When you buy “quality,” you only cry once: handling price objections
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 15, 2008 @ 03:15 AM
Today's post is about handling price objections. Overcoming sales objections is a big part of sales, and I'll bet your product or service isn't the cheapest. If you're in the Silicon Valley or in New England, it's probably among the most expensive. I'll also bet that if you're at a high price point, the quality of your product is exceptional. One of my mantras is "when you buy quality, you only cry once." And that's when you fork over your hard-earned money for a high quality product, so you cry a bit. Because it is high quality, it usually performs well over a long course in time, and you've actually saved money, time, and grief over the lifetime of the product, as opposed to what would have happened had you gone cheap and bought inferior goods.
And this is the argument you'll want to use when talking with a prospect that doesn't want to pay your price. There are a few ways to craft it, and here are several of my favorites:
1) Our goal is to build a high quality product that you'll be continually happy with. We can't do this unless we pay our engineers top dollar. We hire the best to build the best product. And we can't hire the best engineers unless we sell our product with enough profitability to pay them.
2) We want to be here for you today and tomorrow, year after year, building great solutions that will make your job (and your life) easier. We can't do that unless we plug a lot of money into R&D every year. This year it was ($XX or X% of revenue --- look it up in last year's annual report for your actual numbers). Corporate America is littered with the bodies of companies that failed because they didn't charge enough for their products and went out of business. That's not our business model.
3) (To be used when the competitor to whom the prospect is comparing you is in your same geographical area). My competitor is a very good company (never slam the competition), but frankly, they're only 50 miles from here, and if I thought they were a better company, I'd be working for them. I want my customers treated well, and I want them to have the best solution. That's why I'm here, and why I want you to be my customer.
4) Our pricing is "fair," not "high." OK, if I could give it to you, I would. But I can't. To arrive at our pricing structure, our executive team asked how we could build the best solution possible, pay for great engineers, support, marketing, and salespeople, and still make a little profit. And they arrived at the price, which is a fair way of doing it. I'll bet your (the prospect's) company does it the same way. So I hope you'll come on board and join us, because we're trying to make the pricing as fair as possible. And we'll never sacrifice quality.
As I was writing this, I reflected on some purchases I made that were tough, because I paid more than I wanted to be the quality I knew I needed to have. One was my car. Another was a house I bought (I did a crazy thing, buying a house I'd never stepped into. Still haven't). And you know, just about every time I make a capital purchase, I ask the salesperson what the next level up is before I buy the product. 50% of the time, I need the higher end solution, and buy it. So go out and be really proud that you're representing a high-end, expensive solution. You can tell a great story about why it's worth the money. And you can tell about a time you yourself spent more money than you wanted, but got a superior solution that cost you less in the long run. You can tell the prospect "when you buy quality, you only cry once." And yes, this is exactly what I teach in every telesales training course I teach. Add this sales technique to your Best Practices playbook. And if you have another technique for handling price objections, post back to the blog and tell me about it!