Have you ever stopped to wonder why some salespeople never seem to have to cut their price to close a deal and others do all the time?
Yes, there are a lot of reasons why this can be the case, but one problem that gets overlooked too often is the source of the sales prospects.
Doesn’t it make sense that cheap prospects would naturally become cheap customers? Sure it does.
If that’s the case, then our challenge is to make sure we’re not dealing with cheap prospects. (I don’t recommend being being blunt and asking the prospect if they are cheap). Your goal is to ask the prospect the right questions early in the process to determine if they’re even in the range of being somebody you would want to work with.
Do not let your preconceived notions overpower fact. In my business, I’ve had many clients who on the surface would appear to have little potential to hire me, but have not hesitated to do so.
And, of course, the opposite has been true too. More than a few clients have clearly had the financials to hire me, but have not done so for one reason or another.
In working with thousands of salespeople over the years, I’ve determined two ways to remove the cheap customer from the process.
First is by asking them questions about how they’ve made similar decisions in the past. Questions like this alone won’t give you solid facts to base a decision upon, but will offer you leading indicators of how they will lean.
Second way to determine if they’re cheap is by presenting to the customer your plan by way of a trial close. How they respond to your trial close will tell you a lot.
If the prospect responds negatively exclusively to the price, then you have a strong indicator. Now if this same person has given you indications in other ways about how cheap they are, then you can now rest assured you’re 95% accurate in assuming they’re cheap.
Yes, you could go ahead and continue to try to close them. That’s certainly an option, but here’s my view:
A customer who fights you on price early in the process and through the close is most likely going to be a customer who will fight you on everything else. In the end, you might wind up with a sale, but at a very low level of profit. Your profit will get sucked out because of the work you have to do supporting them and keeping them happy.
This is why I love to use the following expression: Sometimes the most profitable sales you’ll ever make are the ones you don’t get.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
