Value based selling or solution selling, has always taught to ask problem questions. But having the customer articulate business problems doesn't always engage them into wanting to do something about it. You need to uncover how they feel about the problems, and have them articulate it, in order to drive the Why Change.

Let’s say you ask some questions and the customer expresses that sales performance is down 5% or costs are up 15%. This doesn’t sound very good and you would assume they are not happy with it. However, they may feel the industry average or the competition sales are down 25% and their costs are up 25% so overall the customer could be quite happy and relieved with only a 5% downturn.

Equally there is a difference between Business Pain and Personal Pain. Business pain is something that people may or not relate to. If it is a business issue, then the business needs to sort it out, that might include you, but it might not be your biggest motivator. However if it personally affects you, and is causing you personal pain, then you will be more motivated to relieve that pain.

The answer lies in adding adjectives which are based on emotion into your problem questions. The adjectives include words like:

• Worried,
• Frustrated.
• Annoyed,
• Difficult,
• Awkward,
• Concerned

For example; ‘How worried are you about …. ‘ or  ‘how frustrating is it ...’

Using these adjectives will engage the customers logical and emotional mind and create linkages between both the business needs and the personal needs.

Customers will always be more motivated in the first instance by personal pain - not the business pain (unless of course they own the business and the 2 things are the same ?) Adding emotional adjectives into your problem questions will demonstrate empathy and help build a better relationship with the customer, and will enable you to uncover the personal wins for the customer, not just build an ROI for the business.