"No pain, no deal." It’s standard sales advice for a reason: painkillers are always easier to sell than vitamins. But are there exceptions?

In this episode, I break down the only two scenarios where a prospect will buy from you even if they aren't feeling active symptoms. I discuss the concept of "high-stakes latent pain" (and why a blocked artery motivates action when slightly high blood pressure doesn't) and how intense desire—like the urge to buy a Porsche 911—can create its own internal pressure to buy.

If you think your prospect has "no problems" but you still want the close, you need to understand these two specific triggers.

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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.

About Ray:

→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.

→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.

→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com

→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.

→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com

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Can you close a sale with a prospect that doesn't have any pain?

Most sales advice, including a lot of my own, I would say, is would say no, right? Like if you don't have any problems, if you don't have any symptoms, if you don't have any pain that you want to go away, there's really no reason to invest your time, money, energy, whatever it is into making any changes. And all sales is about change. That's why we say like, "painkillers are a hell of a lot easier to sell than vitamins."

Which is true, but there are two exceptions that I want to share with you briefly. Now, real quick, if you want a written breakdown of ideas like this, I send that out weekly. You can subscribe at raysemail.com for free.

The two exceptions for selling without any pain that the prospect is experiencing...

The first is if they have a high-stakes latent pain. There aren't any symptoms, but in the process of your discovery or your process, you identify something that's asymptomatic, but it has a significant impact, it's going to change the dynamic.

So for example, say you go to the doctor for a physical and the doctor says, "Hey Ray, like, your blood pressure is 130 over 85. It's slightly elevated." If I'm not already, am I going to change my lifestyle to fix that? Right? Am I going to immediately start training for a 10k and, you know, cut back on, you know, any junk foods and the stuff that I like and start eating my broccoli and kale diet? Probably not, right? Like, that's not enough of an asymptomatic pain. Like, okay, cool, like it's slightly elevated. I could be better, but still not worth the effort.

But suppose that they tell you you've got a heart condition, like high-grade arterial blockage of like 80 to 90% blocked. Would you make some changes then? Well, most of us would say yeah, right? Like the vast majority of people would say that's enough to start making some life changes. You know, prior to that, you were walking around, you were doing just fine, you weren't experiencing any symptoms, but this latent pain that was identified for you is significant enough, right? Like the impact of it is severe enough that you're still motivated to make the changes necessary to make it go away, even though you're not necessarily feeling it.

And the same thing happens in business. If you find a severe latent pain for somebody, as long as they understand what the impact is, like as long as they believe the severity of what you've identified, then even if they don't have the symptoms today, then they're still going to be motivated to change. Right? So that's exception one.

Now, exception two is if they want something so bad that it creates pain on themselves. Right? Because people buy stuff because they have a desire for some future state. Not necessarily because they have a pain that they want to go away today, but because they want something. And if they want it bad enough, that desire actually creates a sense of pain for me internally.

So here's what I mean. Like, you go to the car lot looking for a Camry. You know, nice family car, we gotta get around. It's, you know, nothing against Camrys, but, you know, it's... you're probably not gonna break the bank or make some poor financial decisions to take home the sweet Camry.

On the other hand, you go to the Porsche dealership and say you're looking at that 911 that you've wanted since you were 13 years old. And you test drive it, and you're like, "Oh my God, like this is..." And you've wanted this... for decades you've wanted this car. Man, I don't know. Like, at some point... you start justifying some shit really quickly if when that's the case. Like, you're like, "Ah, I could probably move some things around and maybe it's not such a bad decision."

And I'm not saying sell stuff to people that they don't need. What I'm saying is that when the desire is intense enough, when I say, "Damn, I want that thing so much that not having it creates a sense of pain," people are motivated to take action. Like, they're going to start spending money, they're going to make changes, they're going to invest their resources.

So, vast majority of the time, no—if you have no pain, no symptoms, you're not going to have a deal. But the two exceptions: when you have a latent pain with enough severity to motivate somebody to take action, or they simply want something so bad that they're creating their own pain by not having it, and you have the solution for that.

Otherwise, no pain, no deal. Hope that helps. Adios.