It's easy to get caught up in the trap of thinking when your prospect has pain, they must not have money. But that's not always the case. Plenty of times cash doesn't mean a lack of pain, and pain doesn't mean a lack of cash. Someone you're meeting with could be in plenty of pain and still easily be able to invest in your help.
One of my clients is friends with an accountant. A while back, the accountant met with a company owner. The owner had called in a couple different people to look over the books to see if their current accountant was doing his job. If they liked what my client's friend had to say, the plan was to bring him in to help them long term.
The new accountant quickly found a way they could save several thousand dollars. He shared with my client, "They were sitting on a million and a half dollars in cash, and they were financing their company vehicles. I told them they could save $10,000 today by writing a check and paying those vehicles off. The cash was just sitting there in their checking account."
They liked that, so he continued digging. Eventually, he uncovered something even more serious. Turns out they weren't following a few rules and were in danger of losing their tax status with the IRS.
Alarmed, the owner of that company asked him, "Why do you think our accountant hasn't told us that?"
His response, and I love this line, was, "I try not to speculate, but you can feel free."
He got the job.
It would have been easy for him to just throw the other accountant under the bus. Instead, he took the high road, and let the business owner draw his own conclusions.
Obviously, they were sitting on a million and a half dollars in cash. They had the funds to do things the right way and take care of their problems. But they also weren't in obvious pain initially.
But there was still pain! When my client's friend dug in, he uncovered some serious pain.
The lesson there is not to assume either way. Just because there's pain doesn't mean there's not cash to fix it. And just because there's cash doesn't mean there's no pain.
