Making your first sale is such an important milestone. It proves to investors that people want your product... AND that you have the sales and marketing chops necessary to distribute your product to customers.

Those first sales are also very, very hard.

Fortunately, Haley Bryant from Hustle Fund had an amazing discussion with Armand Faroukh of 30 Minutes to Presidents Club on this very topic. Specifically, how to uncover a customer's pain points.

(PS: Here are the slides from Haley and Armand's talk, “How to sell your first 50 customers when your product barely exists.”)

Pain = problem 🤒

Shouldn’t pain be carefully shoved into a deep dark corner of one’s soul, never to be discussed or dealt with again?

Nope nope nope. See, when pain is brought to light, your future customer realizes:

1. Oh, this is an actual problem, not just an annoyance.
2. Oh, there’s actually a solution.
3. Oh, the solution to this problem is literally sitting on this call with us.

To illustrate these points, let’s use the example that Armand did, from when he was working for Pave, which (among other things) helps employees see the total value of all their benefits, including stock options.

1. Find the pain ⛏️👷🏽

The first question Armand recommends asking customers is a simple one: Why did you take this call?

The first time this question gets asked, the answer will probably be general: We thought you had some interesting products. We’re interested in offering total rewards statements to our employees.

Here's the thing, though. This prospective customer didn't just wake up one day and think "we should find more software to pay for." No. Something happened that caused the leaders of this business to look for potential solutions.

Your job is to understand what that incident was. So you might need to ask in a more specific way: When was the moment you realized you might want this sort of solution?

It’s hard to answer this second question without getting into a bit of a story.

"Well, we had this star engineer leave a ton of upside on the table to go work for another company. Did they not understand what they were walking away from?"

Ah-ha! Now you have a situation. A situation indicates a problem. It indicates pain. A situation tells you not just what the customer wants, but why they want it.

A situation is your opportunity to share your own expertise. Let them know that you understand the situation. In fact, you’ve seen it before and you know what happens next!

"Oh yes," you might say. "I remember when I left my last job I was totally stunned by all the benefits I’d ignored. My new job didn’t even have health insurance and the COBRA costs were such a surprise."

Now you've matched story to story. You’ve shown that you understand the situation.

2. Find the trend 👀

The next step is to turn the situation into a trend. Now, because you’re the expert in this space (employee compensation and retention), you know what the trend is. The trend is losing employees.

But when you’re building a relationship, you don’t want to just barge into the room and tell a bunch of people that their company sucks at something. So make sure you include a humble disclaimer in what you say next.

What’s a humble disclaimer? It’s a way of delicately approaching a topic, acknowledging how awkward or uncomfortable the question might be.

So instead of: "Are you having a lot of trouble holding onto employees?" You might ask: "Hey, this might be out of bounds, but do you think losing that one engineer was a one-off situation?"

Or

"I know this might be hard to answer right away, but have you had similar issues in other departments, not just engineering?"

⭐️ The answer to these questions turns the situation into a trend.  A trend can’t be swept under a rug. It is something that is legitimately hindering the functioning of their business. ⭐️

Now the customer can see how much pain they are in. And lucky them, they happen to be talking to an expert who can help them fix the exact thing that is causing their pain.

When pain is uncovered, it can be solved. And that is how you make your first (and 50th, and 500th) sale.

Now get out there and uncover some pain!