Sales Mistake No 7: Allowing price to dominate the sales dynamic

If your salesforce is telling you that it’s “all about price”, that they need access to heavier discounts, at best they’re negotiating, at worst, they’re simply price taking. When sellers allow buyers to move the focus of the discussion into this territory they are setting themselves up for a margin destroying exercise. Are your margins increasing, or are they decreasing?

Of course price is important, it is an essential part of the value equation, though businesses that want to sustain a marketing strategy based on being the lowest cost provider, had better actually be the lowest cost producer. Selling on the basis of value, is for most UK based businesses, the only sustainable sales strategy. Sellers need to be constantly reminded how important this is, and they need to be equipped so that they are technically competent to perform in this way.

At it’s simplest. Value = Benefit – Sacrifice. Put another way, it’s the balance between what you get, set against what it will cost for you to get it. Value selling starts with a complete understanding of the customer value proposition. Do your sellers know precisely what it is about your product or service that your buyer values? Do they know how to communicate this in benefit-laden language? How are you supporting your sales activity through communicating particular value components to your customers in your sales and marketing message?

We frequently work with businesses where sellers have lost all sense of their value proposition, and where the selling focus has become exclusively about price. We often run customer value proposition workshops, sometimes at sales meetings, to start the process of learning about value selling. If you haven’t run an exercise like this recently, I strongly recommend you consider it (and yes, of course, we can help you run them).

If it’s all about pricing, what do you need a “sales” force for?