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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