You had a great meeting with a new prospective client. You can already see the check coming into your account. You sit down to get the order and your prospect says, “Your price is too high.” Everything goes dark.
What do you say? Many people’s’ first reaction is to cave and lower their price. You may fidget in your chair, not knowing what to say without blowing the deal. What should you say?
My response is to answer with a question. “How much did you think this was going to cost?” Their answer will ultimately determine where this will go next.
In many cases you are selling your product or service against an already existing vendor. You are now put in a position of having to justify your client paying more. Your prospect may say; “Your competitor is much less for the same service.” How do handle this? Ask another question. Such as “Don’t you think that they know what their product is worth?” If they are viewing your product as the same as your competitor you either have not done an adequate job of differentiating yourself from them, or you have given no compelling reason for the purchase to be made in the first place. People rarely change for the sake of changing.
If you allow your prospect to make the sales process strictly about price, you are going to lose more then you will win.
Great point at the end of this blog post: allowing a prospect to make the sales process strictly about price, means we will lose more than we win. Being up front about why your product or service is worth the price point (quality over quantity) is the key, as the author points out.
Getting insight from peers is always helpful and on Thursday, March 18th, there will be an opportunity for more networking. Business Marketing Association of Atlanta is hosting John Jantsch, the author of Duct-Tape marketing; he’ll be providing his tips and tricks for success. We invite everyone to join us at the Regus location at Pinnacle. Visit the BMA-Atlanta website to learn more: http://bit.ly/954URL.
I might add that if you’re a good negotiator all price objections can be eliminated during the opening minutes of any sales meeting. The primary objective of any sales meeting is to find a reason other than price for the prospect to consider giving you the business. Otherwise, if it’s just a matter of price, you’ll spend most all of your time trying to defend your higher price. Exhausting…
Whenever speaking with prospects, keep the discussion off the topic of price as much as you can, and focus on finding the real reasons for change, like bad quality, or poor service.
Pete,
Thank you for your input.