The previous post told you I’d do a more thorough post on price and since it didn’t garner much attention ( comments ), I guess I’ll have to do a real man-size post to try and woo you into commenting the hell out of it.
Price is the first thing a poor salesman tries to manipulate. It’s also the last thing a good salesman tries to manipulate.
Any sales manager worth a plate of Oysters Rockefeller can tell you this. Here’s what I hear every week from our sales people :
” If we had a lower price, I couldn’t find enough time to write orders. ”
” I talked with John Blogger and he said if we’d come down, he’d come over. “
” Can we cut ‘em a special deal, just this once ? They’ll give us all their business if we do. “
And a hundred more lines just like those.
The worst part is, they’ve actually deluded themselves into believing that crap.
Price lies and alibi’s are the most common threads in our everyday sales lives. It doesn’t go away and it never changes.
Every good Sales Manager or VP of Sales knows that service, quality and loyalty are more important, but not usually the focus of the buyer and his song-and-dance to your field-level salesperson.
Good salesmen overcome pricing issues and make sales in spite of them. Good ones. Not bad.
Most salesmen put price first and that starts their downfall. They jump to conclusions when they hear a buyer bring up price. A majority of the time, the buyer will let go of the pricing issues when you have more important things for him to think about.
Did price matter when you drove out to his jobsite at 11PM and showed his men the box that they swore wasn’t there ?
Did price matter when you brought in a crew to deliver his material on a Saturday, just to fix the mess he made by forgetting to order a Friday delivery ?
Did price matter when you personally drove 5 1/2 hours to pick up a box of material and got back with it at midnight, just so he could finish a job the next morning at 7AM for a 9AM ribbon cutting ?
You’ve got to remember those things and how price didn’t come into the equation then, if you want price to stay out of the equation now.
What else keeps price out of the equation ?
1) Quality does.
2) Service does.
3) Reliability does.
4) Experience does.
5) The salesman’s personality does.
Think about it. I don’t buy off-brand tires. I don’t ask price on the raw oysters I love. I don’t ask price when I buy my razor blades. I don’t price-shop for steak.
The list of things we don’t ask the price of is the same thing that our customers buy – things we want the best of and things we need.
I’m cheaper is a terrible marketing mantra.
If that’s all you got, you got nothing.
Ill try to do a few more posts, as I remember a few pricing stories over the next few days … or weeks. Depending on the response from – The Best Damn Blog Readers On The Planet !
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And I think in a wider marketing context, price is something that is the easiest, but perhaps the worst, tactic to use in promotion.
Mostly because its an indefensible position as your competitors race to the bottom; unless you have the capital might of Walmart there’ll always be someone who can out discount you.
It takes no skill to discount — and in the end it damages your business and your brand.
Always interesting to draw parallels …
Great addition Tony.
As the title indicates, I hate price as a marketing tactic.
To go along with that thought –
Once you go lower, you have a hard time getting it back.
truer words I’ve never heard, my friend.
And once you do go lower, you may be creating a different impression of your brand entirely; people think of you differently and as a consequence, deal with you differently.
Lastly, and I think, most importantly, when you deal on price alone you run into the danger of the dreaded “C” word ….
Commoditization.
… where people trade strictly on price (such as sugar), rather than on brand or product benefits and attributes (in all dimensions).
I’m not sure that you shouldn’t have written this post or one to go with it Tony, as you are right on target and are bringing food to the table that I didn’t know we had in the house !
If you’d ever like to do a guest post, my friend, you are more than welcome to do so.
This quote from John Ruskin, a 19th century English, is on the home page of my Web site http://www.bly.com: “There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey.”
Mr. Bly!
What an honor — truly.
Yeah, Mike I was considering hitting up a post, and I still may — but I figure sometimes its just as good contributing thoughts where they originated from.
Cheers — and keep up the good work.
t @ dji
Thanks Bob, I actually saw that quote, maybe in Early To Rise, within the last week. It may have subconsciously inspired this post.
Thanks for letting us know where it came from.
Tony, you feel welcome to add to the conversation here anytime.
The same business person who tries to jack the price down is going to also treat his employees like garbage and pay them the bare minimum.
You get what you pay for is often correct.
I always tell my wife about grocery shopping: “If it’s on sale, it’s stale”.
Bob Bly, direct marketing copywriter par excellance, has a great remark above. Bob, did you ever use my quote in your book?
Steven E. Streight
aka Vaspers the Grate aka Pluto the Planet
Thanks for dropping by, O’ Grate One.
Hurry back with more from Pluto the sphere formerly known as a planet.
Your point was great. It is really the quality of the product that matters the most if you want to draw loyalty from the customers. The good service that you render to a customer is priceless.
-Jan
Thanks for taking time to comment Jan. We appreciate your time and effort !