SALES
For me in my 20+ years of selling, the common ones have been “don’t have the budget”; “it’s not the right time” and let’s not forget the most favorite of all “your price is too high”. What makes it worse is when they say “we really like you and what you have proposed, but….. you are more expensive than the competitor”.
Sound familiar? Then, they keep calling you to try and get your price down because they want you at the lowest competitor’s price, which may not be possible to achieve.
48% of salespeople say competing against low-price competitors is their biggest challenge, according to The Richardson Selling Challenges Study.
There is a great technique that helps you “isolate” the price objection to allow you to come back and address it but also gives you the opportunity to see if there are any other objections the client may be thinking about that you can uncover.
When your client says “Your price is too high”,
you say
The client can only say “No there isn’t anything else” OR the client could raise another objection – “I would need you to…” which is a request for further information. Either way, you are in better shape as you have uncovered something else you did know about before.
So by saying “Other than that” - what are we are trying to do here is to ISOLATE the objection before we respond to it.
Once it is isolated, we are happy to come back and answer it, but we first want to isolate it just to determine if there is anything else that is standing in my way of getting this contract.
If we know the price objection is a regular feature that comes up in our discussions with prospects, then what is the standard answer we have rehearsed clearly in our minds to respond?
When I have trained CEOs, Sales Leaders and their sales teams and asked them “What have you agreed is your best response to the price objection that no matter who gave you that objection, you should be answering it the same way, who would like to share what that response is?”
No one says a word. Why? Because none of them have a standard prepared answer to the same objection that keeps coming up, which is crazy.
So, as Business Entrepreneurs we shouldn’t act surprised when the client raises the price objective and should be well prepared with a standard response for something you know is going to happen and not be “thinking on our feet” or thinking to ourselves “I hope they don’t bring the price up!!”.
A final thought to leave with you, whilst we are on the price topic, one thing you should never do is give a price to an unsold buyer. I once had an introductory virtual call with a prospect and at the end of the session. she said to me, “This sounds great, Michelle. So, how much would you charge for this training?”.
My response was “Mrs. Client, I unfortunately can’t answer that question as there are still too many variables that we need to unpack further for me to provide you with a customized sales program that will improve your sales results. Only when we get to that point, will I be able to tell you what my price will be.” She got that and we moved forward (and I shared some specific examples with her to illustrate my point).
With a sales career spanning over 20 years, Michelle Strydom, the founder of The SMG Group, is a brilliant and accomplished sales and business leader with an impeccable pedigree. She has mastered and honed her discipline at the coalface, as the head of multiple global sales and retention teams.
Michelle now trains and coaches CEOs, Business Owners, Sales Leaders and Sales
Managers who are struggling to improve their sales results, a highly effective and practical 8-step “Sales is Fun” process.
She is also a certified Behavioral, Motivators and EQ Analyst with TTI Success Insights, and an Emotional Intelligence Certified Coach with Goleman EI.
21 | BIZPRENEUR MIDDLE EAST April 2021