Find the Pain; Make the Sale

The title of this blog, “Find the Pain; Make the Sale,” is an old marketing axiom – and it’s one of the most important things we learn in AEC business development and marketing. It’s also the super secret of developing client relationships and designing winning proposals and presentations. This seems so basic, yet time and again we hear of firms taking valuable face time with clients to talk about themselves and their history. Firms frequently write proposals that are generic and unfocused and deliver interviews that lack substance. If more business development and marketing professionals took the time and interest to “find the pain”, they would more often “make the sale”.

Finding the pain means that we have to start with a genuine interest in our client’s business, instead of simply trying to sell them services or respond to an RFP. It means knowing what problems a client is trying to solve with a project and what “pain” that client will experience in getting the work done.  Teams can differentiate themselves with how well they understand the client’s pain and in how well they target their responses to resolve it. Successful AEC marketing professionals should be more like surgeons; they don’t deal with surface symptoms. Rather, surgeons ask questions, they listen, and they devise effective strategies to resolve the patient’s real issue.

Clients have three types of pain:  product, process, and personal. Product pain deals with the tangible process needs of a project:  technical quality lapses, regulatory issues, schedule and budget challenges, and operational requirements. Process pain refers to the pain experienced by clients in getting work accomplished:  lack of teamwork, coordination with other departments/stakeholders, a need for responsiveness, team changes, and challenging procedures. Personal pain is the pain a client experiences on a project that hurts him/her personally by way of reputation, image, or engagement.

In the earliest stages of business development, BD professionals need to be asking good questions, and probing for detailed information from their clients. Then, marketing professionals need to translate that information into focused proposals that offer a clear value proposition – in other words, that articulate how their team will “resolve the pain.”

To get at product issues, I always ask my teams to “unpack” the selection committee, to understand the project technically at a much deeper level, going well beyond the obvious. I ask them, “Why would the client want to go through the effort it will take to make this project happen?” In other words, why is this project being done and why is it being done now? I probe further to ask my teams to think about what the client hopes to be able to accomplish with this new project that can’t be done now. We talk about funding streams, stakeholder requirements, and regulatory processes – three common areas of pain.

To get at process issues, I ask my teams to think about how we can work with the client to make his/her life easier. What tools, techniques, processes, procedures, etc. can we provide that would differentiate us from the competition? Sometimes the most painful part of any project has nothing to do with the technical, measureable aspects of the project; it has to do with the team and the team leadership hired to perform the work. I want my teams to demonstrate a different way of doing business that makes work easier and processes more enjoyable for clients.

Many of our clients are personally invested in their projects either through excitement for new changes, new processes, or new facilities. Others are invested by way of fear – fear of a loss of reputation or image in the organization or the industry. Savvy teams understand that for many of our clients, the Godfather was wrong – it isn’t just business; it is indeed personal. We need to understand that the potential for personal pain for many clients is very real and that these clients will hire AEC teams that understand how to make the client look good through their work.

While projects are exciting and fun to consider, in business development and marketing, we also need to focus on what’s painful about our business. Projects can be amazing and they can bring much excitement and joy to clients, but they can also be stressful, difficult and painful. We need to take a deep dive into our projects to understand what is and what could be painful to our clients. By finding our clients’ pain – or potential pain, clients will see us as their preferred solution to avoid or resolve the pain so they can become excited about their projects.