Tale of The Sale:
Sammy Sales sells a high-end custom software that helps companies with payroll and HR services. His price point is close to double many of his competitors in his space. He is aware of this and smiles when he thinks about it.
Sammy has a meeting a medium sized business in the Midwest today. His contact gave him a meeting but also gave him a heads up that her boss already met with two other companies and believes one of them is the front runner. Their price was right on budget and from what she heard, “the product will do”. Sammy is excited about this meeting. He can’t wait to show them his much higher priced product even knowing what he knows.
The meeting starts and Sammy spends a few minutes chatting and making small talk as they all make a coffee in the company break room. They move over to the conference room and start to get down to business.
Sammy says the following…
“Before we get into it, I want to let you know that our product line is probably almost double the investment of the other companies you met with.”
Sammy’s contact and her boss just looked at him a little confused but before they could say anything Sammy started to explain why. Within his explanation he raised the eyebrows of his prospects several times. Those eyebrow raises were all moments where Sammy brought new information to light exposing some of the weaknesses and potential problems with the prior companies. He didn’t once ever mention the other companies or even make any comparisons. He simply explained his own product in a way where it was clear he understood their industry and their pain points much better than the previous companies did. He also forced the prospects to think about a few things that were overlooked and presented a risk down the line if not addressed correctly. The lower price offering was not capable of preventing these future issues and both Sammy and the prospects knew this without having to say a word.
Sammy got an email a week later with an invite to come back in to talk about more details. The day after that meeting he received paperwork and requests to get set up with this new prospect officially and had a signed agreement that afternoon, at almost double the price and almost double the original budget.
Lesson From This Tale of The Sale:
Sammy won this business for two reasons. First off, he was incredibly refreshing and differentiated himself off the bat. He is probably one of the few salespeople who looked the prospects right in the eye and proudly let them know his price point was double that of his competition. This immediately made Sammy different and got their attention along with making them curious.
The second and more impactful thing that comment did was set him up to explain why his price was so high. In doing so he was able to make the prospects think about the overall outcome vs just the cost. Sammy exposed several risks and shortfalls of the lower cost product without even talking about the other companies. When your price is higher, there are reasons. Those reasons need to be important enough to the prospect that they can justify the price difference vs the value gap. Its YOUR job as the professional salesperson to find out what those attributes are and learn to explain them in a simple and confident way with business acumen. If you can do that, you win at a higher more profitable price point.
Embrace your higher price, it sets you apart and allows you to sell on value vs price! Those closes and customers are ones you will have for a long time!
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