Dear Ms. Marketing: Value vs. Selling
Dear Ms. Marketing: Value vs. Selling
Dear Ms Marketing: What is the difference between selling value and selling price?
First of all, find out what your customer wants. I don’t mean what you are selling but truly what your customer wants. If you are able to give your customer what they want, how important is the price? When you can provide value, price becomes less important.
Take for instance if you are selling your product and promise that your cases will be there on time every time and you don’t deliver that promise or value, than price once again will not matter. Your accounts would rather pay a higher price than to have their cases late.
When they have a patient and you haven’t delivered the case on time it makes them look bad and they lose respect with their customer which will in turn lose the account.
If you don’t believe that it is all about the relationship then you are never going to make a sale. Not everyone buys value. Thirty to forty, maybe in this market fifty percent, of all customers will choose by price. On the other hand, this means that sixty to seventy percent will by value, but you must provide this to them. Remember every time you take a nickel off the top, you subtract that same nickel off the bottom. The ones who always buy price will always be the ones that nickel and dime you to death.
Try not to force on the sale, force on the lifetime use of the product or the service.
Get your customer to visualize what their life will be like once they start using your laboratory. This will help them to understand and not focus so much on the cost. You have to once again show them the value of the money they are spending.
Some people will tell you that they don’t have room in their budget to make a change.
What these people are saying is that they are not the decision makers. You need to start at the top of the ladder if you are going to talk price and value. You can ask if they would rather have price or profit. If they say price remind them that price last for a moment but profit last a lifetime.
I always start my sales call with a smile and I listen to the gate keeper when he or she answers how their day is. I want to be friends and find out if my services can help their office. I may not always be the cheapest, but I try always to be the friendliest. Lets face it, a crown is a crown. We all have them, we all sell them. We have to set our self apart from all the other laboratories and being friendly can do it sometimes. Keep your eyes on the customer. The front office will even sometimes will tell stories about your competition.
So value and price are different. However, I think you have to have both to sell your product. Also remember that people like to do business with people that they like.
You go back to favorite restaurant because you like the way they treat you and you can see yourself at the end of a busy day at that restaurant. It is what you want. So as a customer, they know what you want and how to keep you coming back. This is what you have to do for your customers. Give them value and price will follow. They will almost always come back.
