It’s time for grown people to do stupid things.
I’m talking, of course, about what people will pay to attend a certain football game taking place in New Orleans this coming weekend.
What I find interesting is how the price of tickets for a game like this peaks a week before the event and then slowly trails off. Yes, “trailing off” is a relative term in this case, but they do begin to come down.
You might be asking how this applies to sales and what you and I do for a living.
Well, it applies a lot.
The biggest thing is what one person thinks is a fair price, another person will believe is a bargain. Who are we to say what the other person will pay?
Salespeople are far too quick to underestimate what a customer will pay because they’re looking at it through their eyes and not through the customer’s eyes. The objective of the salesperson is not to sell at what they think is a fair price, but to focus instead on what the customer considers value.
There are people willing to pay thousands for a football ticket because they find value in that particular ticket and that particular game.
Second thing we can learn is that timing impacts price. For someone attending a big event, the price they will pay is certainly going to be higher ahead of it due to the travel requirements, etc.
Lesson for us in sales is simple: We can maximize our price when we sell to the customer’s timeline and not ours.
Third thing we can learn is customers buy on anticipation and expectation. Nobody is going to buy a ticket to a game if they think it’s going to be bad. No, they buy based on the expectation it is going to be an outstanding game full of action.
Lesson for us: Sell the anticipation because it’s what the customer is looking for.
Fourth thing we can learn is that buying is about accomplishment. A person who has a ticket to a big event is going to tell everyone and be extremely proud in doing so.
Lesson for us: Sell to the customer’s ego and allow them to boast about what they bought.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
