It happened again this week.
A salesperson called me to say how much trouble they were having in getting customers to pay full-price.
The salesperson was quick to say how every customer they talk to is asking about a discount and how they won’t buy unless they get a better price.
They go on to say how they haven’t been able to close a sale in months without a discount.
I wish I could say I’ve only had this conversation once, but it happens frequently.
As I’m listening to the salesperson, the underlying tone is how they don’t believe in their own price. My response is, “Why would any customer believe in the salesperson’s price if the salesperson doesn’t even believe in their own price?”
All of this can be traced back to two things.
First, the salesperson is failing to believe they can get full price. Second, the salesperson is believing the customer is going to demand a price reduction.
This gets played out in the salesperson’s mind with every comment made by the customer. Unfortunately, the salesperson thinks every comment made by the customer is somehow an argument for a lower price. Simply put, it’s believing what you want to believe rather than believing what is real, and more importantly, what is possible.
A concept I teach in my programs is the level of profit a salesperson makes on a call is in direct relationship to the level of confidence the salesperson has going into the sales meeting.
More confidence equals more profit.
It’s pretty basic, but spot-on more often than people will ever realize or want to accept.
The next time you go into a sales meeting, allow yourself to only believe one thing and that is “full-price and no discount.”
An extreme way to look at each opportunity is by thinking, “Full-price or no-price.”
By this I mean you either sell it for full-price or you don’t get the sale. Period! We get out of things what we put into things, and when we decide to put into our mind that we can’t get full-price, then why should we even think we will get full price?
Where is your head at? What are your inner voices saying?
Stop the negative voices by accepting only one thing and that’s full price.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
The way I dealt with this scenario was the following.
I felt that if I discounted my original selling price I was basically saying to my customer that I was going to over charge them for more than what my service or product was truly worth ! This to me is being dishonest with my customer and therefore myself as a salesperson. I would use this very definition when a customer asked for a discounted price, I would say that if I discounted my price now then that meant that I was overcharging you with my original price….. Worked more than not because the customer could not deny this point in fact and would agree with me and BUY !