فصل 6

CHAPTER SIX

THE PRICE MYTH

IT’S ALMOST NEVER PRICE

If you were to survey all of the salespeople in the world, you’d find that most of them believe that the number one reason they lose a sale is price. This is absolutely not the case, and, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Price is not the buyer’s biggest concern. It’s actually at the bottom of the list of reasons why people don’t buy. Most sales are lost over unspoken objections—not the obvious and apparent objections like price, payments, or budgets, but the ones that the buyer doesn’t voice. Getting the sale isn’t about money; it’s ultimately about the buyer having confidence that the product is the right one.

If there is a price difference, the customer wants assurance that your product has advantages in excess of the cost difference.

THE PRICE EXPERIMENT

Most salespeople believe that if the price were lower they could sell more. But the truth is, they wouldn’t sell more because they haven’t correctly named the problem, and therefore they can’t get the correct solution. I once had a salesperson who said that if the price of my seminar tickets were lower he’d be able to sell twice as many. Even though I knew that what he was saying was bordering on idiotic, I practiced the first rule of selling—”Always agree with the customer”—and told him that I often wondered the same thing and, in fact, would be willing to test his theory.

So we offered a Grant Cardone seminar in Detroit with tickets at one-tenth of the normal price. Detroit has always been one of our best-attended seminar markets, and the person who made the suggestion about the price cut was thinking that we would have the biggest audience ever. There was only one stipulation to our deal to properly test out his little idea: He could sell the tickets only by sending out a marketing piece offering the seminar, the date, the price, the website address, and a phone number to call. He was not allowed to do a full sales presentation. The reality is, if you take the price that low you won’t be able to afford to do a presentation anyway.

That seminar had the lowest attendance of any I have given in twenty years. It didn’t even cover the cost of my airfare, and the salesperson’s commissions didn’t cover the cost of the mailers. I asked the audience why they thought so few people had come, and they said that they hadn’t thought I would actually be there in person; they had expected that the seminar would be a video feed of me. If the price gets too cheap, people won’t see any value in the product. Additionally, if price alone were the reason people buy, then the company wouldn’t really need salespeople and that would be a problem for 25 percent of the population.

Success will always take a professional salesperson who takes the time to sell features and benefits.

IT’S LOVE, NOT PRICE

After the experiment with the cheap tickets, I doubled the original ticket price, and attendance at my future seminars increased by more than 100 percent!

Price is almost never the issue for buyers, even when they say it is. More often than not, the real issue is love and confidence. Do I love this product? Because if I do, then I’ll pay whatever it takes. Is the buyer 100 percent confident that this product will get him what he wants? Will this service do the job? If the buyer is head over heels in love with the product and can’t live without it, he’ll buy it regardless of price, assuming he can find the money to pay for it. If the buyer has full confidence that the product will solve his problems and get him a real solution, he’ll buy it at almost any price. People will give their right arm for love, and they’ll give their last dollar for a real solution.

If you’ve ever lost someone then you know what I’m talking about. In that moment when you found out you’d lost someone special, you’d sell everything you had and go into debt for multiple lifetimes, just to have that person back in your life. Why? Love, baby—love!

You have to get your buyer to want your product more than he wants his money! He’s got to want the product or the solution more than he wants the numbers in his bank account. Discovering what he’s trying to accomplish and demonstrating how your product solves his problem is the essence of how you close the deal. Certainly there’s the issue of the product being out of someone’s price range, but that’s the point I’m trying to drive home. If they really love it and it will really solve their problems, they’ll figure out a way to come up with the money.

You can’t put a price tag on someone or something that you really love. And if you’ve ever had a serious problem in life, money was no longer your concern. Getting rid of the problem was. Give ‘em love, solve a problem, and you will get the money.

If the customer can afford the product or service but isn’t buying and is harping on the money, it always means that he has other concerns that must be handled. If he were completely sold, price would not be the issue.

While your prospect may be verbally objecting to price, other thoughts are most likely going through his mind: Is this the right product? Is there a better product than this? Is this the right proposal? Will this truly solve our problems? Will my people use it? What will others think of me buying this? Is this something I am going to really use and enjoy? Will this company really take care of me and service us? Am I better off buying something else? Will something better come out next week? Do I know enough? Do we have all the information? Should we get an “X” instead? Should I join the country club? Am I better off with the money in the bank than investing it? Is this going to be a mistake like past decisions?

If these considerations are handled to the buyer’s satisfaction, price will no longer be the issue. The product or service that you’re selling will obviously create different concerns for the decision maker, but trust me, regardless of what it is you have, it almost never comes down to just price. To the degree that you understand this, you will be successful.

Let’s say a guy is buying a birthday present for the love of his life. He finds something he thinks his girl will love, but tells the salesperson that it costs more than he would like to spend. What he’s actually saying is that he isn’t completely sold on the product being the perfect gift for her. He either doesn’t love it himself or he’s not sure that it’s something she will love. This product is not yet making him feel good enough or certain enough to pull the trigger and buy the gift. In this case, I would acknowledge him, tell him I understand that it is more than he wants to spend, but ask him for the opportunity to actually show him something a bit more expensive just for fun. He said it was too much—he didn’t say he didn’t like it and he didn’t say he couldn’t do it! Also consider that when he said it was too much, he could mean that it was too much for that product, rather than that he couldn’t do it. Maybe, just maybe, he’d rather spend extra money and get a gift he loves more.

MOVE UP, DON’T MOVE DOWN

Most salespeople make the mistake of offering something for a lower price when faced with price objections. This is an incorrect solution based on the false belief that price is the reason people don’t buy things.

When you move the customer down in price or offer him something cheaper, he’s less likely to want that next product if he didn’t want the first one. This will cause the buyer to think that you have no solution and that he’s just wasting his time. By moving him up rather than down in inventory, you’ll get him thinking in terms of value, and you’ll find out whether his objection is valid or not.

If he believes that his girl will love the gift and he really wants to make her happy, then showing him something more expensive will actually get you closer to a sale. Remember, he wants to make good decisions. At this point he’ll either demonstrate that the first product was the wrong choice by the simple fact that he’s now looking at the more expensive option, or he’ll tell you that he needs to move in the other direction with something that costs less. Either way, you’ve now got him shopping with you, not negotiating with you. You could even show him a completely different line or product with the knowledge that you could always move back to the original. You want to exhaust your inventory, not your price!

I remember a customer who once told me that my product cost too much money and I was unable to close him. He left me and bought a product for $150,000 more from my competitor. When he said it was too much money, he was really saying it was too much for the solution I was offering. You will discover that as many price objections will be solved with more expensive solutions as are solved with lower prices.

When I can’t close a sale, I’ll always try to move the buyer up to a bigger or more expensive product as the first solution to price objection. Although this might not make immediate sense to you, I assure you that it will prove successful. If the customer will at least consider it, I know I’m on a product that he still has questions about. This is called “closing with inventory.” I’ve had thousands of customers tell me that it’s either too much money or that it’s over the budget, or they get that uncomfortable money look on their face during the close. I’ll immediately move that buyer up to a more expensive product. Why? Because they’re telling me that it’s too much money for that product or service or that they’re not sure it will resolve their problem. The buyer would rather pay more and make the right decision than pay less and make a mistake.

Every consumer has made mistakes before, and this is the number one reason why they hesitate to make decisions. It is the fear of repeating a mistake; it is not the fear of spending the money. It’s the angst about making the wrong choice or buying the wrong product or making a decision that doesn’t create the solution they were looking for more than it is price.

Always show your buyers how they can spend more as a solution to price—this will determine whether or not you’re dealing with a real price objection. The worst outcome is that the more expensive product will make the one they’re looking at seem more accessible, which will actually build value and substantiate the price. Never buy into the talk of the mediocre salespeople around you who believe that price is the most important issue or who promote the idea that if the price were lower they could sell more! Just look at their results and then disregard their advice.

One time a charity asked me if I would help out with some fund-raising. The members told me about this one prospect who had the wherewithal to make a sizable donation and was supportive of the charity, but they were having trouble getting him to make a financial contribution. They’d been working on him for a year and hadn’t gotten a penny. I asked them how much they’d been trying to get him to donate and discovered that they’d been asking for $10,000. I suggested that they might have been asking him for too little. Maybe this prospect didn’t like making small contributions and that it might be easier to get a larger one.

One woman looked at me with disbelief and said that this man was one of the cheapest people she’d ever tried to get a contribution from. So I took the prospect aside and in ten minutes had him closed to contribute ten times what they’d been trying to get for a year. He wasn’t cheap by any means except in the mind of the fund-raiser. In fact, he was one of the most generous people I’d ever met. He told me that he hadn’t contributed anything to the charity in the past because he didn’t feel that $10,000 would really make a difference. All I did was ask him for the right amount, the amount that he believed would make a difference! The higher contribution actually solved his problem.

Tip: Your prospect is never the problem—never! Salespeople, not the prospect, are the ultimate barriers to every sale.

SALESPEOPLE, NOT CUSTOMERS, STOP SALES

You have to get this into your head: Price is not your problem—you are your problem! Customers do not stop sales. It is salespeople who stop sales from happening. You, not the customer, are the barrier to the closed deal.

Give the prospect a product that he loves or a service that solves his problem and you’ll get the close once he has full confidence in the product or service and you.

There will be times when you’ll have to handle the buyer on money. Sometimes I remind a person, “While I agree it’s a lot of money for a gift, there’s no shortage of money on this planet. But there is a shortage of people who’ve found the love of their life and who know how to show their appreciation for that person. Be grateful you’ve got someone to love. Now, how would you like to handle this?” Now that’s selling! If the buyer is totally convinced it’s right, he will chew off his own foot to have it!

If the buyer who’s saying it’s too much money found out that he had a disease and was going to die, but this product would save his life, what would he do? He’d find the money, buy the product, and save his life. Why? Because he’s completely sold on the need! If the need is important enough and he has confidence in the cure, if the love is great enough, price will not be an issue.

When buying a house, for instance, the unspoken objections that the realtor won’t hear will be, “Is this the right house? Is this the place that’s going to fulfill our needs? Will we be happy here? Is this going to be a good investment? Do I really love this place? Can we do better? If we’re going to spend this much money, why don’t we spend a little more and get our dream house?” The last one—let’s spend more money—describes about 50 percent of all buyers who are concerned with price. The same buyers who use price as an objection will often go out and spend even more money, not less! Remember, many times when a buyer says, “It’s too much money,” what he’s really saying is, “It’s too much for this product”!

Remember the story about a house I sold for 50 percent more than the realtor said it could possibly bring? When the buyer came to the house, I knew she loved it the moment she walked in. Later she insisted on having an appraisal done because her manager said she was paying too much. I explained to the buyer that while I understood she wanted an appraisal, it would be a waste of money because the house wouldn’t be appraised for the price she was paying. I told her that the house was overpriced and because of that it wouldn’t appraise. I went on to tell her that I’d paid too much for the house when I bought it, that the people before me paid too much when they bought it, and that the next people after her were going to pay too much for it. Because of the location, it had always sold for more than it appraised for and everyone would always overpay for it. The buyer decided not to have an appraisal done and bought the house. She lived there about a year and a half and sold it to the next people for too much money. It’s never about price; it’s about love or confidence that the product will solve problems.

$4 COFFEE AND $2 WATER

To be an effective salesperson, you have to believe in human beings. You have to have a positive outlook about people. You have to believe that people are good and that they want to make the right decision. Your buyers are just like you—they spend money they don’t have, they go over budget, they work hard for their money, they’ve made good decisions and they’ve made bad decisions. Like you, they want to avoid bad decisions and make good ones. People want to feel good about themselves and their decisions.

If you’re selling a service to a business owner, he wants to know that he did the right thing for his business and that what he paid for is going to make a difference for his company. If you’re selling a product, consumers want to have certainty that they’ll be happy with it and that when they use it they’re going to feel good, look good, and be admired by others because of the choice they made.

If people don’t buy from you, I assure you it’s almost never about the money or the budget, but about something you didn’t uncover. If it were all about price, please explain to me why people stand in line for a $4 cup of coffee when they could make an entire pot at home for almost nothing. Explain why people spend $2 on a bottle of water when they could simply get water from the tap for free. Explain why someone spends thousands of dollars on season tickets to the ball game when they could watch it on television. Explain why someone would go out and buy a sports car when they could take the subway to work and arrive there in half the time. Explain why you bring your kid to a professional when he cuts himself rather than stitching him up yourself! Love, baby—love!

Consider how many times you’ve paid more than you could afford and you loved it! Consider how many times in your life you went over budget because you found something that you weren’t even looking for and decided to buy it on impulse.

Remember, it’s almost never about price.