High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price

By Mark Hunter

This book teaches salespeople to rethink their approach to sales goals--so they not only sell a greater quantity but sell with the bottom line in mind.

In the high-pressure quest to make a sale, acquire a contract, and beat out other bidders, sales professionals frequently resort to short-term strategies like cutting prices, offering discounts, or making other concessions. By explaining how short-term strategies are destructive to the long-term sustainability of a business, High-Profit Selling helps salespeople instead focus their energy on “profit sales” that successfully execute product price increases while maintaining and strengthening current customer relationships.

In this invaluable resource, you’ll learn:

• how to avoid negotiating, actively listen to customers,
• match the benefits of products or services with customers’ needs and pains,
• confidently communicate value,
• and ensure prospects are serious and not shopping for price.

Too many salespeople believe that a sale at any price is better than no sale at all. High-Profit Selling teaches them to do away with this logic and instead make sales that satisfy and add value to both the client and company.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9780814420102

Book preview

Introduction

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve been amazed at the number of times salespeople have asked me how they can avoid lowering a price to close a deal. As many times as I’ve been asked, I know there are hundreds more salespeople wondering the same thing. The tactic of giving someone a lower price as an incentive to close a deal is certainly not new. It has been going on for as long as there have been people looking to sell something to someone else. What astounds me, though, is that cutting prices to close a deal seems to happen regardless of whether the item is staggeringly expensive or supercheap. Customers want a deal, and too many salespeople are more than willing to give that deal, regardless of the negative consequences.

But will the customer buy if the price isn’t lowered? This is a vital piece of information to have if you want to close the deal. Unfortunately, many salespeople don’t dig deep enough to find the answer. The end result is the salesperson simply resorts to lowering the price. When the salesperson gives in once on price, the sales process usually becomes a game where customers wait to see how low they can get the salesperson to go on price—and everything else. Profits continue to erode at an expanding rate until the damage is done (and even then, some salespeople still don’t realize the extent of the damage).

The purpose of this book is to show you how you can avoid cutting prices to close sales. I’ll even show you that instead of cutting prices, in many cases you actually can raise them! For some of you, this is an unheard-of concept because never has a week gone by in your selling career that didn’t involve lowering price, regardless of the impact on you or your company.

I am dedicated to showing salespeople how to avoid this habit of discounting. While it is definitely possible to stay firm on your price (and even raise it), I’m not saying it is easy. If you are looking for a couple of quick, easy steps, this book isn’t for you. If, however, you want to make solid changes in your sales process that will lead to high-profit selling, then you have arrived at the right place. I will walk you through each phase of the selling process, from finding the right prospects to closing the sale. You will learn the techniques and ideas that you can best adapt for your situation and industry.

The core of the problem rarely is a customer who is not willing to pay. Rather, I believe the problem begins with salespeople who do not believe in the price they are asking. If the salesperson does not believe in the price, then there is no way the customer will ever choose to pay anything that is not discounted. Harboring internal doubts about price affects the salesperson’s ability to close sales and, more important, to ensure the profit margin.

In this book I’ll share personal stories—good and bad—about how I have dealt with issues on sales calls. The experiences cover a cross section of my more than twenty-five years as a salesperson and now as a consultant and speaker on sales and, particularly, on pricing. I think you will find that my stories are similar to situations you have already faced or are currently facing.

Many salespeople claim that price is one of the biggest issues they confront when closing a sale. To me, it’s debatable whether price is genuinely a big issue or simply something we have come to believe is a big issue. I devote considerable time in this book to helping you determine whether price is the real, underlying issue holding back a sale or if the customer is merely saying it is the issue. More important, I’ll show you how to respond to the customer and even how to avoid getting into situations where price becomes the central focus. It may surprise you, but when selling situations are consumed with discussion about price, it usually means the salesperson is dealing with the wrong type of customer. You want customers who are focused less on price and more on how your product or service meets their needs and delivers desired benefits.

High-profit selling is all about changing how you think. If you change how you think, you can then change how you deal with the customer. By changing how you deal with the customer, you can take control of the process and move yourself away from dependence on discounting to closing sales.

In all my years in the selling profession, I have seen countless techniques that customers use to try to get a salesperson to lower the price. I will walk you through the more prevalent situations, including how to handle professional buyers and requests for proposals. My goal is to offer you solid solutions for the problems you face. After reading this book, you’ll be better prepared to go into your next sales call without relying on discounting to actually close the sale. Finally, I’ll share with you the exact steps you need to take to avoid the many problems that can arise when a company attempts to increase its price.

High-profit selling sounds good, doesn’t it? It does to me! Let me show you that there is nothing wrong with high profits when they allow both you and the customer to win.

CHAPTER 1

You Are Hurting Your Profit

SOME PEOPLE PLACE THE BLAME for anything that goes wrong on someone or something else. This has become the norm today with far too many salespeople. They blame their inability to make the sale on everything except the fact that they are unable to present a compelling reason for customers to buy from them.

If you were to ask salespeople why they can’t close more sales, many of them would claim it is because their price is too high and simply more than what their customers want to spend. I’ve heard this excuse thousands of times. I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve seen marketing departments and sales executives get sucked into believing it. But in reality, price is only one of many factors that influence people or companies to buy. Even if you are in a business where you sell commodities, there are other issues, such as quantity, delivery time, shipping method, and payment terms, that influence the customer’s buying decision. Unfortunately, many salespeople have the tendency to turn this one element—price—into the only issue.

The business environment is tough. There are always outside factors beyond the control of the salesperson that can and will affect how customers behave. Whether the economy is up or down, it seems that customers are asking for a discount or saying they won’t pay the listed price. It’s time we slay the myth that selling revolves around price. I can dispel this false concept for you, both in your personal sales process and in your entire company, so that you can stop hurting your profit and actually start increasing it.

In this book, I’ll show you how to get the customer to accept your price. Beyond that, I’m also going to show you how to increase your price and have your customer thank you for charging more. Yes, you read that right! I’m going to help you to convince your customer that there’s a higher level of value reflected in the higher prices you are charging, which is representative of both you and what you are selling. You may be wondering if I’ve lost my mind. It’s okay to doubt me, because it means that once I show you and, more important, convince you that you can turn a higher price in your favor, you’ll embrace my recommendations even more.

Ask yourself:

Would I be a better salesperson if I could generate 20 percent more profit off the same amount of sales?

Now ask yourself:

If I could increase the value of what I’m selling in the eyes of my customer, how much more profit would that be worth to me?

Finally, ask yourself:

If all it took was 30 minutes a day to increase my overall sales performance by 30 percent, would it be worth it?

I bet I know how you’d answer each of these questions. The questions themselves are not tough to answer. The challenge is in figuring out how to proceed after you have answered them. You obviously care enough about improving your profitability to have bought this book, so I have no doubt that you want to do what it takes. I’m committed to helping you.

What Is This Book Worth to You?

Reread the previous paragraph and you’ll notice that I didn’t mention the price of this book. I pointed out the value of what you are going to get from it. I set up a scenario and got you to do some self-reflecting. By merely going through this exercise, you’ve begun to determine what the price/value relationship is for High-Profit Selling. Some of you may see the book as a tool for potentially unlocking $1 million in increased profitability for your company each year. Others may see a $50,000 annual opportunity, while still others may see only $1,000 per year. What would the value of this book be if the increase in profitability you gain from it occurs each year for the next ten years?

Regardless of the specific increase in profitability you may potentially realize, you have an expected benefit for the book—and this expected benefit plays immediately into the price you are willing to pay for it.

What if the price of the book could vary by an amount reflecting the full value of what somebody would gain from it? If that were possible, then some people would pay $20 while others would pay $20,000. Naturally, this is not possible. I use this example because I recognize that in some situations it’s not possible to vary the price or some other part of the price equation. These circumstances can make your role as a salesperson more difficult. However, the premise of this book is that you must find a way to increase profit whatever the situation.

To increase your profit you may have to find other ways to enable the customer to receive value, which means you need to have different strategies and tactics to help you through all situations. Throughout this book I’ll show you how to do just that.

To Maximize Profit, Change How You View Your Customers

You must be able to provide your customers with the services and/or products they want in a manner that allows you to maximize your profit. To that end, you have to change the way you view your customers. The solution lies in seeing each customer as having unique needs that require a unique solution from you. When you view your customers in this way, you will discover new opportunities to assist them and they in turn will be willing to pay more for these solutions.

Maximizing your profit also requires that you assess your service or product offerings to tailor them more effectively to what the customer wants. Don’t worry, I’m not proposing changes to your manufacturing or supply-chain systems. In the vast majority of selling situations, maximizing profit does not require any changes to your internal process. The changes you’ll need to make are to your selling process and how you deal with your customer. This is why I say high-profit selling is all about you. When you, the salesperson, take ownership of the complete selling process and the customer, it’s amazing what can and will happen.

It’s Time to Look in the Mirror

Throughout this book you’ll find countless proven methods for selling more effectively and successfully. But before you can begin to put even the first principle to work, you have to look in the mirror and assess yourself. Don’t look for others to be your key to success. More than anything else, it’s sales motivation that counts. The less sales motivation you have, the more profit is lost. Sales motivation is composed of your attitude and your confidence. You can have the greatest product in your industry or niche, you can have unbelievable advertising or fabulous marketing materials, but you can still lose sales if your attitude is poor and you lack confidence.

In my years as a sales consultant to corporations large and small around the globe, I’ve sat across the desk from many marketing and/or sales VPs and told them not to spend one more penny on advertising or marketing until they fix the problems with their sales force. I look them in the eye and say they must look closely at their team’s level of confidence in what they are doing and what they are selling. Yes, this critique has made for some tense situations, but I’m a firm believer in making sure that sales can handle what marketing will deliver.

The example I like to use is that there’s no sense in owning a Lamborghini if you don’t know how to drive it. You’ll never be able to fully appreciate its qualities unless you are skilled at driving a high-performance car. The same applies in sales. We all have the ability to communicate with customers, but do we all have the ability to truly sell? If you don’t possess the best selling skills, there’s no way you’ll ever be able to fully use the opportunities that marketing may give to you.

If you think I’m putting marketing on a pedestal, I assure you that’s not the case. I’ve been in sales for more than twenty-five years, and during that time I’ve grown skeptical of what the typical marketing department claims it can do. I believe that sales and marketing must work together cohesively if either is going to achieve its goals. Think of it this way: Sales and marketing are connected in a food chain. Marketing creates the food that sales eats. There’s no reason for marketing to create anything that sales can’t eat. At the same time, there’s no reason for sales to ask marketing to make anything that sales won’t eat.

Your Confidence Drives Your Attitude

Your level of confidence drives how much you believe in what you sell and how you deal with your customers. Unfortunately, too many salespeople lack complete confidence in what they sell and, therefore, in the price they are expected to charge. Why? The simple fact is that the vast majority of salespeople are not willing to take personal responsibility for failing to close more sales.

If we were to believe that the reason salespeople are not more successful is simply because of pricing, then all we’d have to do to solve the problem is lower the price we ask for our goods or services. The problem with this line of thinking is that no matter how much you lower your price, you are almost always cutting your profits by a percentage far greater than the percentage of the price reduction. Salespeople often fail to realize the damage they are doing to themselves, and to their business, by thinking they can close more sales by taking this price-cutting approach.

The other problem with lowering the price to close more sales is that there’s no guarantee the competition won’t do the same thing. And what’s to say the customer isn’t going to continue to demand further price reductions? Either way, you lose. What’s the point of selling anything if you are unable to make any money from the sale? This is why you must establish, in the mind of your customers, the value they will receive at the price you offer.

The level of confidence you must have is not just in the product or service you are selling, but also in the price you are asking. Let’s dig into this idea by using a comparison of two companies and the different ways in which they determine the price they ask for the same item.

Can a Company Asking a Higher Price Really Win?

Here’s an example I frequently use when addressing sales organizations: One company, which we’ll call Ace, is struggling to grow, but the products it makes are very good. Ace is a smaller player in the marketplace and establishes its pricing based on what it costs to make the product. The company’s managers have done repeated analysis of their cost structure and know exactly what it costs to make their goods; therefore, they know exactly how to price them based on these costs.

A second company, which we’ll call Big, is a large, well-financed, multinational organization that produces the same item as Ace. But Big does not price its product based on what it costs to produce. Instead, Big bases the product’s price on the value its customers see in the product. The entire sales process is all about helping customers realize the value of what they are buying. More important, Big has excelled at showing customers how the product helps them deal with their critical needs.

By now you probably know where I’m going with this story. The company that is able to get a much higher price is Big. The real issue, though, is that the salespeople who work for Ace are nothing more than order takers who fail to maximize their relationships with their customers. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Big’s customers probably appreciate the relationship they have with Big more than Ace’s customers appreciate Ace. Big clearly is focused on helping its customers see how they are getting a superior value.

Are you beginning to grasp this vital concept? Value is what the customer believes it is, not what the salesperson thinks it is. In too many selling situations, you may be doing way too much thinking! That is, when you focus too much about how you define value, and you try to sell that idea of value to someone else, it can start knocking down your confidence. As your confidence gets knocked down, your attitude starts to suffer, and suddenly you are in a vicious downward spiral. A better approach is to allow your customers to define value for you.

Confidence—in yourself and in what you sell—is without a doubt the greatest single asset you can bring to both your customers and your profitability. Your challenge is my challenge, because I’m committed to helping you find ways to increase your level of confidence in the prices you offer. Note the last word in the previous sentence is offer not charge. Confident salespeople don’t charge anybody anything, so strike that word from your vocabulary from this point on. Rather, confident salespeople allow their customers to invest in, to participate in, and to benefit from their offerings. It doesn’t matter whether you sell in a business-to-business environment or a business-to-consumer environment. The principle is the same.

People Don’t Buy—They Only Invest

Customers don’t want to buy. They only want to invest in order to achieve something: to get some sort of gain or to relieve a pain. For example, a company may be looking to buy insurance to minimize the risk of theft or vandalism; this would be an investment to relieve a pain. The company is only going to invest enough money in buying insurance to offset what it sees as the risk. If the company believes the potential loss from theft (i.e., the pain the company would suffer) would not be very much, it might make the decision not to buy insurance. An example of a gain that a company might invest in would be buying a new piece of equipment to help operations run more efficiently. In both these cases, the company will invest if it can get a clear return on investment. Although the cost (price) is factored into the decision, it is really the return on that cost that is most important—so price is a secondary consideration.

While these examples involve businesses, the concept applies equally to individual customers. They are also looking to gain something or to relieve pain when they are contemplating making a purchase—or, should I say, looking to invest.

Confident salespeople help their customers succeed, and that’s exactly what you are doing when you sell something. For instance, I have a high degree of confidence in what I do as a consultative sales expert because I firmly believe I’m helping you and thousands of others achieve a higher level of profit from each sale.

An exercise I like to take salespeople through to help them develop their confidence is to ask them to write the top-five reasons customers buy from them. I then ask them to detail specifically what benefits their customers gain from the purchase. Do this exercise for yourself and keep your written answers someplace where you can refer to them regularly. Also, ask some of your loyal customers what benefits they are getting from buying from you. They might mention some things you haven’t thought of. The idea is to always have in the front of your mind the reasons customers prefer to do business with you rather than your competitors. If salespeople have no idea why their customers do business with them, it’s no wonder so many of them struggle with the issue of maximizing price!

Forget About Your Competition

Too much effort is lost worrying about what a competitor is charging. Forget about your competition. They are not you. It’s time for you to be proud of who you are. People who second-guess themselves are never going to excel. Would