We are still digging deeper into my 5 Sales Tips to Maximize Your Price.
If you are late to the game and missed the posts to this point, check out Sell the Outcome, Not the Activity, Sell the Urgency of the Customer’s Timeline and Are Your Customers Confident in You.
Now I want to look at the tendency some salespeople have to break down their pricing model into line items.
If you do this, you need to stop.
Think about when a doctor does a surgery. Does the doctor do “half” a surgery? No! He or she does the entire surgery. They don’t sit there and tell you what each and every aspect costs.
The same is true with you. You do not need to volunteer information about the pricing of every little aspect of what you sell.
We’ve all been in the situation where we have put a great proposal together for a customer, and we know the proposal is perfect for them. As the customer reviews your proposal, they then request you break it down so they can see each component of the proposal.
There is only one reason why a customer will ask you to do this — they’re looking for a way to cut costs.
No matter how tempting it is to provide them with the information, don’t do it! If you do, you run the risk of not only having a smaller sale, but also a sale at a lower profit.
The strategy the customer is using is to get a couple of things taken out of the proposal as a way to save money. Sure, this might sound good, but there’s always a catch.
The sharp customer — just as they’re about to say “yes” to the deal — will come back and ask you to put the items that were cut out of the proposal back into the proposal, but at no charge.
This is a strategy used by professional buyers on a regular basis. To the unsuspecting salesperson who is determined to show them great customer service, it works 99% of the time in favor of the buyer!
When asked to break down your proposal to show individual amounts, your reply should simply be “no.”
There is no way you want to go down this road. You reinforce your position by saying your plan is designed to allow the customer to achieve the beneficial outcomes.
When the plan is based on outcomes, then you must know that if you were to break it down, the intended outcomes could not be achieved.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
One Response
I agree. It’s a slippery slope and you’re playing their game.