We often focus solely on buyer challenges — but sellers face challenges too. And sellers’ internal pains can obstruct their ability to truly offer a valuable experience to positively solve buyers’ pains in the first place.
Selling organizations exist on the assumption that their buyers have challenges they want to overcome which become insufferable to the point the buyer (and their organization) determine it is time to address the “pains.” With a pain, a seller can develop and offer a coveted and valuable solution. Without a pain, selling would be based on luck or mistake — and certainly would not be sustainable.
This pain-solution tension rests on two competing realities:
Buyer pains are often not recognized or are simply ignored, so “status quo” wins as buyers do not feel the urge nor can justify investing in a solution.
Sellers have solutions to buyer pains but are often too pressured to “hit their quota” to