You know, way too many business owners crumble under the tiniest bit of pressure when the customer raises a price objection, but price objections are really not a massive barrier to a sale, you just simply need to know how to handle them properly, and that’s what we will go through in this section.
IMPORTANT: When you have done your sales pitch and built the prospect up to fever pitch, you then state the price and shut up and wait.
Way too many business owners will start to talk themselves out of the price they quoted and will often reduce the price quickly, even after just a few seconds of silence, but resist that urge.
By forcing the prospect to say / do something in response to your quotation you are putting the ball into their court and ensuring they take some sort of action in order to proceed, even if it’s a negative reaction to your services. If it is negative, you then go into your ready prepared scripts.
The prospect will usually have been carried along on a tide of positive emotions about you and your product they will usually say go ahead, even before they have had time to engage the brain and actually thought about the price. After that, it is as simple as taking the payment there and then!
Just never forget that your pricing tells a story about the quality of your goods or services, and if you are targeting the right prospect in the first place, then price probably won’t be their #1 concern!
Ultimately, the best thing I ever did for my business was to make up a sales system that you can call upon and follow that will lead you to the right result, which will usually be the sale of your services, but not always.
What I mean by a sales system is this … say you want the end result to be a sale. You go through your system and all is well until you mention price when the customer raises an objection, so you then go smoothly into the price objection scripts that you have practised and polished so they just flow off your tongue.
Scripts and systems work hand in hand to get the right result for you.
It is essential you put together a sales system, including what to do when you reach a price objection.
Important: to avoid the majority of price objections in the first place it is essential you are targeting the right customer for your services. If you want to reduce the number of price objections you get, you will get far less price objections if you are targeting the right customer in your marketing. If you find yourself getting a huge amount of price objections, it is likely you are appealing to those customers that cannot reasonably afford your goods or services in the first place.
So targeting the right customer with your marketing is essential to ensure you don’t waste your time or energy trying to sell to someone who will never buy from you, because the wrong customers, which in this scenario are those that cannot afford your services, will give you nothing but price objections.
Now, when you go out for a quote it is essential that you leave the price as the last thing you discuss, because before you get to that stage you want to load the sales presentation with tons of benefits, and clearly demonstrate the value your product or services offers to the customer.
You must always remember that you are selling based on benefits and value not price.
If YOU make the focus of the sales presentation the issue of price, that is what the customer will focus on too, but if you focus on the benefits and value your goods or services offer, then that is what the prospect will focus on.
- So you have targeted the right customer and loaded the sales presentation with tons of benefits and value. But, you will still sometimes get a price objection.
So, when you get a price objection, there is no point getting all huffy and annoyed, it just means that the prospect is not yet warmed enough to your offerings.
Here are 14 ways to tackle a price objection that just work brilliantly! You should adapt them to your use and learn them off by heart and practice them until they flow off your tongue.
1) Start to re-warm the prospect – A great place to start the re-warming process is by rewinding the meeting a little and reiterating the benefits and value of your services
2) Advise her of the consequence of not choosing you – as a carpet cleaner these could be trade cowboys, shrinking carpets, dye bleed, bait ‘n’ switch tactics, “splash n dash,” carpets left soaking taking days to dry etc etc
3) Help the prospect realise the damage inferior alternatives can cause – helping her realise how a cheaper service will be much more inferior to the one you sell and would not provide the value that your goods provide.
4) Emphasise your quality – Back up your statements up with stories, pictures and testimonials of people who have been thrilled with your goods or services. This demonstrates how your services will actually perform better than a cheaper, more inferior product.
5) Show your customer – A great way to do this is with pictures of your work taken on your smart phone.
6) Try the “feel, felt, found” method – This means you say something like this to the customer … “I know how you feel. Others have felt the same way. However, we found that … ” and then lead on to a series of benefits the customers have found by choosing you. This is especially powerful if you back it up with a testimonial from a customer who backs you up on that very point!
7) Make the purchase emotional – I speak quite often on the website and other places about some sun glasses I bought that were very expensive and how I rationalised this purchase by thinking how much money it would save me in the long run by not having to buy a new pair of sun glasses every year. For me there was a huge amount of emotion in the purchase, and I wanted greater value from my purchase and I believe I got it with these expensive sun glasses because I wouldn’t have to buy a couple of cheap pairs every year.
8) Check price is actually the main objection – Prospects may raise a price objection at any time throughout a sales presentation, although the customer may state she has a price objection when they are really objecting to something else. If this is the case, your job is to work out if their price objection is just masking something else, or if the objection is actually real to the customer. A great way to see if this really is the objection or if this objection is masking something else would be to ask something like “if we can do something on the price would you be happy to proceed?” This then put the ball in the customer’s court and she then has to decide if price actually is the main issue or if there is another issue she will need to tell you about.
9) Break it down – Another great way to handle the price objection is to break down the costs into a daily amount that is easier to sell. For example, if I am asking for £300 from the customer for a lounge / diner area, they may well cough and gasp. However if it is like broken down into a much smaller amount then it will seem a lot more palatable. Here’s what you would say … “So, madam, your quote is £300, or well under £1 a day to keep your carpets fresh and healthy, and extend their life by over a third. What are your thoughts on that?” Note how I added benefits in the statement while I was stating the price; her carpets would be lovely and fresh and healthy, and extend their carpets’ life by a third.” If I am performing all those benefits, all of a sudden the price seems much more reasonable doesn’t it?
10) Ask the question – if you receive any sort of price objection, ask your prospect how far wide of the mark you are in comparison to the price they expected. You do need to find out if you and the prospect are on the same page (or even in the same book) so it is really important to ask how far off the mark you are.
11) A great way of wording your response to a price objection to see how close you are price wise is using something like the words “OK, so what do you see as a fair way forward?” Putting in the word “fair” in the question means the customer will usually be discouraged from stating a stupid price just to see how low she can push you on the price.
12) Remember that the price is rarely totally fixed, nor are the offers you can give away to the customer to get the sale. If at all possible, it is usually better to NOT lower your price but add extra value to the transaction instead.
13) Know your costs – Be creative with your offers or giveaways when you get a price objection and make sure you know your numbers. A little, low cost nudge is often all that is needed to ensure the deal still goes ahead!
14) An awesome sales technique to help you sell more for a higher price is to get to the prospect into a pattern where she gets into a habit of saying “yes.”
Then, when you deliver the price, it is quite difficult to go from saying “yes” often to then go and say “no.”
For example, if I was selling a carpet and the customer had chosen the carpet and colour, I could go through a final check list …
“OK, can we just confirm what we have spoken about today please?”
“yes”
“so you like Sacremento range”
“yes”
“colour 932?”
“yes”
“you wanted underlay and 2 new silver door bars”
“yes”
“And you wanted the standard 10mm underlay?”
“yes”
“OK and you wanted us to dispose of your old carpet and provide someone to move all the furniture for you”
“yes”
“finally you said a Friday morning is the best day for fitting … is that correct?”
“yes”
You would then go into one of your closes and here the “presumptive close” would work well.
“OK, so based on what we have agreed here, for all your home to be carpeted in Sacremento and with everything we have spoken about, the total is £1500. OK?”
Can you see how difficult it would be, now you have got her into a pattern of saying “YES,” for her then to say “NO” ? Now, I know this sounds like we are being forceful, and using mind trickery to get a sale, but we really are not.
Remember our job is to match the right product to the customer’s needs and to treat the customer fairly, and as long as we have done that, then our job is to sell.