> Attaching to buyers pain is the only way you’ll ever get anything meaningful done.

Yes. Under the one precondition that you can actually provide a solution. Your customer might know that pain better than you do and they may sometimes know the solution space better than you do.

That is rare, but I have been on the reverse end of that multiple times. And while it isn't a catastrophe if the sales person is just that, they may need to convince someone with an actually hard problem that they (and their collegues) have the competency to solve it.

Some problems are just genuinely hard. Not in a "we would need to restructure some things"-hard, but rather "limited by the laws of physics"-hard.

If that is the case with a customer all you can offer is to try together.