Your salesperson tells you: "my prospect finds us too expensive". How do you react to that?

Every sales or business leader experiences this: their salespeople telling them that their offering is too expensive.

As long as I have been a sales consultant, I have heard salespeople complaining about their product/service being considered too expensive. There are different reasons why prospective customers can find you too expensive. Sometimes lack of funds can be the reason, but often it has to do with not realising that what you have to offer them will satisfy their need. Lack of insights into how to sell value by the salesperson plays an even more critical role.

For people to buy from you, there must be a need. This need can be dormant, which means the demand is there, but they are not actively aware of this need. Or, there is an operational need, but they need to make a choice.

Let's take a closer look at how to avoid getting swamped into price discussions.

1. Preparation: Before the call, research the prospect, market, and what they offer to their customers.

2. Know your product, including your value proposition, features, benefits, and value for the customer.

3. Prepare your conversation, which means having a script in place which should sound natural. Your story should include your introduction, followed by the prospect telling you about their business and followed through by you asking questions. Your questions should be in a conversational way where you avoid behaving like a detective.

4. Above all, pay attention to how you start a sales call with a prospect. The first minutes of the call are crucial for the whole conversation. Your introduction and the way you lead the discussion depends on these first minutes. Either the prospect accepts that you take the lead, or they take it!

Price can be crucial, depending on the value that the buyer sees in your offering. The reality is that professional buyers know that using price is an excellent instrument to put pressure on the salesperson and get the best deal. Quite often, they bring up "price" at the beginning of the sales conversation. And quite often, salespeople tumble right into this trap.

Be aware that a sales conversation with a professional buyer will be different from a C-level manager's call.

Conversations with professional buyers usually focus on price. Still, if you can stay away from price and focus on their deep needs, you will sell on value.

Conversations with C-level managers or VP's are more focused on strategy, shareholders value, the organisation's well-being, future development and much more.

Take care that you discover at least three compelling reasons why they would want to buy what you are offering.

Receptive listening plays an important role here. Sometimes salespeople ignore critical remarks, which can be essential.

I'll give you an example: the prospect just reacted to a feature of your offering with, "this is interesting". Most salespeople would say "thank you" and continue. Wrong! Try the following by asking: "why do you find it interesting" "where does it fit your expectations", "how would it solve the issues you have", any many more questions you can ask.

You will add a new dimension to your sales conversations regarding "price" by trying the above-mentioned approaches.

Contact me here, if you want to know more about increasing sales performance and more profitable margins. Call me at +31 0642713033.

How to weather a financial storm?

There is a saying that if everybody starts to talk about a crisis, this crisis will eventually happen. Recently more and more business people talk about an imminent crisis. But is this true? Will this happen? I think it’s too early to say although recent publications predict something is going to happen.

So, what do you do if you want to be on the safe side? If you are a business leader, it's important to continue reading. If you are not, continue reading as this will provide insight in maintaining a healthy revenue stream throughout a financial crisis.

Often managers tend to see a crisis as a threat and they start to panic. This is the wrong approach. If you panic, you should ask yourselves what effect this will have on your co-workers. The people who we need to help you keep the business going. Not good.

There is another way: approach the crisis as an opportunity to get your team up and running!
The following steps will help you in this: 

1. Create a sense of urgency. When co-workers are aware of the sense of urgency, they are more capable to accept and adapt to change.
2. Keep your team informed. The better you inform people, the less there will be gossip. Gossip can kill during challenging times.
3. Emphasize strategy, responsibilities, objectives and priorities. By doing so, you get people involved to help meet challenging times. It’s also builds teamwork.
4. Have monthly meetings where you present where the organization is and where it needs to be. This gives your team insight and focusses them on the objective.
5. Have a daily or weekly roll call. Share results of the previous period/activities, where we stand, what are future steps to take/activities to deploy. Who does what by when and how. 
6. Celebrate successes. Sports people work hard and train hard to achieve results. Being in a winning state increases the chance for more success.
7. Inspire, stimulate, show interest and congratulate. This approach has a positive impact on motivation and will nurture and drive results.
8. Don’t fire people involved with your customers/market, they are your liaison with the people (customers) who can help you survive the storm. If you have to let people go, focus on underperformers who are not willing to contribute to the team.
9. Beef up your salesforce. When confronted with challenging market situations like recessions, economical setback and other disruptive market situations, your salesforce is your best tool to survive. They are responsible for bringing in revenue and profit. This means, hiring the best, developing the team, motivate, coach, train and hold them accountable for result.

This will help you withstand the most severe storms.
Following these nine steps will help you weather the most severe storms.
By the way, if you need additional assistance in beefing up your salesforce contact us here.