Avoiding the Price Objection

Watch this week's Short Attention Span Sales Tip here.

Good morning!

Not all price objections occur in the bidding process.

A long-time customer calls you. As you look at the Caller ID, you smile. But that smile quickly fades as you pick up the phone and hear, “We need to talk about the prices you are giving us.”

Rut-roh!

While you might expect to hear a client say, “Your price is too high” when you are going up against other vendors and you might even have a defense for that (especially if you have heard me address this issue in previous sales tips), it is unusual for an existing account to suddenly and out of nowhere bring this subject up. When this happens, there is only one conclusion…

You've screwed up.

The best way to beat the price objection is to avoid it altogether. That is your takeaway today:

Avoiding the price objection is a matter of reminding a happy client why they should be happy.

For example, if a difficult delivery deadline was met successfully, remind them. If a mailing had a particularly high response rate, point it out. It is your job and your responsibility to let your customer know how well you are doing, how your solutions are impacting their business, and ultimately, why they are buying from you and not someone else.

Achieving this might simply be an email to the client summarizing the details of the job and highlighting key success points. Or maybe it's a follow up phone call — a sales rarity — where you check in to make certain everything went well at the trade show the customer just returned from.

Picture someone from accounting walking down the hallway with a piece of paper in their hand. Walking into the CEO/president's office, they say, “I think we could save a lot of money on our print/signage/promo/label/packaging spend.”

If you have not taken the time to head off this objection, get ready to explain why you are suddenly able to cut prices. That's an ugly and difficult conversation to have.

Avoid it by taking action now.

Another action to take is to join The Sales Vault. The Vault has videos, ideas, downloads, articles, scripts, solutions, workshops, and a community of other sales reps and selling owners. Find out more at SalesVault.pro or call Bill Farquharson at 781-934-7036.