[This is the second in a two-part series on selling to the military. Todd Rogers is our guest blogger today. Todd is a recruiter in a fascinating field—science and defense contracting. His thoughts and experience can be of great help to ALL B2B salespeople.]

In the last post, I focused on how it works when the military buys a big defense contract. I spoke of the process specifically and how it differs from the sales process you might be accustomed to. In this post, we’ll get more into the sales cycle.

Pain or Opportunity

I learned the value of this type of conceptual selling and I apply it daily. I approach each prospect with a typical Caskey mindset. There is something taking place at a prospect’s work site, and someone there is willing to spend time with me to see if my services can address that thing.

Most Recruiters Miss the Sales Mark

Now, I know very few readers are “headhunters,” but I give you this post because this happens to many salespeople today.

The way I see it, businesses hire people for two broad reasons. They have a challenge or pain of some kind and someone else they hire will hopefully make that pain go away.

Or, businesses hire people to help them move closer to some opportunity they perceive within their respective market. If I don’t know the reason why a company would make a hire, then I haven’t done my job.

If the prospect I’m meeting with doesn’t know, or isn’t willing to tell me, why a job is open and also why they would be willing to pay me upwards of $25,000 in fees to fill it, then it’s pretty safe to assume either I really screwed up, or I’m not actually sitting with a prospect who will buy when he sees something he believes will help his business progress towards his goals.

Everyone Says They’re a Decision Maker…But Facts On The Ground Say Something Different

I have lots of prospect calls with lots of people who claim they’re decision makers. But if they can’t tell me, in no uncertain terms, what they hope to accomplish by filling the job we’re discussing, then I continue that meeting purely as a fact finding endeavor.

And I fight that tingle which emerges when a salesperson adds a new prospect to his funnel. If someone speaks in terms of a problem they face and my services might be a solution, I feel good. I know that most newly minted prospects probably don’t really care much about price. They don’t even care if it’s a new employee who will be the remedy or perhaps if it’s just a piece of software.

“Make My Pain Go Away”

Like a guy with a compound fracture, my prospect just wants something which will make that pain go away. The Pentagon wanted something which would ensure air superiority; not having it would be very painful. My clients must be able to articulate why this job is open and what they hope to gain by filling it. Otherwise, they’re probably not really a prospect—but rather someone who was nice enough to invite me in. But those people typically don’t sign invoices.

Do You Know Your Prospect’s Intentions?

Let me give you an example of why it’s so critical to know exactly how your prospect plans to use your solution. How many times have you had a sales process stay nice and warm right up until the time that you delivered your proposal?

Then, when you send over your multi-page PDF, PowerPoint, or Word proposal, your prospect mysteriously vanishes into the ether—POOF!

Now, if you were selling morphine and there were a bunch of people laying around in agony, trust me, they wouldn’t send you directly to voicemail when you call. In this example, you know what your prospect’s pain is and you also know precisely what they plan on doing with your product the moment it arrives.

You also know if they don’t get your product that nothing else will get done that is work-related. Thus my point is this, if your solution is born directly out of whatever pain (or opportunity pursuit) your prospect is currently experiencing, you won’t go directly to voice mail, ever.

So, don’t go into that meeting trying to qualify a prospect in terms of whether or not he has a need for your product or service. Qualify him in terms of what obstacles stand between him and how he defines success. Or, qualify him in terms of pain and what exactly it is that will make that pain go away AND what will happen once that pain is remedied. THEN—and only then—see if your solution addresses that obstacle. If not, it’s time to get back to the phones.

[Todd Rogers will be a regular contributor to Inside The Sales Mind blog. He can be reached on LinkedIn.]