...Try Shutting Up!
Do you ever feel like youíre falling back on price a little too early? Leaving too much money on the table? You may be able to stop ìgiving it awayî by simply shutting-up (pardon my candor).
A coaching client came to me last week agonizing over what he should charge for his services. Since we had already analyzed this issue and had established what would be an appropriate fee structure for his business, I was surprised that the topic was coming up, again. He claimed that while he believed that the new higher fees were a bargain for his customers from a return on investment standpoint, and that he felt strongly that his previous customers had gotten way more than they had paid for, we were talking about his rates, again. It was sounding to me that while he had rationalized his prices intellectually, he couldn't bring himself to believe in them when in the heat of a sales call. And sure enough, although he had taken on several new customers, he had not been able to sign any new clients at the new higher rates.
When debriefing him on his last call I discovered he had made a selling mistake that is commonly made on painful sales calls; he was jumping too soon to the rescue of a client who was merely thinking out loud. I know it's hard to believe, but many sales people talk a little too much for their own good, and answer ìunaskedî questions. When a prospect makes a statement, the salesperson hears a question in the statement, and attempts to answer it, which is usually not in their best interest. For example, the prospect says, ìYour price is a bit more than we expected,î and the salesperson replies, ìLet me see if I can shave a few bucks off of it.î Why do salespeople respond this way? Because when they hear a surprised reaction to the price, they begin to doubt the legitimacy of their pricing (like my coaching client) and make the assumption that the prospect is really asking: ìCan you lower your price?î
Before responding to the prospectís statement, itís important to ask a question to first determine why the prospect made the statement. Rather than offering to ìshave a few bucks,î a good response might be; ìNow, youíre telling me that for a reason,î or, simply to ask, ìWhich means?î Or maybe the best response is no response; just let the client think out loud for a moment. Itís surprising how often that the intent of this kind of statement is not to obtain a lower price, but only to say out loud that theyíll have to adjust their budget to go with your product or service. They may simply be going over in their mind what other funds are available in other ìbucketsî in their budget that they can ìstealî from, or whom else theyíll have to get buy-in from to free up the funds so that they can make payment for your stuff.
Itís sometimes easy to avoid ìleaving money on the tableîÖ just stop answering ìunaskedî questionsÖ try shutting up!