Pain Can Mean "It's Working!" Help Your Clients Lean In...
Your clients & colleagues want solutions that resolve their pain... but first, they have to weather the "pain" of decision-making...
My daughter was sobbing. I felt impotent, unable to take her pain away. As her doctor had predicted, her Lyme Disease infusions were kicking in. Her body was excreting dead pathogens — from her blood stream, through her pores — in an excruciating process called “herxing.”
Suddenly, with tears still spilling down her beautiful, 15-year-old face, she broke into a smile, exclaiming, “It’s working!”
Pain [aka: discomfort, awkwardness, momentary fear] isn’t always a bad thing. At times it’s the only avenue to health, sanity, clarity, decisiveness.
🔸 Decision-making Fixes Pain… & Causes It, Too
Most decisions (think: team decisions & client decisions!) are motivated by one of two causes:
To realize a goal or dream
To get out of pain
Not surprisingly, PAIN is the motivator that most frequently and reliably moves anyone from status-quo to action.
So why don’t people move out of their pain-states more quickly when a good idea or solution is presented? Well, as the old saying goes, “It’s the devil you know.”
When clients come to me with an issue, I’m aware that their very willingness to meet with my team and me is an indication that something in their world isn’t working. Something is causing discomfort; blocking a better outcome. They’re “in pain.”
But that doesn’t automatically motivate my clients to take action on my very good proposals [wink]. Sure, they want something different, better, more satisfying. B U T . . .
Needing to embrace a new idea or solution introduces it’s own form of “pain”: the pain of change, of perceived loss of control, of unpredictability, of unfamiliarity… the pain of risk!
That means, for the many client problems I hope to resolve with my solutions, there’s the need (for me and for my clients) to know how to BE with the pain caused by disrupting the status quo! In that decision-making moment, we must both master the discomfort of change or new thinking.
The rewards for this momentary discomfort are multitudinous — we arrive at the new, more desirable outcomes we each want. In the case of a YES decision by my clients:
They get better sales, more revenue, happier teams
My team and I get new opportunities to exercise our expertise; we get sustaining revenue… we get new clients!
🔸 Helping Clients (& Colleagues) Over the “Uh Oh” Hump
For clients & team mates whose cooperation or collaboration I’m hoping to influence, I need to allow their experience of “the pain of decision-making” to unfold.
🔸 Dealing with MY Discomfort First
First — and ironically — this means I need to get super comfortable with my OWN discomfort or “pain” when faced with a client’s or colleague’s hesitation or momentary rejection!
Let’s be honest: when I’m overly-invested or attached to a client or colleague saying YES or agreeing with me, I might label that moment of their resistance as “a pain in the [neck, butt, ass - it depends on how big the deal is and how attached I am to wanting to sway the decision!]”
Lots of these moments show up in the course of my doing client work or colleague collaborations. Do any of these sound familiar to you…
Despite weeks of effort to satisfy their many questions, a client will:
Hesitate to take the next meeting
Gate-keep the key decision-makers
Equivocate at the moment of signing my Agreement
Even when I or others have worked hard at involving all voices in a team meeting, a teammate might:
Introduce a last minute idea that upsets the flow toward resolution
Challenge the interpretation of the problem (back to square one!)
Instigate drama that hijacks the meeting
🔸 Why Do People In Pain Stop Actions That Resolve Pain?!
Well, what’s likely to be occurring is someone (the client or colleague) is experiencing a moment of discomfort. They won’t understand that the moment of discomfort - physical and actual! - is actually a GOOD sign that they are in new territory that could lead to a solution that resolves the problem they brought to the table.
Instead, they’ll assign a label to the “wobble” or “contraction” they feel at that moment… they’ll label this new, unfamiliar sensation as “bad” and that will create their resistance.
🔸 Become a Master at Pain Management!
If you find yourself in a similar situation, this might be of service: Your job (and mine) at those moments is simple: gently help the client (or colleague) get over this momentary hump of unfamiliarity. Help them to BE with their sensation of new thinking or new action. This moment allows them to integrate the new thinking, which (surprise!) is a very visceral process.
When you do this, clients are more likely to take the next move that inches the discussion (or catapults it) toward the outcome you proposed:
a commitment to a second meeting
an invitation to meet the C-Suite decision-maker
a signature on an agreement
a head-nod that tips the team to consensus
🔸 Key Take Aways for Your Sales Success…
BE with “pain” that leads to new outcomes
Become discerning about body sensations that signal danger (run away!) versus newness (lean in!)
Make space (and offer support) so clients & colleagues can do the same
Or as Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going!”
Put These Ideas to Work
For more on how to apply these concepts and skills, subscribe to receive our weekly 🔸 Head-to-Habit Worksheets. I include 3-6 minute video instructions on each Worksheet to help you bring the skills into your own work with clients and colleagues. Check out our tiered pricing for Teams.