The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

There are some things that you should try to emphasize when dealing with a pricing objection:

1. Stress the value of ownership versus the cost of purchasing.
2. Stress the value of the service versus the cost of the service.
3. Stress the value of long-term benefits versus the up-front costs.
4. Stress benefits rather than features.

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The best way to handle any objection is to anticipate it and, if possible, make sure that it never intrudes into the sales discussion. Once a thought has been expressed by a prospect it becomes harder to eradicate. This is because the prospect has placed himself on record and is unlikely to recede easily from his position.

Objections that are raised to price are probably the most frequent of all honest reasons for prospects refusing to buy. It’s important to understand where the price objection is coming from, before you can handle it effectively.

Sometimes a prospect will object to price because it is simply more than he can afford to pay. The products or services are too expensive and the buyer can only afford something of a cheaper grade. As the salesperson, it is your duty to enrich the prospect with the knowledge of how the purchase of a quality item will be more economical in the long-term as opposed to buying the cheaper article of a lesser grade.

Scripts:

• “Compared to what?”
• “You know that our quality is the highest you can find, which means that you pay much less over the life of the product. The higher quality saves you money in the long run. Why not order today?”
• “If our products were cheaper, would you want it? If yes, let’s find the way you can afford it!”
  

Alternatively, an item which is more expensive usually offers additional features that may convince the buyer of the validity of such a purchase. In other words, there are times when a quality item will speak for itself. At other times it is up to you, as the salesperson, to educate the buyer of all the features and the value it holds, before he can make an informed decision.

Script:

• “Yes, we can lower the price right now, however you need to decide on what options to cut from our proposal.”

An objection to price doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the line. A buyer may be in a position to arrange alternative funding, if he sees that there is just cause. It is the duty of the salesperson to discover the cause of the price objection before being able to deal with it appropriately.

Another common objection when it comes to price is the follow-on that “times are tough” and “we’re in a recession”. Naturally, a business depression will send most buyers running for cover. However, a skilled salesperson will quash this objection by agreeing that times are indeed bad and the recession has affected all aspects of daily life; but that the product on offer has been specifically engineered and priced to accommodate the current recessive period and its characteristics. In fact, a buyer can only benefit from purchasing your product in a particularly recessive time, for all the various reasons that you can provide. You don’t have to succumb to the pessimistic mood that surrounds a recession. You can provide a quality product at a price that is uplifting in a time of downsizing and depression.

With price being the most common objection made to many sales people, a skilled manner of dealing with such a sensitive issue is to delay any mention of money matters until the very end of a discussion. In this way, you have had the opportunity to demonstrate to the prospect the quality and worth of the product and ensure that these have been firmly established before the price is mentioned. If a price is requested early on in the presentation, a skillful side-step would be to say something like,

Script:

• “…let’s decide if you actually want to buy this product. If you do, I’m sure I can put it within your reach…”

The point is to sell the item and all that it’s worth before you’ve even mentioned the price.

Learning to handle price objections effectively is one of the most vital skills that a successful salesperson can acquire. Remember, you can’t sell an item without agreeing on a price. There is no success without the sale – and there is no sale without the price.

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If you want to learn how to recognize and handle objections effectively, our one-day workshop can help you overcome objections and close more sales. Even better - at this workshop we will give you exact objection-handling techniques and scripts that sell!

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If your prospect does not see the value in your product or service, and if the only difference between you and the competitors is in pricing, you didn’t do a good job as a sales person. The main description of your position inside the company is to create the value, not just to show your price list. Teaching and educating customers is no longer enough, giving them information about your products or services is no longer necessary. They can get them by themselves, without ever talking to you or your company, and know more about your product and positioning on the market then you.

If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product without knowing their business situation or their needs?

Remember that customers are sophisticated; they either have or believe they can get product information more reliably on their own. Information is readily available through many different sources, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Internet is full of different forums, blogs, and review or research websites where they can get information about your product easily.

Customers don’t just want a specific product; most of the times they want to solve their pain point or business issues. A customer in today’s competitive sales environment does not expect to educate the sales professional about their business.  Therefore, you must already possess a solid understanding of the customer’s industry, competitors, and business direction.

Developing such a comprehensive view of the customer is a task that requires extensive researching and education to get an overall picture of the customer’s business industry. The modern sales person needs to focus on understanding the customer’s business initiatives, strategic plans, IT environment, and key customer preferences.

If you are still seeing yourself as someone who is there to educate customers, you are living in the past. The time of product-centric sales is gone. Welcome to customer-centric approach in sales.

You need to move away from the focus on presenting your products. Instead a customer-centric approach shows that you recognize and understand your customers’ needs, which is necessary if you want to survive in a 21st Century sales environment.

Your customers are tired of salespeople who come in and are unable to address real business needs, but talk about their company and the hottest feature, or unique one that nobody else has. There are many dimensions that you are selling, and price is only one of them.

You as a salesperson should give every opportunity to the prospect to ask questions and make objections if she is inclined to do so. It is desirable to assist in bringing out these questions and objections. Sometimes the very best arguments you can make are based on objections by the prospect, especially if you are thoroughly prepared.

To ignore or try to dodge them is a confession of weakness which will not be overlooked by a prospective buyer. It is an opportunity for you to treat the question raised as if it were a point you would have reached very soon in your presentation even if the buyer had said nothing about it.

Among the usual objections are:

1. The product is cheaper elsewhere.

This may or may not be true. You may not know whether the statement is truth or false. If you know it is not true, it is not a wise plan to say so in a blunt, positive way. Neither is it wise to offer to bet that it can’t be done nor to offer an amount of money to charitable institutions if the prospect can make his word good. This comes too near an insinuation that the prospect is speaking falsely, and while he may know that what he says is false, he does not wish to be told so. You can simply ask: are you comparing apples to apples? What is included in that price?

2. Good points of a competitor’s products

An objection raised in this form is usually made for the purpose of starting you on a discussion of a competitor. This is always dangerous ground. You should say as little about the competing product as possible, emphasizing the points of difference strongly, and demonstrating the benefits of your own product for your previous customers (your own success stories create credibility!).

3. Your product is costing too much; customer can’t afford it

If you can show that the product you are selling will produce or save for the buyer more than it costs, your prospect can’t afford to be without it. Two classes of buyers raise this objection. In one class are those of whom it is true or for whose purposes a cheaper product will serve as well. In the other class are those who desire to put the salesperson off or whose experience has not been sufficient to enable them to know that the best is the cheapest in service and satisfaction.
To those in the former class you should make no further effort to sell. For those in the latter class you have a message. The price paid for a product is forgotten, but the service secured from it and the satisfaction enjoyed while using it are what counts toward future trade and repeat orders.

4. The product offered is not needed.

In meeting this objection it is worth while to raise such questions as:

• Is what the prospect has the best solution for them?
• Does it do the work in the most economical way?
• Does it enable the owner to meet the competition of those who are better equipped?
• Does it make the best possible impression upon those with whom the owner comes in contact?
• Would continued use of the inferior product indicate a lack of progressiveness (or vision)?

5. The prospect has no time to discuss your proposal further.

This is a method often employed to get rid of you in the hope that you will not return. A courteous request for a future time will usually find available time at the present. Whnn the prospect realizes that you are not to be put off in that way, he will usually agree to hear immediately what you have to say.

6. Time to think it over.

In some cases this is bona fide, but in others it is only an excuse. You must judge between the two. If you decide that you are facing the manoeuvre or excuse, and your decision will probably lean in that direction as a rule, you should point out the disadvantages which are liable to arise by postponement, and the desirability of immediate action. If your products are satisfactory and desirable, if their ownership promises to be profitable, each day of postponement means so much loss to the buyer. Have you ever asked your customers - what is the impact of not making the decision today to buy? How much it cost you to stand still for next 60 or 90 days of postponing your decision?

Further reading:

• If you live by price - you will die by price
• How to win the deal without discounting
• Three Classes of Price Objections

Alen Majer - TSE Daily Interview

“Times are too hard, I cannot afford to buy anything“- how often have you heard that in the last few months?

So what to do when customers complain about the price?
Why is compromising on price such a bad idea?

How to win the deal and not even touch the topic of discounting of your product or service?

Listen to my interview with Top Sales Experts Daily:

Read more about Top Sales Experts here.

Objections to price are the most frequent of all objections. The ability to meet these successfully is a valuable asset, and efficient selling is impossible without it. It is so important that every sales manager should take special efforts to see that each member of his sales force is able to meet successfully price objections.

Price objections may be divided into three classes:

1. Those which are not meant by the customers from the point of view of value, but that the prices are higher than they can afford to pay. These customers desire a cheaper grade of products.
2. Those which are made solely for the sake of argument. Many customers think it is their duty to make many objections in the course of buying, and their most frequent objections are to price.
3. Those objections which are made with all sincerity. The customers object because they sincerely believe that the prices are too high for the products. They are sincere in their objections, and believe in what they are saying.

When an objection is made to price, you should be able to tell to which class it belongs. If the products are too expensive, you should be able to read this, and to judge what the customer is able and willing to pay.

Many salespersons cannot tell this kind of price objection, and continue with arguments to prove that the price is satisfactory from the point of view of quality. This is not the cause of the objection made, and the customer knows it.

If the customer can afford to pay the higher price, in a few cases you may be successful. If this is the case, you should know it, and continue the plan of sale with that in mind. On the other hand, if the customer cannot afford to pay the higher price, the sale is lost.

Great number of sales people are not able to distinguish between these two classes of customers, and they wonder why they are not more successful.

Let me give you an example.

Recently, I was shopping for a Valentine’s day present for my spouse in a big retail store where I witnessed a conversation among the customer and a saleswoman.

The saleswoman showed to a customer a nice dress with a higher price tag. The customer said the price was too high. The saleswoman thought that she meant that there was not a value in the dress priced higher. Arguments were used to prove that the price was not too high considering the quality of the dress.

The customer repeated that the price was too high, and added that she wished to see something less expensive.

The saleswoman even then did not understand the reason for the objection, and continued with arguments to show value. Eventually, the customer went out without buying. The saleswoman wondered why she did not make the sale.

If she had been able to read human nature, she could have told that the objection was because the price was higher than the customer could pay. This being the case, the sale under ordinary circumstances would have been made if a products of lesser value had been shown.

Next time when you hear a price objection from your prospects, try to understand to which class of this three this objection belongs and than try to handle it properly.