Oilfield Sales Tactics: No Pain, No Sale – No Pain, No Leads

No pain, no gain! Am I headed back to health coaching, or are am I gonna learn you some oilfield sales tactics?

When prospects reach out, they don’t tell you the whole story. Let’s look at the oilfield sales tactics you need to uncover their real problems, convert more leads, and close more sales.

Oilfield Sales Tactics Transcription

Let’s talk about oilfield sales tactics and what you can do to incorporate them into your marketing approach to convert more leads and close more sales.

No Pain, No Sale

Anyone who has gotten to know me over the past four years and our approach here at Tribe Rocket knows we are very big fans of Sandler selling and the Sandler Sales approach.

Sandler Rules! No pain, no sale!

What Sandler means by no pain, no sale is that if you don’t discover or uncover the real problem, the personal problem that your prospects are dealing with, you are not going to close a sale.

Even if you’re not in sales, you already understand this intuitively. Because you have more than likely sat down with amateur sellers who listen to you for about 30 seconds and then immediately start selling you. They’re not concerned with solving a problem so much as selling you something and getting you to sign on the line that is dotted.

As important as it is to get your customers to sign on the line that is dotted, you will not get there unless you get to the level of how it personally affects them.

And I keep pointing back here so let’s just walk through the three levels of pain real quick.

The Continuum of Pain

The three levels of pain, or as Mark Lacour would say, problem. I like the way Mark focuses on problem vs. pain because problem makes it a bit more concrete. Pain is a bit, I don’t know, esoteric.

But you have the surface, the business, and the personal.

The surface is very easy to understand because that is what people tell you when they call to look for services.

Back when I worked at Quicken loans they started by asking, “What is the interest rate? I need to know the interest rate.” Thankfully, Quicken taught us how to pivot around that question and dig into the real problem.

But we’re not selling mortgages in the oil field, so let’s take an oilfield sales tactics example from a seismic services company.

Earthshattering Oilfield Sales Tactics

Let’s say you sell seismic services out in the Permian Basin. A geologist gives you call and says, “I need to understand the subsurface rock we are drilling in this acreage we just acquired. There are some raster logs and other things, but I need a much better understanding.” All right, right now we understand, we got to his surface problem.

Even an amateur seller can stumble across the business problem. Some professionals think the business pain is where you stop. But the true professional knows you need to dig deeper. You need to understand how this affects them personally.

Let’s go back to our seismic company example. This geologist called you up and you understood he needed seismic services. Now you know that he has “X” dollars and needs the work done in 30 days.

Let’s Make Things Personal

One layer deeper we get to the personal pain or the personal problem.

How is this impacting this person personally? What are the stakes for him or her? What does he or she stand to gain or lose by not taking action and solving the problem?

That is the true core of personal pain and in uncovering the personal problem.

Going back to our seismic services example. Since we already know that he has “X” budget and needs it done in 30 days, we have to dig one layer deeper. If we do so,