The Pain Funnel: What It Is and How To Use It
The sales pain funnel enables sales reps to uncover a prospect’s real problem in their role.
It’s a sequence of questions designed to help you understand the root of a prospect’s needs and wants. Additionally, you’ll be able to qualify prospects so that you focus on winnable deals.
This blog explains the sales pain funnel, how it works, and how to implement the system within your sales process.
What is the sales pain funnel?
The sales pain funnel is a systematic series of open-ended questions and statements designed to uncover a prospect’s pain points through a consultative approach.
This system focuses on sales reps taking on a buyer-centric selling approach instead of high-pressure sales tactics. The pain funnel can be used in various sales conversations, such as a cold call, discovery meeting, or demo presentation.
The pain funnel is not a sales pitch. Instead, it’s a method to diagnose the pain a prospect is experiencing both logically and emotionally within their business. The goal is to identify if your solution can solve a prospect’s pain points.
The questioning method is very similar to a doctor’s diagnosis. For example, before a doctor prescribes a solution, they must go through a series of questions to diagnose where the pain is and when it started to diagnose the cause.
Altogether, the system is broken down into seven key stages in the submarine.
- Bonding and rapport
- Upfront contract
- Pain
- Budget
- Decision
- Fulfillment
- Post-sell
Let’s dive into how the pain funnel works.
How the pain funnel works
Using the diagnostic method, the pain funnel is a series of questions to determine a prospect’s true pain point. When a well-trained sales rep uses the pain funnel, they will uncover three pain levels.
Below is a breakdown of each level.
Level 1 Pain – Technical
The first level of pain focuses on technical issues. It is a common pain that many prospects experience.
For example, a company that sells a CRM may reach out to a prospect experiencing problems collecting customer data, negatively impacting sales productivity.
Although it’s a solvable pain point, you should explore more details about the technical pain. By diagnosing deeper, sales reps can enable a prospect to quantify their pain in business terms.
Level 2 Pain – Business-Financial
Technical pain points are insufficient for a prospect to purchase a new solution. As a trusted advisors, sales reps shouldn’t start pitching their solution right after hearing about technical pain.
Instead, sales reps should quantify the value of the pain and justify if it is worth solving. Level two pain is business-financial impact. It is important to get to level two pain because the buyer has to be able to quantify the pain and justify the cost of a purchase.
For example, if the pain is a problem in collecting customer data and sales productivity. Then ask how much revenue the company might lose due to insufficient data. Or, how many wasted hours are sales reps experiencing?
Level 3 Pain – Personal
Prospects often implement solutions for personal reasons and not necessarily for company reasons.
The third pain level is finding out how the business problems affect the prospect personally. This stage is not about why the buyer specifically would benefit from a solution. However, it’s to ensure they are committed and personally invested in finding a solution and working with the sales rep.
Pain funnel questions
If you’ve built a good rapport with your prospect, you can get into the pain funnel questions. It’ll help the prospect open up more easily while providing you with enough information to see if your solution can help.
The pain funnel starts at a high level with generally broad questions. Then, the funnel progresses into specific questions, which get more granular on the emotional and how you can help.
Quick tip: You can’t uncover the truth by dominating the conversation.
Here are the questions in the pain funnel that you can use. Once you hear your prospect start to talk about pain, that’s when it’s the ideal time to use these questions in this sequence.
First, start with broad questions to kick the conversation.
- Tell me more about your current processes.
- Can you be more specific?
- Can you walk through an example?
As you progress, your questions should identify a pain point.
- Why do you suppose this is happening?
- How long has that been a problem?
- What have you tried to do about that?
- Has anything you’ve tried worked?
Lastly, ask questions about the impact of the pain once it’s identified.
- How much do you think this has cost you?
- How do you feel about how much this has cost you?
- What kind of trouble does that cause you?
- Have you given up trying to deal with this problem?
The questions above are just examples. However, you can customize those questions by making them more relevant to your business.
Don’t try to guess or make assumptions about your prospect’s pains. Instead, follow a sequence of questions starting with broad and ending with specific questions. This will allow you to truly uncover the real problems that your prospect is facing and, ultimately, if your solution can help.
Pain funnel example
Here’s a video example of the CEO of MathMarketing, Hugh Macfarlane, asking the pain funnel questions in the right order.
Pain Funnel Best Practices
1. Develop bond and rapport
Before getting into the sales funnel questions, ensure you have a bond and rapport with your prospects.
Build an authentic connection with your prospects. You’ll establish yourself as credible and trustworthy.
Bonding and rapport are not chit-chat or talking about their hobbies. True rapport goes beyond superficial details. Instead, it’s about understanding their communication style, nurturing the prospect, mirroring their body language, and active listening.
2. Establish an upfront contract
An upfront contract (UFC) is used to set the expectations, time, and outcomes of a meeting. It ensures you and your prospect’s time is used productively while being mindful of their objectives.
Establish an upfront contract at the beginning of the conversation to provide an overview of what will be covered. It’s also used to set the expectation that you’re planning on asking some questions about their current situation to see if your solution can help.
3. Internalize the questions in the pain funnel
When asking the pain funnel questions, you want to be confident that you sound natural with your prospects.
They will sniff the sales in you if you’re reading off of a script or lack confidence.
The only way to do this is by internalizing the script. Internalizing means practicing and roleplaying these questions with your manager before a sales call. You’ll be more prepared and consciously identify the right cues to ask the right questions.
This can be accomplished by knowing the questioning framework inside and out and making it part of your sales process.
4. Open-ended questions
The pain funnel questions help ensure that your prospect shares the right information with you.
Getting the right details in your prospect’s answers can only be accomplished with open-ended questions. Whereas close-ended questions can make the conversation less fluid and less in-depth.
Use phrases such as “walk me through…” or “help me understand…” to get more detailed answers from your prospects. As opposed to asking about who, what, when, or where.
5. Actively listen
It can be difficult to listen if you’re trying to remember the pain funnel questions or think of how to respond.
The pain funnel questions are created to obtain helpful information regarding your prospect’s pains and needs. To do so, you must ask relevant questions and, more importantly, listen.
Give your prospect your full attention during the conversation. Use techniques just as summarizing what to confirm that what you heard is accurate. This process shows prospects that you’re actively listening and understanding their needs.
What happens after the Sales Pain Funnel?
Once the pain funnel is successfully executed, you and your prospect should have a mutual understanding of their true pain points.
As you continue the conversation, show that you actively listened by summarizing what the prospect said.
The prospect should agree with your recap, which is a great sign that you were attentive and asked the right questions.
Once the prospect has confirmed their pain points, transition your conversation towards pitching your solution to address their pain points.
After following the pain funnel, move towards the next stages in the process, such as budget, decision, fulfillment, and post-sale.
Implement the pain funnel
Without pain, there is no sales.
The pain funnel is a strategically organized system to qualify a prospect and determine if your solution can solve their pain. It will help you uncover the true reasons that prospects buy your offerings and guide you on how to position your solution, so it addresses those issues.
When used consistently and correctly, the pain funnel can produce great results for your sales pipeline and increase your ability to connect with prospects in a meaningful way that supports them toward becoming customers.
