If you don’t want to sell your product or service as a commodity, you have to stop acting like it is. Salespeople complain all the time that customers are just interested in price. And yet, their actions perpetuate the commodity mentality.
As a salesperson, price is only the deciding factor when you allow it to be. When someone calls you and asks for your price, what do you do? If you immediately respond with the price, you’ll only be compared on price. The only way to get out of price wars is to create and demonstrate value. You can only do that when you know what’s important to the prospect.
Many businesses throw away tons of advertising dollars, because they don’t know how to respond to calls from interested consumers. When a prospect calls in and says, “I heard your ad about XYZ service and I wanted to know how much it costs?” The immediate response is, “The cost is X.” To which the caller often responds with a thanks and a click.
Instead, the response needs to engage the other person and find out what’s important to the prospect. For example, the salesperson could start off with a response like, “Our prices vary on that service depending on what exactly you want. I’d be happy to give you a better idea of price. To help me do that, could you tell me…”
The same principle applies when salespeople call on a prospect and want to be allowed to provide a quote for an upcoming need. This happens frequently in many industries like insurance and printing. Salespeople will call a prospect and ask for an opportunity to quote on the next policy or order. Without taking the time to find out what’s really important to the prospect and what extra value they can bring to the table, the salesperson and his management are setting themselves up to be in the commodity business.
To remove yourself from price wars with your competitors that just erode your margins, you need to act differently. You need to engage your prospect. You need to establish a relationship based on trust and understanding. That allows you to ask the right questions. Besides finding out what your prospect needs, your questions need to dig below the surface to find out what’s important to the prospect and why. Then the buying decision is based on the value you offer, not the lowest price.
Do You Have A Commodity Mindset? - To learn more about this author, visit Will Turner's Website.
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Will Turner
(Visit Will's Website)
As President of Dancing Elephants
Achievement Group, Will feels he has the
best job in the galaxy. He loves working
with salespeople and entrepreneurs to
"unblock" themselves and "unlock"
their potential. Will is the first to
admit that he was a reluctant salesperson
for many years. He thought most
salespeople had to be pushy, and he just
wasn't comfortable in that role. He later
discovered that you don't have to act
like a typical salesperson to be a great
salesperson so he created a company to
teach others what he had learned.
Will transitioned a twenty year career in
sales and sales management into his
current position as President of Dancing
Elephants. In addition to facilitating and
presenting, Will is the author of Impact!,
the company's monthly e-newsletter on
sales performance. He is also the
co-creator of the Sales Magnetism program
and the co-author of Six Secrets of Sales
Magnets.
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