Situation:
Friday afternoon and Julia’s mind was already on the vacation she had coming up in three weeks. The past week she dealt with the one sales challenge that constantly caused her frustration, and no matter what rebuttals her manager told her to throw back at the prospect the result remained the same; no sales because her price was too high. After at least two of these lost opportunities every day, Julia just wanted to find a nice hotel room to relax in and forget about work for a few days. As she made her final decision to book the room at a mid-priced property after dreaming over some luxury accommodations, Julia began to realize what price shopping looked like in her world as well.
Diagnosis:
Too often salespeople fail to recognize that price is not the problem, despite what the prospects say when they will not buy. All the feature and benefit pitches that the marketing department creates fall flat for one simple reason, the prospect does not believe the product or service is worth the price they are being asked to pay. Sure, there are those folks that always insist on buying the lowest price offering, but the reason is still that they do not believe the price you are asking for is worth it. Test yourself the next time you shop for plane tickets or vacation accommodations like Julia did. Will you book the Ritz Carlton or the Holiday Inn? Will you fly first class or sit in the back with most of the passengers going to Disney? Whether you are paying a lot or a little, you will more often than not decide to pay what you believe the service or product is worth to you despite the experience the marketing says you cannot live without.
Prescription:
Selling a higher priced product or service requires a salesperson to discover what the prospect needs to believe to be willing to pay more than a lower priced alternative. With virtually every product or service being commoditized, features and benefits all start to sound the same to the customers, so they opt for a lower price to protect themselves from being “sold”. Without finding out what better looks like or sounds like to your prospect getting over price objections will be difficult if not impossible. What does the prospect need to believe they will get for paying more? The person that sold to them last time told them what to believe and it did not work out, so if you approach the opportunity the same way you can expect to be asked to drop your price or move on to the next prospect. Sell to the belief the prospect requires not the belief you expect them to agree to.
Critical Thinking:
Have you ever believed the customer or prospect when they say it is only about price? What happened when you were able to resolve the price piece? Was it an immediate close or did other issue pop up?
The Drill:
Final Thoughts for the Morning:
"There is no victory at bargain basement prices." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
Your Top 3 Goals & Tactics for the Week
LAST WEEK: Update us on how things went last week with your stated Goals and GD Tactics.
THIS WEEK: Please share your Top 3 Goals for this week and the GD tactics you plan to deploy.