Pain and Budget

When in a sales conversation: What connects a customer’s pains with their budget? It might not be an obvious answer off the bat. But, the answer is quite simple. A person isn’t going to have any budget for something if they don’t have any pain for something. Take for example buying a college education. We have a budget for our college educations because we have a pain, or a felt need to acquire a college education. It might be pressure from families to attain a college education, a desire to learn more beyond high school, or a desire to find a well paying job in the future. There is a pain, so there is a budget- we’re willing to spend money on it.

Second up, people want to talk about their budgets. They want to know how much the product or service is going to cost them. When we walk into a store and look around, almost always before buying a product people will check the price of the item. Whether it be chicken or cars. The key as the salesperson is to know when to begin to talk about budget. If we come in too soon, we might not know how much a person is willing to spend.

One final tip: It’s nice to get a sense of what the customer’s budget is. It’s tough to ask this outright, because people might undercut the budget when they tell you. They’re trying to preserve how much money they have in their wallet, so lying is common.

Finally, we need to be totally comfortable talking about money. Our issues and hangups shouldn’t be projected onto the prospects. If we are conservative with money, the customer might not be as conservative. By putting our budgets on them, we could miss out on what the customer will spend.