SALESPEOPLE have two major fears – rejection and price or fee. Most salespeople (not you, of course) are hesitant when it comes to talking price or fee. The reason is, in their own mind, that they think their prices are too high. As a salesperson, I’m sure you’ve all shopped the competition – and they all offer similar items at lower prices. And you’re worried your customer will look at your price structure and say that your prices or your fees are too high. Let me give you a clue: That is the single biggest fear of every salesperson in the world, you included. When it comes to price, the first thing you have to have, as a professional salesperson, is a deep-rooted belief that the value of what you’re offering far exceeds the price or fee that you’re asking. If you don’t believe this, the highest level you will rise in your sales career is to the level of mediocre. And worse, your prospective customer will sense that your belief system is not deep enough by your language. Here are the telltale signs that you don’t believe deep enough 1. You try to justify your price. 2. You apologise for your price. 3. You rationalize your price. 4. You have to go back into your presentation to clarify your price. 4.5 You try to ignore the signs that are evident, hoping that they will go away. And worse than that, you go back to your boss and say, "We lost one on price". Let me share something with you – you did not lose on price, you lost on perceived value and you lost on perceived difference. If the customer doesn’t perceive the value of your offering, if the customer doesn’t perceive a difference between you and the competition, then all that’s left is price. When was the last time you walked into a Lexus dealer and had a price battle? Answer is never. But Ford and Chevy, $50 can swing a deal on a $20,000 car because there is no perceived difference between one car or one dealership and another. I’m certain you’ve seen the new car ad for a ‘dollar over invoice’. I don’t want to ruin your belief in Santa Claus, but that means that if they sell 100 cars, they make $100. I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying that. I think they’re lying to me. Wouldn’t it be cool if one dealership put an ad on TV and said, "Our cars are $250 more than anybody else because the service we provide after you buy the car will not only blow you away, it will also enhance the lifelong value of your car. You invest another $250 in our dealership, and you win back thousands when you trade your car in." Doesn’t that seem obvious? In a price fight, everyone loses, especially all the sellers. The price or the fee for the products or services that you offer must be presented, clarified, justified, and affirmed during the sales presentation, not at the end. If the presentation is perfect, the value is clear, and the differentiation is obvious, then a reasonable price will not only be accepted, it will be accepted without a fight. Too much emphasis in any sales environment is placed on price. Salespeople moan that their product or service, whatever it is, is becoming a commodity. Commodity is your word, not theirs. If you spent as much time concentrating on value and differentiation as you do moaning about price, the issue would disappear. There’s one more key; your customers are better at justifying and extolling the virtues of your price than you are. If I were you, I would have a few one-minute videos on my laptop of existing customers who believe in you, who have gladly paid your price, and who are proud to do business with you. Those customers will help you gain new customers faster and better than your sales presentation. But they do not replace the sales presentation; they enhance the sales presentation. The key to mastery of price is a combination of the belief system set in place by past wins, and the voices of encouragement from the customers with whom you’ve built a relationship. The combination of those two elements will breed self-confidence so evident that when you walk into a room you’ll be attractive (I don’t mean pretty, I mean attractive in that people want to do business with you). You become attractive by the manner by which you present and the obvious superiority of your offerings versus others. It’s pretty interesting to me that in sales, you often hear the phrase ‘no brainer’. I don’t believe in that phrase. In fact, I think the phrase is as insulting as any phrase in our language. What someone is saying is that the offering was so powerful, the offering was so different, and the offering was so value packed that the decision was obvious. But let me share with you, plenty of brains went into that process, and plenty of brains went into the preparation. And so the secret to price is combining brains and sales guts. If you want a few price statements, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you’re a first time user, and enter PRICE in the GitBit box. By Jeffrey Gitomer
