Have you been following our series 8 Ways to Increase Your Price?
No worries if you haven’t, because you can still look at my specific explanations of the four points we have discussed thus far: believing in what you sell, increasing your pipeline, just saying “no” and never entering into a discussion about price.
This brings us to number 5!
5. Accept the fact you won’t close every sale.
It’s fine to not close every sale. If you were to close every sale, it would mean your price is too low. It’s certainly better to close fewer sales at a higher price than it is to close every sale at a lower price.
Brett Favre and Closing the Sale
I have a lot of respect for Brett Favre as a football player. For years he amazed football fans and teams he was competing against. The number of times he connected with a receiver who was either being covered by multiple players or when he himself was on the verge of being tackled is simply amazing.
As good as he was at making the impossible play, he was also famous for throwing an interception at just the wrong time. The vast majority of interceptions he threw were because he was trying out of desperation to get one more completion to somehow pull off another win.
The example of Brett Favre fits also for sales and the tendency by some salespeople to think they’re going to close every sale.
There is nothing wrong with going into a sale with the attitude of expecting to close the sale. However, if you carry this approach too far, like Brett Favre would sometimes do in a game, it can wind up hurting you.
If you live by the belief that you must close every sale, many times you will wind up offering a price discount to merely close the sale. Sure you got the sale, but you did so at a lower profit. Plus, you’ve even damaged long-term profits by changing the value/benefit correlation in the mind of the customer.
Your best approach is to go into each sale believing you’re going to close the sale once the customer has accepted your value proposition based on the merits of the benefits they will gain.
Do not be thinking that if all else fails, you can offer a discount. You’ll be just like Brett Favre throwing a pass into a crowd of defenders and winding up with an interception.
(Don’t miss the other posts we’ve already ran in this series: believing in what you sell, increasing your pipeline, just saying “no” and never entering into a discussion about price).
Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
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