"No decision" is the silent deal-killer

Pain isn't enough anymore. In sales (especially if you speak MEDDPICC), we're taught to uncover and implicate pain to find sales opportunities. The logic seems sound: if there's enough pain, people will invest in solving it – ideally with your solution.

But here's the reality check: ask any experienced seller about their well-qualified deals, and they'll tell you their biggest competitor isn't another vendor – it's do nothing. Despite identifying pains with real consequences, deals still stall.

Of course, do nothing is actually do something else. Your prospect has decided, either explicitly or through inaction, that their time and money are better spent on business-as-usual or other projects, rather than solving the problem you've identified.

The Missing Piece: Risk of Inaction

What's often missing is the prospect's understanding that there's actual risk in not acting. For example:

* A lawyer manually reviewing vast amounts of text, consistently missing key details. Once they believe your AI tool can prevent these misses, continuing without it becomes a liability risk.

* A team consistently falling short of lead generation goals. If they're convinced your solution can change their trajectory, each quarter without it means missed targets and lost revenue.

This risk of inaction becomes your compelling event – that business situation demanding action. While these compelling events aren't always naturally present, you can create them by demonstrating the risk of doing nothing.

How to Make Risk Real

The process is two-fold:

1️⃣ Start with pain discovery - Through thorough Discovery, confirm the prospect has the problem you solve. But don't stop there.

2️⃣ Connect current pain to future risk - Help them see the real cost of the problem – which is the cost of inaction.

For example: If it takes days to spot themes in customer feedback when it could take hours, show them how this delay directly impacts customer churn. Your job is to:

* Help them connect the dots between their current scenario and actual business losses

* Build confidence that your solution will deliver the needed outcome

Now you've transformed the conversation. Instead of asking can I invest in this product to improve visibility to client feedback? they're saying we need this technology to reduce our churn by 3%.

The Bottom Line

As sellers, our discovery isn't complete when we understand they have the problem. We must help prospects see both the consequences of that problem and the growing risks of inaction. That's what turns interest into urgency.