The ridiculousness test
Are you that special cookie? Most messaging to the market goes as “bringing solutions”, “being creative”, “focused on success”, “the best of”, “state of the art (?)”… Ask yourself: Would saying the opposite sound ridiculous? Would your competitors go to the market and say they “Bring problems”? “Are incompetent”? “Are not creative”? Since this scenario is highly unlikely, find out what truly makes you stand out. It’s hard work. And it’ll be SO simple to understand, your clients will “get it”.
Talk price early
If you’re selling something that is somewhat of a considerable amount ($$$), you want to talk price early in the game. Take it out of the question from the beginning. You’ll respect both your prospect’s time and yours. Going first into the details of what you do / sell [AKA features, or deliverables] to then try to convince is justifying the cost / effort of what it takes towards the price. “It does this, so the price is this”. Think of what they want, their desired state, what they value….
After the silence
After the awkward silence came: “Why are you saying that? Our product goes for 42K per year.” Here’s the thing While this price might be high, it depends on the context. The firm is specialized in IT security (aka protecting high-profile companies from being hacked). Going deeper into the conversation, a company being hacked loses —besides reputation— a few millions. In no time. When set up on this specific context, putting 40K a year is pocket change compared to what stays secured. What…
Are you able to ask the hard question?
When selling to another business, both parties tend to see the sale from a cost perspective. However, that’s not important. You can change the way this works and how they see things. In a b2b setting, you need to involve the ones who are making the decision (for this you can deff check The Challenger Sale, The Jolt Effect and Sales Pitch). If you get to talk to Procurement/Purchasing at the very end of the process, you’re out of the game. They have all the power to negotiate (and they’re…
Incompetence
There are 2 types of incompetents. Type I Here you find the ones who try new things, experiment, fail consistently, and try to bring new perspectives into new scenarios. They’re incompetent because they’re not trying to achieve efficiencies. They haven’t had the experience in doing the thing yet. They’re learners. Seth Godin writes a bit about it here. Type N Here you find the other type. Where they stick to the old ways of “We’ve always done it like this”. Where they don’t look for…
Having conversations
There’s a principle introduced by Blair Enns on how to approach sales: Replacing presentations with conversations. It states that instead of going into convince-solution-presentation-mode, where you do all the talking so that you get buy-in from your prospect, you go into a conversation. Trying to find a fit between their situation and how/if you could help. If there is a financial fit (can they afford you?). Going into this mode changes the dynamics of the sale. Makes your prospect go into…
Is it something personal?
“No. We won’t buy from you.” What do you feel when you’re in a sales conversation and hear that? That it’s a No against you? That you didn’t convince them enough? That you weren’t good enough to close the deal? That your offer is sub-par? That you… . . . It’s hard hearing a No. Until you seek for it. Hearing a No felt like something against me. That if I didn’t get a Yes, then I wouldn’t be as good as I could have thought I was. Or that I lacked the competence. It felt personal. Then the…
You’ve been taught pricing… backwards
Friend-of-the-list Brandon Hughes started an interesting discussion on price and rates. “If you find the price, you would give the extra value.” This makes sense on the way we’ve been taught about pricing and prices. We need to find the right price. But there’s no right or wrong price. Just a price. We’ve been taught that first you find how much it costs you, then you find the right price, and then you see the value that can be added to your customer. That’s backwards. You don’t find the…
Not all will follow. And that’s ok.
That’s Blair Enns’ proclamation in his manifesto. That not everyone will do business with you. And that’s ok. Same applies to your current customers. When shifting your pricing and pricing policies, current customers won’t like it. They’ll fight you over small things —that are totally fine if it comes from somebody else (at even higher prices). 🤷♂️ And that’s ok. It’s a sign to start looking into the future and find better fits for your business. It’s your decision to keep them in your…
You got approval and now… Procurement
You got through the hard part of the sale, you got the approval and now comes Procurement saying: “We’re about to place the order. Do we get a discount?” There are 3 possible ways you could go on it. Say no and call it out. “We got approval and agreement for the price. I’m curious, what’s the reason for this to happen?” “Sure. I could do a 1-figure discount for early-payment, etc.” “No can do for this one. However, with the following projects we could take this into consideration.” It’s…