Seriously, I’m asking.
Why do you think “profit” is a dirty word?
If you don’t, good! You have won a lot of the battle that many salespeople face daily — they don’t believe in their price and they are even suspicious of profit.
I’m here to boldly proclaim that profit is NOT a dirty word.
In my recent book, High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price, I explain that “when a business provides its customers with what they need and want, it is able to make a profit. The company can then use this profit to do any number of things, but one of them is to reinvest in the business in order to be able to serve customers even better.”
Before you think I’m casting stones, you should know that I at one point struggled with seeing profit as positive.
Like many of the salespeople I meet, I believed that discounting was a valid way to secure a customer that would then become a “long-term” customer. I was willing to sacrifice profit — to lessen it’s significance, in order to get a sale.
Certainly what I lost in charging at full price I would make up for in quantity, right?
Wrong!
If you run the numbers, you will see that discounting doesn’t just eat away at your profit immediately, it destroys it over subsequent sales as well.
Why?
Well, if you discount once, your customer now associates the value of what you sell at the discounted price. This is a barrier that is incredibly hard to overcome. If and when you try to re-establish the normal price at which you should have sold in the first place, the customer’s rebellion is likely to be more intense.
As a salesperson, you have to fully commit to maximizing profit.
That means you must expect the customer to pay full price right from the start. The sooner you realize this fact, the better off you are.
What if you aren’t outright discounting — but are still throwing in “extras” that you wouldn’t normally give to the customer? Sorry, but this technique squanders profit as well.
You must always be conscientious of what you are doing to shape the customer’s perception of value. Your goal is to do an excellent job determining their needs and wants — so that you can then show them clearly how you product or service is the answer. They will be willing to pay full price for something that either solves their difficulties or satisfies their desires.
Want to find out more about why profit isn’t a dirty word, as well as how to minimize “profit takers?”
Order my new book, High-Profit Selling: Win the Sales Without Compromising on Price. The book is the result of my decades in the sales profession as a salesperson, manager, consultant and trainer.
You and your company need to embrace the power of profit so that you are actually in a position to keep providing customers what they want and need!
Profit is not a dirty word.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
