Live by Price, Die by Price …
By Brad Sugars
I want to teach you how it is that the very best companies and the very best salespeople NEVER worry about having a higher price.
In fact, if you’re great at sales, and great in business, you want a higher price.
You want to have to sell, rather than just accept orders.
You see, anyone who can only make a sale when they have the best price has, in my opinion, missed the whole point of selling.
Let me give you an example from my own life …
I needed new tires for my car. I opened the yellow pages and picked three companies to call. Of course these companies had invested big dollars to have their advertisements placed, so you’d want their people to do a great job at answering the phone.
(Just as an aside, try calling your company and buying something, see if it’s hard, easy or somewhere in between.)
So I make the call, first company, what do I ask … “How much for a set of tires ... ?”
That’s what everyone asks, why …?
Because that’s how we’ve been trained - and even more importantly, what else do we know to ask about? When I call to ask about airline tickets, do I ask about the pilots’ experience? No. I ask about price.
So, his answer … “That will be $X per tire plus fitting and balancing.”
I said, “Thanks, I’ll call you back.”
Of course I did, same line we all use, what other option did he give me?
Second call was the same, third guy must have been trained by me or Jeff. He used my “magic line.”
“Yes sir, thanks for your call, just so I can help you best, would it be OK to ask you a couple of questions … ?”
How great is this? He makes me feel good, and then gets my permission to sell to me.
He then went on to ask VALUE based questions. What type of driving I planned to do, how many passengers I carried and so on, until I blurted …
“So, what does all this have to do with a price … ?”
“Well sir, if I don’t understand your driving habits, I couldn’t possibly recommend the right tire with the right tread pattern, the right tire compound and that would mean your tire wouldn’t be safe and wouldn’t last as long as it could, and you wouldn’t want that would you sir … ?”
BANG … I’m shot dead, I can’t go anywhere …
Suffice to say he got the sale, but the whole point is …
Price only matters if you don’t educate your buyers …
If you let them think price is important, if your questions lead to price objections, if your sales literature focuses on price and if your sales skills are lacking …
Turn yourself into a performer …
Use questions rather than answers, let them show themselves why they should buy, design questions that lead to value answers not price answers …
You see, if you have a higher price, it must be because you are better. So find out why you are better and ask the customer questions about how important those things are to them …
This article is reprinted courtesy of My Business magazine, one of the leading business publications in Australia.
Thank you Brad. The day I stopped worrying about price or competing on price, my business started to grow and was able to hire and thus improve customer service.