Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came

1. What every word before the ask is for

Start with a question: every word that comes ahead of the request to buy — what is it meant to achieve? The answer is pain. Before you sell, and before you turn to the pitch, what you are building is pain.

The picture is a steak. Say you have one to sell and a buyer in front of you: what raises the odds that they want it? You want them in pain. Picture a steak fresh from the pan, by its smell, its sound, its crust and the cut inside. The point of the description: to sell the steak, the buyer has to be hungry first. A description like that has probably made some of the people hearing it hungrier already.

The same move applies to whatever you sell. Food makes it easy, since everyone is human. For your own product or service, you have to raise the appetite in the words and terms that belong to it.

2. Timing: put the offer where the want is

One more point comes before scripting how to maximize deprivation: timing, called super important. It comes as a finding from one company's event, and it is the case this page adds to the other pages that carry the rule.

The setup. At an in-person event, one business sells a deeper consulting offer to attendees who want more hands-on help with the main constraint in their business. The best-rated part of the event is reportedly not the owner's own question-and-answer session, where everyone assumes it will be. It is a long session in which the team's specialists sit with attendees in groups, sorted by revenue, and answer questions face to face. Each person gets, basically, one question to put to each expert.

The first placement. When the offer came right after the team's session, as a way to have more of that help, the attendees were not interested in buying.

The change. All it took, reportedly, was a longer break and a new slot for the offer, at a point where people had not managed to get their questions answered: after the owner's own session. There, almost no one gets an answer, since only a handful of questions can be taken from a full room. Many came out of it still holding questions they had not put. The want had come back, and when the offer was made, more people bought.

What it shows. The pitch did not change and neither did the offer; the timing alone was different. That, it is said, is why deprivation matters so much.

This page gives no figure for how many more bought.

The rule underneath the case, sell at the point of greatest want and not just after the want has been met, is set out for an upsell after a purchase in section 5 of SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it, and moment by moment on SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation. What this page adds is an offer made inside a live event, where the want was made fresh again by moving the offer past a session that answered almost nobody.

3. Discovery: find the problem before you offer anything

How do you create deprivation? The answer runs to discovery; how the question links to discovery is not established on this page.

Discovery, as described here, follows a nine-step process. It goes round and round, finding problems, until there are enough of them to base the offer on, and this is called really important.

What is the sale for? It starts like this. You make an introduction. Then you need to label the prospect with a problem, or with more than one. How do you find it? By discovering it. The aim is to know the process so well that it becomes second nature.

Which steps make up the nine: this page names only the opening of the process. Not established on this page. The later parts are carried elsewhere: the pain cycle on SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle, and the technique called pulling teeth on SOP 241 — Pull teeth until the answer is specific.

4. Clarify: why they came, where they are, what they want

This part is marked as the clarify step. The questions come in this order:

• Where are you at right now?
• Why are you here?
• What made you respond?
• What brought you in today?

With those asked, establish where the prospect is now. Then ask what they want: the result they desire.

Once the prospect has put both into words, where they are and where they want to get to, the part called the pain cycle begins. That cycle is SOP 240's.

The same first step, with its own run of opening questions, is also in section 5 of SOP 147 — Make new customers consistent — advertise.

5. The gap

Picture it. The prospect sits low, with a sad face. Where they want to be sits higher, on top of a mountain, with a happy, triumphant face. Between the two is the gap, and the gap is what the clarify questions set out to establish. It sounds very simple, and yet no one does it, it is said.

6. What this page does not decide for you

• The nine steps. Which steps make up the nine. Not established on this page.
• The size of the change. This page gives no figure for how many more people bought once the offer moved.
• Where clarify begins and ends. Which of the opening questions belong to the clarify step. Not established on this page.

7. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Up to the ask, aim what you say at the prospect's pain
2	Raise the appetite in the terms of your own product or service
3	Place the offer where the want is still open, not straight after it has been met
4	Keep finding problems until there are enough to build the offer on
5	Ask where they are now, why they are here, what made them respond and what brought them in
6	Establish where they are now, then what they want
7	Make the gap between the two plain before the pain cycle starts

8. Where this sits

• The opening line, and the few things a call has to hit: SOP 238.
• After the gap, the obstacle and the pain cycle: SOP 240. Pulling teeth: SOP 241.
• Linking each pain to the offer, and the price: SOP 242 — Map each pain to the offer and name the price.
• Among the closing rules in section 6 of SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real is one that sends you, when every call feels like a battle, to what happens before they show up and to your script before the ask.
• Objections, and how to sort them: SOP 99 — Classify an objection.

9. What this page does not cover

The pain cycle, pulling teeth, mapping pains to the offer, naming the price and objection handling are not covered on this page.