Your Price Is Too High
January 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In the process of selling, how many times have you heard an objection related to your price being too high? I will always remember a live Tom Hopkins presentation where he said that every time a prospect says your price is too high, he is really saying “Tell me more.” Your price is too high can be a way to brush you off, or it can be an admission that your prospect wants what you have, but that you have not built enough value to justify the price.
Everyone makes buying decisions based upon value, i.e. the benefits received for the price paid. This applies from hamburgers to real-estate. When a purchaser believes they are receiving enough benefit for the price, the will make the purchase. If they do not see enough benefit, they will not purchase. And if they purchase, but later feel they did not receive enough benefit, they get buyer’s remorse – a feeling with which we can all relate.
The job of the sales professional is to identify a prospect’s pain and need, help the prospect quantify those needs into real dollars, and then offer a solution at a price that provides good value. Many times novice sales personnel focus on a single prospect need and begin closing only to find out that the single need will not justify his / her price. Then, he must either lower the price, or backtrack and start probing for more needs / problems on which to build greater value – a process that is nearly impossible. The sale is lost not because the prospect didn’t have the need or couldn’t afford the solution. It was lost because the sales person did a poor job of building value.
Sales professionals know that their job is to identify the scope of the prospects needs, determine if their product is a solution that fits, quantify the needs monetarily with the prospect, and then present the solution and price. Done correctly, prospects become very satisfied customers. Done poorly, prospects buy from someone else or don’t buy at all. The next time you hear “your price is too high,” ask yourself, “Is your product a poor match for the need?” Or “Have I failed to build enough value?”
