In one of our role plays, the following conversation often occurs:

SE: What kinds of issues are you trying to address?
Customer (us): Well, we aren’t able to keep up with orders.
SE: How many orders do you need to process?
Customer: 5000 orders per day.
SE: Ok, What other issues do you have?

As facilitators, we have thrown the SE a “softball” and invariably they don’t take the lead. The SE assumes that’s all and stops short of finding lots of other pain points. Consider this conversation instead.

SE: What kinds of issues are you trying to address?
Customer (us): Well, we aren’t able to keep up with orders.
SE: How come?
Customer: We just received a large government order and we have to expand our order processing capacity.
SE: Where are you now and how much do you need?
Customer: We need to double capacity to 5000 orders per day.
SE: How soon?
Customer: In 120 days.
SE: Any other reasons why you can’t keep up with orders?
Customer: Yes, we have people falling off the line.
SE: Why is that happening?
Customer: Due to all the added work, people are getting carpel tunnel.
SE: Is that causing other problems?
Customer: As a matter of fact, OSHA is threaten us with fines.
SE: How much?

Now, the SE is “digging for pain”. Questions are open-ended and “short and sweet”.

Always assume there is more pain. More pain leads to more solution applied to the customer’s real business problems which leads to larger deals.

The SE digs until each pain point is quantified. This enables the SE to establish clear value downstream and connect the dots for the customer. Very often customers don’t see the pain or don’t realize its true impact on the business — we have to do that for them. The more quantified value you establish, the more you will differentiate yourself and the faster their decision will be.

Best SE practice: Dig for pain. Make value “painfully” clear for the customer.