Most sales professionals eventually learn that potential buyers start out price-conscious, but end up becoming value-conscious. Value is the emotional perception of benefits over costs. Benefits, in turn, are the combination of perceptions on price, quality and service. The key to sales success, then, is to get the buyer emotionally involved by influencing those perceptions and to show the potential buyer why they are better off with the benefits and values your product or services offers.
We always start our sales training classes by asking WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? The answer is not the features of your product but rather the benefits and reasons to buy. The old adage is that a customer doesn’t come into a hardware store to buy a drill. They come to buy something to make a hole. Always start from the buyer’s perspective.
Next, we look at the cost-benefit ratio. Since the purchase decision is based upon perceptions of benefits over costs, we focus on this ratio. Where do we stand verses competitors? If we are the low cost leader in the industry, we focus on this. If not, we need to work on all those perceptions of value that the buyer may have. We need to create as many reasons to buy from us as possible.
As we mentioned, the buying decision is emotional but often the strongest emotions are often based on past negative experiences involving service or quality. It’s important to identify and draw these emotions out from the buyer. It can help move them off the status quo of staying with the product or service they currently use. Ask questions to find out your potential buyer’s past dissatisfactions and show, better prove, that you’ll do better.
If your price is higher, help the buyer justify the higher price in terms of the value and benefits offered. If you are in an acceptable price range, rarely is price the dominate factor. If you fail to help the customer justify the higher price, price can easily be a dominate excuse they use not to buy from you when really it was the perception of insufficient benefits that was the real cause.
When you sell value – your best combination of quality, service and price – you will have more satisfied buyers than when you sell on price alone. Even after a rigorous price comparison, buyers will rarely make a buying decision predominately on price.
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