Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Understanding the “Pain Chain” and how to use it to get to the root of buyer problems (downloadable template included)

Estimated reading time: 2 min 06 seconds

Pain Chain

What is a Pain Chain?

A ‘Pain Chain” is a visual map first introduced by Keith M. Eades in his book, The New Solution Selling: The Revolutionary Process That is Changing the Way People Sell.

It’s an effective methodology that helps sellers:

• Identify multiple stakeholders within an opportunity

• Gain a better understanding of the problem, root cause, impacts, and effects

• Develop a broader base of support for your solution

It’s simply building a cause & effect chart to answer the question: “Who else does this affect and how?”

Where do you use one?

This can be used as a pre-call planning exercise and a living document you continue to revisit and update during the evaluation.

It’s also used when building a business case for change.

Let’s take a look at an example:

In the above example - The pain of the CEO: “Missing Profit Targets” has a reason of “Decrease in Sales Volume”.

“Decrease in Sales Volume” then becomes the pain of the Sales Leader - followed by a reason it’s occurring.

Rinse and repeat until you understand how the problem affects all involved.

If you’ve never tried a “pain chain” before and want to give it a try - I put together a Template you can grab by clicking the image:

Give it a go and let me know if you have any questions.

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