Value Selling Blog

Every sales rep dreads hearing prospect objections. From “Your price is too high,” to “Call me again in three months when I get my budget back,” it can sometimes seem like all prospects want to do is find reasons not to buy from you.

This is a frustrating situation for reps, especially when they feel, as the best do, that their product or solution could actually help the prospect and improve his or her business. So what’s the disconnect? If your offering can actually make life easier for this prospect, why is she spending so much time finding reasons to reject it?

Last week I worked with a client to finalize a list of cost savings and revenue gains provided by her company’s offering. During our review, she flagged the section where I had included “sales growth” as a revenue benefit. As she told me, “We’re not allowed to include soft benefits when we present business cases internally.”

Is your offering underpriced? It happens more often than you’d think. For example, during a recent consulting project, I helped a particular business unit at a material manufacturer realize they were charging $100,000 for an offering that was delivering $1.2 million in value.

What’s the best way to get a buyer’s attention, move deals quickly through the buying cycle, and increase close rates? Follow these five fundamental steps. (For a handy summary of these steps, download our tip sheet, "5 Steps to Close More Deals.")

It’s happened to the best of us: you tell a prospect how much your product or service costs and silence ensues on the other end of the line. This is known as “sticker shock.” If you’ve done your job as a salesperson though, your customer should never experience this. Why? You’ll have set up the value and discussed price early on and, therefore, eliminated any price sensitivity. However, there will be times when, despite your transparency with price, the prospect may not have been paying attention or started to think about pricing.

Setting the price for your offering is critical. Price dictates whether or not your offering will succeed or fail in the marketplace. A price that’s too low can cause you to operate in the red or leave profits on the table. However, a price that’s too high could create drag on the sales cycle or make it tough for your salespeople to close deals. 

Why Common Pricing Strategies Fail 

When setting price, you’re looking for the optimal price to maximize profitability. That number is not the highest price possible nor is it based solely on what your competition charges, yet I hear many marketers talk about pricing in exactly those terms. Here are the two most common approaches to pricing I see.

Using a value-based sales approach helps sales teams succeed consistently and more frequently. These four tips from the world of value selling can help move deals through the buying cycle faster and increase close rates.

The other day I got a call from a client asking for my help with a sales problem. His company sells document management solutions to property and casualty insurers, and he said reps were having trouble with a specific set of sales objections. Here's what he said:

It's the middle of the month and I'm enjoying my early morning caffeination while reviewing the preliminary monthly sales forecasts from the sales team. I see one thing that concerns me. Many of the opportunities forecasted to close again this month at 90% probability are deals that have been previously forecasted to close at similar rates of probability.