You will always find yourself discounting your price if you don’t know the real reason why your customer wants to buy from you. It sounds easy to know why your customer wants to buy from you, but because it seems easy is exactly the reason why it’s so hard.
Stop the Discounting by Increasing Your Value:
Customers will always pay whatever price you want as long as they believe the value they are getting is greater than the price. The best time to find out what the value is that the prospect is looking for is during the prospecting phase. The worst time is during the close when you’re negotiating price. The reason is simple, the prospecting phase is when you’re developing confidence with the prospect and they’re far more likely to share truth and key details. If you wait until you’re negotiating the price, the customer knows money is in play and they’ll be far more likely to give you obstacles. Watch the video in this blog where I share a real-life situation from my own job where knowing the outcome the customer was looking for allowed me to avoid discounting the price to close a sale.
In prospecting, the big issue many salespeople have is they race to get to the close and miss out on what the prospect says. They don’t hear, because they’re not asking. During the prospecting phase, you need to ask the most questions. Asking questions and having an in-depth conversation is how the prospect builds confidence and will see their need to work with you. Take whatever the prospect shares with you and reference it in at least one follow-up question. That will allow you to go deeper. If you go deep during the prospecting phase, you don’t have to go deep with a discount to close the sale.
When you learn an insight from the prospect about their need right away, you can greater explore it during the prospecting phase. Then, you will have the information you need to close at full price. We’ve all heard that customers don’t want to be sold, they want solutions. Give them a solution to their need and they will buy. Give them a confident solution to their need and they will buy without hesitation.
Your objective is to assess the last several deals you gave discounting your price and ask yourself if you really knew the outcome your customer was looking for. If you felt you knew, ask yourself how confident you were that it was correct. Too often, salespeople are quick to assume they know their customer’s needs. It’s only an outcome if they say it. It’s only a major outcome if they talk about it in depth after you ask them questions about it. The more significant the need (outcome) the customer is searching out, the less significant price will be to close the sale.
Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result
