Is your family prepared if the worst-case scenario were to happen to you? Your untimely passing. Is your family prepared? Would they be taken care of?

Obviously, that's going to take the conversation down to a pain area and you want them to squirm a little bit because as we talked about earlier, pouring some salt on the wound could be a good thing.

Selling with Gain

But then let's look at the lighter side, because if you've got one of those social decision makers, let's talk about some gains, let's make them feel better about their current situation.

A good question there is, "What do you like most about your successes so far? Are you happy that you've been a high-income earner? You know, you've done a great job saving, you've seen great returns in the market. What are you most happy about?"

And then another good question, "In a perfect, yet realistic world, where do you see yourself at retirement?"

Anybody should be pretty happy about that. You know, on a boat in Catalina, sipping Mai Tais. Get them feeling good about it.

You can really tell if their eyes light up or if they sink into their chair, if they're going to fall anywhere on this spectrum, which we'll get into right now.

Again, how did they answer?

Were they happier about the gain or the pain?

As a salesperson, you actually can sell completely on gain, completely on pain, or as we see here, we have future gain and future pain.

This study shows that gain in the present and pain in the present are actually the two biggest deciding factors when someone makes a buying decision.

They're either going to make a decision on pleasure or pain. And what's pressing on them right now and what's causing them the most amount of stress, keeping them up at night would be our pain in the present.

This has proven currently to be the number one skill set that salespeople have to get people to make that decision to move forward.

But again, not to say that right now the market's been doing really well. We're on a nine-and-a-half-year bull run.

Gain is very prevalent right now.

People are liking the high returns, but we also need to have in the back of their mind that something could happen.

Then, of course, gain in the future is pleasure. Yes, that looks good. Happy retirement.

That's something that can help motivate, so we want them thinking that way as well.

Then, of course, pain in the future would be fear. Like we said, the market's on a great run.

What are we going to do when it corrects itself?

Getting them to really think about where they're at on this spectrum, gain and pain in the present and then in the future also very good buying decisions there.

As you're doing that, you're going to uncover some pains during this conversation.

What really caused them the anguish? What caused them the agony? What was that one thing that you saw when you asked them those pain questions that really got them to think? You know, their family. Are they protected? Would your wife have to sell the home? Can your kids go to the college of their dreams?

When you find out what they're leaning towards, that would obviously be a life insurance sale that we're talking about.

The Pain Funnel

This here is known as the pain funnel.

It's real simple. Five or six questions that you want to ask people to just take them down the road to where we want to lead them, which in this case, again, would be a life insurance sale.

If someone was worried about their family, "Why don't you tell me more about that? How does that make you feel?"

Bring out some emotion. Get them to start thinking about their family and worry about their family.

“Okay, why don't you be a little bit more specific?” Well, I had a family member recently pass away and they were not insured and I saw what happened to them.

That's getting very specific.

“How long have you had this on your mind? Has it been something just recently since that family member passed? Have you been thinking about it for year and years, just haven't moved forward? What have you done to remedy this? Have you talked with someone? Have you looked at quotes online? What have you done to handle that life insurance solution?”

Then, of course, “Did that work? Have you made a decision? What did you put in place? Have you given up on the problem? The answer is probably no because you're in my office today.”

As you've taken them down that pain funnel, really got them to think about the need for life insurance and their family and all that protection that we have within these life insurance policies, that's going to direct us right towards the life insurance conversation.

Hopefully, throughout this process you have been only speaking 20% of the time, listening 80% of the time, uncovering the gains, the pains, really analyzing how your client makes decisions, whether they're straight to the point, analytical, nurturing or social.

Then after we do all that and we really understand where this client wants to go, that's when you would end up getting into your presentation, whether it be life insurance, annuities or investments.

So, again, my name is Adam Reyna. Thank you for attending this episode of Money Script Monday, and I hope you found some good questions or strategies you can use with your clients.