Price is Only A State of Mind

Yes, price is only a state of mind, and it’s not your mind you need to be concerned with.

Discussing with a salesperson the concerns he or she is having closing sales is something I do quite a bit. On one particular occasion, the salesperson shared with me how his company’s prices are simply out of line for the marketplace.

He wanted to walk me through one example after another about sales he lost because his boss wouldn’t cut the price.

After hearing two examples, I cut him off. He immediately became defensive and began telling me how I don’t understand the severity of the problem and won’t ever grasp it until he shares every situation.

It’s as if by my comment of not wanting to hear more that I had somehow taken the oxygen out of the room — or at least he would like to believe it.

Contrary to his thinking, my belief is that by cutting off the discussion, I’m putting oxygen back into the room.

Only thing the salesperson wanted to do was discuss with me how his price list was simply not appropriate for his market. Everything was about his market, his territory, his customers — or I should say, “lack of customers” and his belief system.

Emphasis on the last point — his belief system.

He had become so convinced about his pricing being out of line that he was refusing to believe or see any other option to succeed. To him, success was only going to occur when pricing came down. Until that happened, he would be faced with rejection 100% of the time.

Problem is he was allowing his belief system to overpower his ability to listen to the customer. His belief was so strong, he was not willing to listen to what the customer was saying.

When I asked him what his customers said about his pricing, he couldn’t give me one concrete comment. Only thing he had was what he believed the customer was thinking. His argument is because his price was higher than the competition, the only reason why somebody would reject him was because of price.

This was nothing more than a belief based on what he wanted to believe. It had nothing to do with what the customer was saying.

Don’t allow your beliefs or what you want to believe to become reality in your mind.

Price is purely a state of mind. The only mind that counts is the mind of the customer. That’s the mind you want to believe.