If you don't provide value, you'll lose to price.
At a recent seminar in Ontario, James Perly of Perly Consulting Group came up to me during a break and said, “I have a new closing method.”
I said, “Great! What is it?”
“We beat our customers over the head with a value stick until they close us, and ask us to buy. We don’t have brochures, and the whole meeting is about how exactly we would deliver massive value to the client, all done in a friendly, professional manner. We give the client a full strategic map of how they profit if we’re hired. They buy because they believe we are capable of implementing the plan we have offered.”
I smiled.
James continued, “At the end of our sales conversation we have provided our customers with so much value and perceived value that they ask questions like, “OK, what’s the next step?” or “How do we get started?”
NOTE WELL: This is a pretty interesting concept when you consider that 99 percent (and I may be a bit low on that number) of salespeople (you included) are trying to figure out some manipulative way of closing the sale or asking for the sale. Or worse, they’re wondering when the best time to close is.
Think about it. Is it more powerful for you to ask for the sale, or for the customer to want to buy? Is it more powerful for you to ask for the sale, or for the customer to ask, “When can we get started?”
Your big question at this moment is, “OK, how do I do that?”
But a bigger question is: Are you willing to jump off the product pitch and price comparison proposal horse and buggy, and onto the value rocket ship?
VALUE is a combination of what you offer that you perceive is in favor of the prospective customer, combined with what the prospective customer actually perceives is in his favor. Sometimes those are two very different perceptions.
What is your value proposition? Do you even have one? What are you saying to a prospect that goes beyond what you do and how you do it and what your product or service is, and how it works? Hard question. Harder answer.
BE AWARE: There are many key areas where value can be perceived. Here are some of them:
1. Ease of doing business with you or anyone in your company.
2. Ease of use after purchase.
3. Increase in productivity for the customer.
4. Availability of service when the customer needs it.
5. Boost in customer morale after product or service is installed.
6. Reasonably affordable and market price aligned. It’s NOT the cheapest, but rather, the best value.
7. Additional customer profit, not just savings. How does the customer really monetarily benefit from overall use?
8. Assurance to the customer, and perception by him, that there is a perfect fit.
9. Assurance that there is no risk in doing business or purchasing. Otherwise stated as “their peace of mind.” Total reduction or elimination of their perceived risk in doing business with you. Without this, the first nine points don’t matter.
10. Continued value messages to help the customer AFTER the purchase.
SALES REALITY: All prospects and customers want to know the same thing: What’s in it for me? How do I profit? And of course: How much is it? When these elements are part of an overall value presentation, you win.
If the customer needs it, wants it, and feels there’s a fit, he will compare perceived value with price.
When people make a decision to buy, they first look at the value and quality. How does this suit me, how does this feel, how comfortable with this (and this salesperson) am I? Or better stated: What is the fit?
Then they justify the price—or not. The decision to buy is made emotionally, and then justified logically.
Keep in mind that what I have just told you has nothing to do with your literature, your sales pitch, your sales techniques, or your product description. It has everything to do with how the customer perceives things will happen after they take ownership or after they get started.
PRICE REALITY: Don’t worry about a price objection—price is just a customer’s way of telling you that the value is lacking, or not evident. 
Return to Ingram's August 2010
Jeffrey Gitomer is author of The Little Red Book of Selling and The Little Red Book of Sales Answers.
P | 704.333.1112
E | salesman@gitomer.com