Imagine walking into an electrical store for a new fridge. You say to the sales assistant  “I want a fridge” and the sales assistant says “They’re £300”.

Do you buy? No.

Why not? Well, because you don’t even know if it fits in that space in your kitchen, never mind if it has the right number of shelves, or enough wine bottle holders. You need a bit more to go on than just the price!

Giving the price, before understanding the customer’s needs and explaining the benefits of your valuable solution, is not the answer to increased sales and profit. It’s a challenge for many sales people, but the good news is it’s a skill that can be learned.

I have a client whose business sells interactive apps. Apps have many benefits, the first of which is that the information on them can be viewed on your phone whilst on the move, saving time and money.

The mistake the sales team were making was not finding out enough about the customer’s problems and the opportunity to improve. Most initial contact was by phone, either by ‘cold calling’ or in response to an enquiry on the website. In actual fact, many potential customers had already done some research and thought they knew what they needed, when in reality they had only skimmed the surface of the benefits an app could bring to their business.

They called to ask “how much?” These were business-to-consumer, as well as business-to-business callers, and, in every case, the correct answer when asked the price, before understanding the customer’s needs is “it depends on what you’re trying to do with the app”.

We made two fundamental changes to the start of the sales process.

  • Firstly, we added some questions to the website contact form. One of these questions was: “What problem will the app solve?” This meant that when following up on an enquiry, the sales person could focus initial questions on something that really mattered to the customer.
  • We made sure that all sales people were comfortable with the “it depends” question, and could follow it, immediately, with some great open questions. They could then understand what the customer needed the app to do, so that they could explain a solution, with all the benefits the customer needed. That is true value.

A proud example of this was a call that came in as I was reviewing some sales-coaching with the app sales manager. It was a manufacturer of professional coffee machines, the type you get in Starbucks. They wanted an app that would be a digital version of a heavy and cumbersome components catalogue.

The man from the coffee-machine company asked how much it would be to get the catalogue onto an app. I was in the office at the time, and listened, in anticipation of the response from the sales person. “It depends what problems you want the app to solve”, he said. “What is happening right now with your hard-copy catalogue?”

It turns out that engineers tended to leave the massive catalogue in the van, rather than take it into the coffee shop. This resulted in a delay in ordering, as the engineer had to get back into the van, look up the part, and then call in an order. This was a problem to the engineer, the barista with a broken machine, and the coffee-lover with no coffee. It was losing money for everybody.

The sales person’s answer was textbook:

“So, if we could create a catalogue app that shows the engineer the stock of a part, and that he can order directly from, that would save you, the barista, and ultimately the coffee customer a lot of heartache, is that right?”

A brilliant response to the price query, which resulted in a very happy coffee-lover, barista, engineer and manufacturer.

Mindset Shift No.3: Sell value before price

Tips for selling value before price

  1. If you are asked the price too soon, use the ‘it depends’ technique to ask great open questions. Find out what the customer needs and how you can help, even if the customer raises price first.
  2. When you explain your offer, make sure the solution you give solves the customer’s problem and describes all the benefits of doing so.
  3. Summarise the benefits and check you got it right. Discuss price, only when you have checked that the customer’s needs are all met.
  4. Remember to talk price with pride and conviction; you deserve to be paid for such a great solution.

Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment

“The Go-Giver” – Bob Burg & John David Mann

 

Sales GROWTH Expert provides a range of services to bring external help to businesses that need to grow their own sales experts.  Our aim is to support businesses, both small and large, to drive the value they bring to their customers, and the capability of their people to sustain it. For a copy of our latest ebook, PRICING-MINDSET MISTAKES AND HOW TO SHIFT THEM, email amanda@salesgrowthexpert.co.uk and we’ll send it to you.