Price - the five letter word that salespeople love and hate. Sometimes we use it as the deal clincher and sometimes it's the last resort. The common mistake we see salespeople and entrepreneurs make, is to drop the price when a prospective customer has apprehension about closing the sale.
My suggestion? Focus on the Process and the Output.
When speaking with prospects, you invest so much time convincing your prospect of the value of your product and service - WHY erode that built up trust in your value, with a price cut?
These days most of us are competing in markets where the client has plenty of options when it comes to a vendor or service provider. When it comes to information clients do their homework - they research, they seek the opinions of their peers and even their competitors. They visit your company website, where almost ever business advertises their product solutions, marquis customers and portfolio to establish rapport. It definitely helps to showcase your successes, but this is the thing: Your prospective client doesn't care that you helped someone else succeed - they want to be certain you can deliver even more for them.
Throughout your sales journey with a potential customer you need to constantly reassure them how your product/solution is going to solve their business problem and more importantly how you are going to get them there. Speaking about your process is an opportunity for you to showcase your firm's talent and educate them about how you will create value for them.
It's not just about price transparency, being transparent about your process builds trust.
When you focus on speaking about your process with a client, you make the conversation about them, it's a personalized way to draw out the map and milestones to success, a map with you in it. Your conversations can help the buyer envision a future where you both are working together with phrases like: "We will work with you.." and"Once we start..and at this stage we will.."
Speaking about your process can differentiate you from a competitor offering a similar product or service. You can literally distract them from the price and it also allows you to probe for potential opportunities to discover other key criteria for making a decision.
Design agency IDEO has basically institutionalized the above design-thinking process as the approach for any client engagement. It's been so successful that many of the world's top companies, like IBM have adopted it as well.
Your process shouldn't be a secret, it should be something you openly share with clients as a competitive advantage. After all, you have assembled a team of talented individuals who know the market, you have invested significant time and resources to build and provide your product or service - you have insights the client doesn't and your process is a way to justify the value of what you are charging them for access.
Your potential customer expects results - so paint a picture for them of the output.
If process is the journey, then the output you deliver to your customers is the destination. Often we see passionate entrepreneurs and salespeople get caught up in repeating the same features and benefits of their offering to prospects - this is a mistake, every customer wants to feel different, unique from their competition. Although it maybe difficult for you to guarantee a 100% success, you need to be able to set expectations early with a potential buyer that you will deliver with sale - more importantly you need to specify what success will look like for them.
This is where speaking with prospective buyers about your process comes in handy, through your conversations you should be able to discover what key indicators, metrics or problems they are looking to hit by buying your solution. Are they looking to control costs, save time, increase efficiency - What will tomorrow look like once they sign on? These are the expectations you need to set and paint a picture of. Again by making the conversation about them and the output of your collaboration, you personalize the benefits of your offering and justify the premium you are charging them for that output.
Focus your sales conversations around the process of working with the prospect and the output that will come of it. It will reinforce your potential customer's world view and deflect the conversation away from the price you are charging, because they will have a deep understanding of the value of what you are selling.