Stop asking for the budget
Please stop asking what’s the budget It assumes they’ll buy from you. It assumes you’ll accommodate YOUR offer to THEIR arbitrary budget. It assumes they know what they want and need at a deep level. It assumes they’re the expert. It assumes they lead the engagement. And when you assume, you stop asking.
Who are you talking to?
Something that happens quite often when selling: you’re talking to one of the right people. You might be talking with some of the people that are in the process. You might be talking (and they might love you) to one of them: technical, manager, procurement, economic buyer. While doing it, others are left. And they become your blind spot. Involve everyone who is part of the decision in your process. That’ll give you better chances at moving forward, or stopping the process when things don’t…
Price is advantage
Somewhere, I read that price (or even pricing) is strategy. It’s not. It CAN give you a better position or approach in a strategy, yet it’s A factor for strategy (in your business). Price is advantage. It’s what makes your public claim of expertise make sense —or not. It’s what makes your promise give a sense of your deliverability. It’s what makes your offering be good, good enough or too good to be true. It’s what can be your advantage.
Strategic partners
You’ve seen this everywhere. Every vendor is a (or wants to, or feels like) a strategic partner to their customers. Allow me to push back a bit on it. If that’s so, what’s the shared risk between them and their customers? To be a partner means that you also have skin in the game. Is a vendor really a partner?
Are you listening?
When you’re in a conversation (with stakes for your business), are you listening, or are you waiting to respond? In one you try to understand what the other party means. In the other, it’s about what you’ll say. Which one do you want to feel when you’re the one talking?
Alignment
Here’s a quick exercise you can use to put in the open if your customers are aligned —or if you run a team, if you and your team are aligned. Write every response in 1 minute each. On one post it each. All of the ones who are there at the same time. Each one grabs 3 post-it’s Post-it 1. What’s the vision of the business? Post-it 2. What’s the direction being taken? Post-it 3. What does this look like in reality? If you have a quite similar response, it’s a great sign. If there are different…
No difference
If your buying ticket is in the thousands, a 50 euro difference won’t make any difference. You might be tempted to use a charm price (finishing in uneven figures [.99; .90; –50]), and it might be devaluing your offering. You haven’t seen a McLaren sold for 355 950, have you? Give it a shot and go with round numbers. You might be surprised of what comes off next. And if it doesn’t work, you can always go back to the charm.
Killing your products
Might be the thing that livens up your business. To kill offerings is a good thing. You have to do that. Better that YOU do it, than someone doing it for you. It’s good when you choose it, it’s bad when it’s chosen for you (by the competition). A few ways to kill: To get rid of dead weight. To add it into another offering. To create new ones from what does work. To be more efficient. To gain focus. To push yourself to new heights. What can you think of?
Not your idea
The fastest (and more efficient) way to get someone to do something is when THEY come up with the idea. In THEIR words. It’s not your job to convince. Or to police them around. It’s to guide them make the best-informed decision. And that only comes from their mouths. Not yours. It’s their idea. It’s you guiding.
Thinking backwards
Usually, how we understand ‘thinking’ is as a scaffolding process, where one thing builds upon the previous one, taking you to a scenario. I don’t usually function like that (been told I think backwards). Thinking backwards is jumping onto as many scenarios could happen, to then take the most likely ones to happen and start working backwards on how to get there, what could the obstacles be for each one, and ways to approach each one. This drives people crazy. If you give it a shot it can…
