Implicate the Pain

Pain is a problem the customer has with their business that is serious enough that there is a need for a solution.

The I in MEDDPICC refers to Implicating the Pain

Simply put, if you don’t find enough pain your deal is on the fast track to lose. Either to your competition or to inertia.

The higher the pain, the higher the value, the higher the priority.

However, today's buyer is overwhelmed with solutions they can buy that will help them towards their goals. Your job as the seller is to identify the biggest pains the customers have and attach your solution to solving them.

Our extended Pain process

Understanding the Pain is only the start of the Implicating Pain process. You need to take your customer from merely having the pain identified, through to where you indicate it to them in the form of a report or business case all the way through to where you do such a good job of illustrating the pain to them that they feel implicated by it and wish to solve it as soon as possible.

Identify - i1

Indicate - i2

Implicate - i3

THE THREE TYPES OF PAIN

- Financial Pain

- Efficiency Pain

- People Pain

DISCOVERY IS IMPERATIVE

As you would expect, discovery is an imperative part of any pain discovery, and while you can find some pain from the outside in by reading public documentation and even from being able to try some of the organization’s services if you have access to do so, the main source of the most valuable pain is going to come directly from your customer via discovery.

Summary of IMPLICATING THE PAIN

No Pain, No Gain. Elite sellers know that finding pain is only the beginning of the process and that to gain the full benefit of any pains your customer may be feeling to progress your deal will require you to dig in deep to fully implicate the pain.

Think of a deal you are working on right now and ask yourself which of the following three scenarios best describes your status.

i1 — You have identified some pain

i2 — You have Indicated the cost of the pain to your customer

i3 — You have implicated the pain onto your customer and they feel the negative impact it is having upon their business

Unless you are at i3 you should feel like you have some work to do.