Tool Box
Issue No. 51 - February/March 2010
How to deal with price-buyers
With so much of today’s advertising being based around price - “We guarantee to beat any genuine quote by 10%!” - it’s little wonder customers sometimes think the price is the most important element of any buying decision. This doesn’t mean that there is no room for valuebased selling in today’s market. You just need to be savvy and do more things right.
If price buyers are a challenge to you in your business here are a few pointers that may help. Don’t assume every customer is a price buyer Some of your customers will be price buyers. Other customers will be value buyers. Value buyers are less concerned about price; more concerned about what they will get for the price they are being asked to pay. They want to know “What’s in it for me?” It’s the difference between, “How much is it?” and “What do I get?” If you assume all of your customers are price buyers you will mis-handle your value buyer customers. So, if you are going to make an assumption, assume your customers are value buyers until they show themselves to be otherwise.
It’s sometimes a game they play Sometimes a customer will offer the Price Objection in a playful attempt to get you to lower your price. They will say something like, “Your widgets are $200 more than XYZ’s” even though they haven’t checked XYZ’s prices and probably won’t.
A weak salesperson will immediately lower the price by $200 in an attempt to get the order. The point to get here is the customer would probably have paid the original price if the salesperson had stood his/her ground. The customer was bluffing!
Prepare a fall-back position This requires some homework. Take the trouble to identify the reasons, apart from price, why customers should deal with you and your business. Think about what your ‘package’ offers to prospective customers from their point of view. Remember, there are two aspects to your package; they are the benefits provided by your product plu...
