by Ed Rigsbee, CSP

Regardless of whether they sell from an office or physically call on prospects, the dream of every salesperson on this planet is to turn their prospects into buying partners. Read on, and you too will learn the secrets.

Your prospects, like everyone else, are in some kind of pain. Your job is to uncover their pain. Understand how your product or service will solve their pain. Then translate the features and benefits of your offering in such a way that your prospect will absolutely understand how accepting your offer will relieve their pain.

The following is my PARTNERS model for success in selling. Follow the simple acronym and you'll dramatically accelerate your selling career.

P – Pain; uncover, understand and translate it. 
This is the first and most important aspect of selling. Without this knowledge, you might as well try to walk a tightrope with a blindfold. 

To learn how you can move your customer, you must have a strong understanding of their core issues, as this is generally where their pain starts. Rather than having a personal vision of pushing a product or service on others, have a vision of how your product or service will solve the pain of your prospects and make their life better.

A – Access your prospects' real situation
This can only be done with a powerful, out-of-the-chute, opening statement: one that will break their preoccupation barrier, hook their attention and make it clear that you have something of value to offer. 

To access the real, or hidden, need of your prospect, you must get them talking. And, you must focus on active listening. If you are trying to convert someone away from their current supplier, try asking the following two questions. 

What is it you find helpful about Company X?
Get them talking. When they are relaxed and chatting about how wonderful their current supplier is, make the transition. 

Is there any area where Company X could improve?
If they answer your second question, listen carefully—you just struck gold.

R – Relevance is a must
Too often, I have observed salespeople acting like what I call a Features Jockey, where they spend so much time trying to impress their prospect with their product knowledge that the prospect doesn't have time to buy should they want to. 

Too much information can be like trying to catch a little breeze in a wind tunnel—when it’s turned on full blast. Do not make the mistake of blowing your prospect over with a blast of information when they only need and want a little breeze. If you did well in accessing the real situation, making it relevant should be a breeze.

T – Translate the features you believe to be relevant into profound benefits. You cannot leave it to chance that your prospects will figure out for themselves how your offer will make their lives better. They must clearly understand how you can end their pain. 

Do the work. Take the time to be clear on how your product or service helps your customers. Ask satisfied customers and use their stories. Force your sales manager, vice president of sales or anyone else at your company to tell you more about how you help people or organizations. The more you learn, the more you can share.

N – Neuro-Linguistic Programming 
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the cutting edge science of sales psychology. It is important to your success that you have a working understanding of how NLP skills will help you to communicate with your prospect in a style that will foster instant rapport. 

NLP is the study of how and through which strategies the brain learns: auditory, visual and/or kinesthetic. The key is to have the ability to recognize the preferred learning strategy of your prospect and mirror that strategy in your communication. If you do this, your prospect’s brain basically says, “This person is like me. I like me. I like this person.” The result will be a stunning subliminal connection.

E – Emotional connection to your prospects is essential
Many of the ideas listed above will help you to develop an emotional connection—they gotta like ya! Understand buyers' acquisition motives and you’ll achieve this emotional connection. Never forget that people buy based on emotion and then use logic to justify their buying decision. 

Think back to one of your own impulse purchases. For some reason, you were drawn to make the purchase. That’s emotion. Then you came up with some kind of justification for yourself—and your spouse. That’s logic. Use this to help your prospects remove their pain.

R – Remove their objections
You can do this by using your NLP skills to anchor your prospects positive feelings towards how your offering will make their lives better. This is most effective when they finally reveal their smoke screen objectives. 

Usually, an objection is simply an indication that you attempted to close the sale before you demonstrated the overwhelming value they will receive in doing business with you. You just need to better demonstrate how your product or service will remove the pain they are currently enduring. 

If you’ve already done all the other good stuff I mentioned, this should be a very small part of the selling process. If you get stuck here, go back to the two questions I suggested you ask in the Access paragraph.

S – Solve your prospects pain
Throughout the PARTNERS model, you are simply moving closer to pain extraction. Do this by skillfully helping them to understand just how easily they can have a better life by using that which you sell. 

Generally, if you have done your selling job correctly, you do not need tricky closes. The close is the natural progression of the relationship building that you have achieved in helping your prospect. Always remember: Pain extraction means plentiful sales.

Adopt the PARTNERS model, and you’ll experience successful selling. Your efforts will surely be rewarded.

Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the author of three business relationship books: PartnerShift–How to Profit from the Partnering Trend, Developing Strategic Alliances and The Art of Partnering. Rigsbee has over 600 published business relationship articles to his credit and is a regular keynote presenter at corporate and trade association conferences across North America. He can be reached at or . Visit his Partnering University Web Site at www.rigsbee.com

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