Sell with Confidence, Not Concessions
Pressure to drop price is everywhere in sales today. It’s become a go-to customer demand, and too many salespeople fall for it.
That needs to stop. It’s time to address discounting head on and build the conviction to hold your price, close faster, and protect your value.
Your Mindset Is the Price Problem
Discounting almost never starts with the customer. It starts inside your head.
You are giving a discount because you don’t believe in your price.
Doubt in your mind is the biggest driver of low prices. When you don’t fully believe in your value, you’ll cave to the first pushback. Mindset, not negotiation, is where most pricing problems begin.
Wrong Prospects, Wrong Prices
Discounting usually points to a deeper issue: chasing the wrong customers in the first place.
You’re prospecting deals that don’t fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) just to fill your pipeline. Answering every email. Taking every meeting. Anyone who “shows interest” makes the cut.
That only devalues your time and your price.
Selling a value proposition that doesn’t fit the customer’s needs forces you to compensate with discounts. The pipeline fills up, but closes slow and painful, if at all.
Value Drives Price, Not the Other Way Around
Customers will absolutely pay your price if the value aligns to their true needs.
Customers will pay a price when it’s in line with the value of the outcome that they’re looking for.
Two motivations drive buying decisions: relieving pain (solving risk or problems), and seeking gains. Here’s the catch: people pay more to eliminate pain than to chase a gain.
Connect your offer directly to the customer’s pain, risk, or mission-critical outcome. Never lead with price. Lead with value.
Never Drop Price Without an Outcome
A price, stated on its own, is meaningless. That’s why negotiators go straight for the jugular because there’s no outcome connected to what you’re offering.
Don’t fall for it.
“You never just put a naked price out there. You always say, based on our conversations and the issues that you have … this is the right solution.”
Every quote needs to be wrapped in the outcome the customer wants. Make it crystal clear the price is tied to the very thing they need, and no less.
Price Confidence Is Everything
Discounting exposes a lack of confidence in your solution and in yourself. When you’re tight with your ICP and clear on your value, confidence shines through and price resistance shrinks.
If the customer pushes back, hold your ground. Be prepared to walk away. When you or your team aren’t ready to let a deal go, you’ll always negotiate against yourself and cave in to lower margins.
Own the Total Benefit of Ownership
Selling on price is a losing game. Sell the total benefit of ownership:
- How does quicker installation help the customer seize opportunities faster?
- How does reduced service save them money and headaches long-term?
- What additional revenue could they capture with a faster or better solution?
Tie everything back to the big picture benefit, not just cost, but total impact.
Protect Your Pipeline and Your Price
Filling the top of your funnel with the wrong prospects creates a sewer pipe, not a sales pipeline. Go deep, not wide. Stay disciplined, and only invest in those who match your ideal customer and will value your offering the most.
Fill your pipeline with clean, clear prospects that appreciate and pay for value and close faster.
Sell with Conviction or Don’t Sell at All
If you believe in your price, your value, and your customer fit, you’ve already won most of the battle. Selling with integrity means serving only where you’re a fit and never apologizing for your price.
Mark Hunter :
Let’s get serious. How do you stop discounting your price to close a sale? Hey, let me tell you something. The pressure to respond to a customer’s demand to reduce price is now greater than it’s ever been before. But it’s driven by a number of different reasons. And let me tell you something. When it happens, it drives you, the salesperson, into a state of confusion. It’s time we deal with this head on. And the show begins right now.
Mark Hunter :
You’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you, as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here’s your host. You’re discounting your price, and I’m going to call it out right here, right now. I’m going to get ugly and say it. Because you are giving a discount because you don’t believe in your price. That’s right. Your mindset is too often your own enemy. Okay, now that we got that issue out on the table, and believe me, I should do a whole separate episode on just that.
Mark Hunter :
Because your mindset drives your price. I want to tackle that, but I want to tackle some other reasons why. Because here’s the thing, I want to back up the bus and say something else that’s going to hurt. You’re discounting because you’re trying to gain a sale from someone who you should not even be talking to in the beginning. Yeah. Simply put, you are prospecting people who you are. No, no. You’re trying to close people who you should not be prospecting.
Mark Hunter :
That’s being very blunt. Why are you sitting here prospecting people that do not match your icp, your ideal customer profile? Just because they took your meeting, just because they responded to an email, just because they. They downloaded something does not make them somebody you should invest your time in. Remember, your most valuable asset is your time. It’s not what you sell. It’s not your product. It’s not your customer list. It’s your time.
Mark Hunter :
And what this means is very simply this. You can only afford to be prospecting people who absolutely fit your icp. Now, now, why is this? Because here’s the thing. Your price, the price you are expecting customers to pay are based off of a value proposition designed for your icp. So your price does not line up. If you’re trying to chase customers and trying to close customers that don’t see the value in your icp, it very simple, okay? It. It just doesn’t happen. But this is what too many salespeople are doing now.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, let’s back the bus up even further. This means unless this person matches your icp, and again, I’ve got a number of episodes out there on out, they’re on a podcast in terms of how to determine your icp. I don’t want to spend time with them because my whole goal is to spend more time with fewer prospects. That’s how I really begin to understand the needs that they have. What’s the outcome that they’re chasing? You see, the value proposition matches the absolute perfect person. Now, see, here’s the whole thing. Customers will pay a price when it’s in line with the value of the outcome that they’re looking for. This is why.
Mark Hunter :
This is why you can’t sit there and prospect anybody and everybody just because they respond, just because they, you know, some, they have an itch, doesn’t mean a thing. Just because they call you up and say, can you give me a price quote? Now, you never put a price on the table without first understanding what is the problem, what’s the challenge. Now, remember, customers only buy for one or two reasons. One, they’re looking to overcome a pain. They have some sort of a risk issue at play, or they’re looking for a gain. And here’s what I found. Customers will always pay more to take care of a risk to solve a pain than they will again. They just always will.
Mark Hunter :
And again, this has to come back to your value proposition and the outcomes that you create. Let me, let me set this up for a bit here. The example I love to use is, is airline ticketing, airline pricing. If you go get on any flight, you’re going to see people sitting on that plane who have paid different prices for the same flight. The same piece of aluminum or whatever planes are made out of, going from point A to point B. They get there at the exact same time, and yet people are paying all kinds of different prices. Why is that? It’s very simple. Because of the value proposition.
Mark Hunter :
The value proposition of grandpa and grandma going to visit the grandkids. They don’t really care if they fly on a Tuesday or a Thursday. They’re just looking for the cheapest flight because they know their kids will still be there. But to the. To the person who’s going to a critical meeting where there’s a critical decision being made and they have to leave at a certain time on a specific day and be back the next day at a certain time, they’re willing to pay far more. You see, the value proposition for the Grandpa and grandma, they would never pay the price that the business person going to attend a critical meeting is willing to pay. No. Now will the, will the, the business person pay the grandpa and grandma price? Sure they will.
Mark Hunter :
If you offer it to them, sure they will. But see, this comes back to, you have to be able to segment your customers. This comes back to really understanding the value proposition that they have. You see, here’s what it comes down to. And I want to walk through each of these here and you’ll see how they all tie back together. We wind up discounting a price because we don’t feel that the value proposition is lining up to what the customer is looking for. In fact, I’ll argue this, that more discounts are given because of the false beliefs of the salesperson than are given based on the demands of the customer. Yeah, Discounting signals a lack of confidence.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, by the way, that lack of confidence is with the customer and with you. You see, the discounting happens because the customer doesn’t have confidence in the outcome. They don’t have customer because the value is unclear to them in terms of how they’re going to benefit from it. Very simply, very simply put, it’s why one of the reasons in my book, Integrity first selling, I talk a lot about how trust plays in and I say how in the absence of trust, low price is everything. In the absence of trust, low price is everything. And see, if the customer is not confident and by the way, the customer is many times not confident because they see you’re not confident. Confidence goes, it’s a two way street. It goes both ways.
Mark Hunter :
You see, if the customer is not confident, they’re going to naturally look for a discount. Now they’re not confident because you have not laid out a value proposition that fits the outcome that they’re looking for. Gotta stop an echo. Does this fit the outcome? And this is why you never present a price without wrapping it around the outcome that they’re going to receive. Never. You, you never just put a naked price out there. Never put a naked price. You always sit there and say, based on our conversations and the issues that you have and what you’re trying to feel, this is the right solution.
Mark Hunter :
Boom. That’s what you do. You see, they have to be continuously reminded of the outcome because otherwise what can happen is the customer can revert back to features very quickly. And if it reverts back to features, and I see this a lot in my own business, I see this a lot because I do a lot of keynote speaking at conferences. And you sit there and say, well, there’s a lot of People who they could bring in to go up on stage and deliver a keynote speech. Why do they hire me? Because they feel that my value proposition is going to help them achieve their outcome. There’s other people cheaper. Sure there are, sure there are.
Mark Hunter :
But I’m going to deliver based on the outcome that they’re looking for. Now, this is the other key piece. I’m going to take my value proposition and tie it to time. This is very critical when I am looking to prospect with you. Not only am I trying to figure out the outcome, not only am I listening for the outcome that you’re looking for. And I love doing this in the prospecting phase. Why? Because customers are honest. They’re upfront with me.
Mark Hunter :
I’m listening for signals regarding time because time has a cost associated with it. Time has a cost associated with it. And when I do that, it’s amazing how now I can tie it to the total cost of ownership. I’ll give you an example. You may have a higher price offering. In other words, what you sell is higher price than what somebody else is selling. However, in looking at the installation and the time and the effort and the problems it’s going to take, your total cost of ownership is going to be less. In other words, they’re going to be able to get this product up and running faster.
Mark Hunter :
Or maybe the product that you sell is going to require less service over the life of the product. And therefore what they’re going to benefit from is they’re actually going to save money down the road. See, the total cost of ownership. But there’s also another one, what I call the total benefit of ownership. In other words, the total benefit of ownership is because you have this in place. This is where time really comes into play. You’re going to be able to generate X amount more revenue. You see, if what I sell, what I provide you with, is going to be able to help you get up and running in two weeks versus four weeks or six weeks.
Mark Hunter :
That’s going to allow you to achieve two weeks or four weeks or six weeks of additional revenue. You see the total benefit of ownership. This is why you have to stay very tight in your icp. This is why you don’t sit there and allow yourself to get sucked into conversations with customers that don’t understand. And you don’t understand, because what happens is that’s when the value proposition falls flat. The value proposition only has the most merit when you are tightly, closely aligned with the icp. Everything lines up. In other words, you have your very tight icp.
Mark Hunter :
And that in turn has driven the value proposition. That’s how you maximize your price. And when you do that, it’s amazing at what will happen. Now, here’s the situation. Customer has sit there and says, hey, you need to cut your price. You have to have conviction about your price. That means you have to be prepared to walk away. You have to be prepared.
Mark Hunter :
If you are not prepared to walk away, you will, you will give a discount. You will give a discount. This is why I tell so many sales organizations I get a chance to work with. Don’t give your salespeople any kind of pricing power. Don’t give them any kind of ability to discount because under pressure, they will discount. Oh, they’ll moan and groan, they’ll complain. Oh yeah, they’ll complain. But in the end, they’ll learn how to sell at that full price.
Mark Hunter :
You see, here’s the whole situation. You have to believe. And, and again, if you are selling to your icp, you believe in the value proposition. And when you believe in the value proposition, you believe in the total cost of ownership and the total benefit of ownership. Really want you to stop and think about total benefit of ownership because I want you to ask yourself this question. How will the customer benefit from what it is that I want to sell them? And you want to be prepared to articulate that. So when the if the customer should push back on price, you come back and you convey to them the benefit of ownership. You, you convey to them.
Mark Hunter :
And, and many times you, you convey to them by asking the questions, hey, you made the comment that you needed to get this up and running by this or this had to happen by that. You get them to confirm to you and then what happens is now they believe. Because remember, price is not just your confidence, but it’s the customer’s confidence. And it all comes down to right at the beginning. Don’t allow yourself to prospect with people that do not fit your icp. Regardless of the temptation. It can be tempting. It’s this way.
Mark Hunter :
I’m going to fill my pipeline, but you’re going to wind up filling your pipeline and it’s going to become a sewer pipe. I don’t have the ability to manage a sewer pipe. I want a water tap. I want prospects who are clean, who are just clear. I understand them, they understand me, and I can close. Ultimately, I’m going to close them faster. It’s all in the book. Integrity first selling.
Mark Hunter :
I want you to grab a copy of it, share this podcast with others in your organization. Leave me a review on your favorite podcast app with you. And if you’re not subscribing to the Podcast man, make sure you are on regardless of your podcast platform. Two episodes a week. One like this for me. Second where I do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. I do the podcast for one very simple reason. It’s to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible.
Mark Hunter :
Sales is without a doubt the greatest profession in the world because we get to help so many other people. I’m Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great selling.
