Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We’re now in full swing for the holidays…and holiday parties. But before you begin celebrating the holidays, I wanted to have a quick chat about how you can close-out your sales targets with a bang. It all starts by not blindly sending your clients price sheets. Yup, a price sheet, a little innocuous tool that can be the death of your sales strategy. Let’s sleigh in!
Ten Words I Hate
“Can you send me your price sheet, we’ll call you.”
Allow me to explain my distain with a caveat, if you are a company that sells only on price, then I guess this approach is fine. However, if you are a sales person for a large company or provide professional services like accounting, real estate or insurance, then you have to sell value to get the job or business (if we are being honest here, everything is about value). There can be no two ways about it. In fact, even if you are the former, I’d still tell you a discussion with your clients on prices is always the more refined approach. However, a price sheet for professional service jobs can never truly speak to the value of the products or services you are offering.
You Can’t Sell Value with a Price Sheet
I compare sales professionals blindly sending out pricing lists as tantamount to a person mass emailing resumes when job hunting. It is never a one fits all approach when it comes to practicing good sales etiquette. The truth is,
“A sales person who takes the easy route when pitching sales prices will most likely not get the job without the face to face meeting.”
Strong salesmanship requires a potent mix of relationship building, trust establishment and a personalized pitch. Let me use another real life example to build more context. A friend of mine spent over twelve months searching for a new job and could not get any promising callbacks. Let’s breakdown the reason for his failure to launch. Could it be a bad market? No. Hmm…Could it be a bad resume? No…Again. Huh, okay. It has to be not enough experience, right? Nope, nerp, and dramatically shakes head. You see, it was his approach, or lack thereof, that reaped him the same level of effort he put in. He simply emailed out his resume – en masse – to various companies. We already know the outcome, he batted zero with getting any solid interviews.
Personalization Creates Value to Your Product, not Price Sheets
You see, doing the bare minimum- especially in competitive situations- be it seeking a new job or making the sales price, will put you at the back of the line.
“With little effort or risk, comes little results. This is true in life and it is true in business.”
As sales professionals we must be willing to go the extra mile to get that appointment for that all important conversation. Doing so shows that we value our product and want to earn the right to that business relationship.
Your Take Away Regarding Those Pesky Price Sheets
Here are some key facts I want you to take away :
- If we can’t sell the value of our time, we have no chance in selling the value of our service or products.
- In the absence of value there is only price and price can be beat.
- Get in front of your prospects and clients and show them the value they are buying.
Okay, now you only have a few more weeks to knock those sales targets out the park this year. What are you waiting for? Take this advice and run with it!
Want to gain more helpful sales tips? Check out my books, The Sales Professionals Playbook, The Sales Leaders Playbook and The Sales Leaders Game Plan. I also love interacting with my audience, so feel free to book me for your next sales motivational session.
