Desire Crushes Price Objections

The most common response from sales managers, senior executives, and most sales trainers when a client or prospect tries to negotiate price is “Did you sell the value?”

“Don’t they understand our value?” “Make sure you sell the value.”

“Selling the value” is drummed into our sales heads much like “Eat your vegetables” was when we were growing up.

But, by doing that, are we focusing on the wrong thing?

After all, value isn’t some set of talking points. It’s not even a laundry list of differentiating product or service features.

Value has always been in the eye of the beholder. It’s personal.

Yes, we can try to make it more visible to the client, but in the end, they’re the ones that have to see it, believe it and feel it. Once they get that feeling desire for it increases.

Massive desire should be our aim. Better explaining our value isn’t the goal. It’s just a step in the process to building massive desire.

It’s a subtle but important difference.

Massive desire is what causes a stakeholder to champion our cause. Massive desire is what leads a stakeholder to give us inside information (coaching) to help us win. And, massive desire is what causes price objections to become token, half-hearted attempts to get a better deal, and not a deal breakers.

Massive desire will crowd out their will to get a better price.

Here’s an example outside the tech world:

A few years ago I decided to sell a lake lot I owned in northern Wisconsin. I bought it when the owner of a resort we frequented as a family decided to convert the 11 rental cabins to condos and then opened up 5 rustic lots. Owners of the other 4 built new cabins on them but we had not.

A guy who’d been bringing his family there on vacation found out I was thinking about selling. He offered $15K less than my asking price. I pushed back with scarcity and a few other “value statements”. A split second later he told me he was going to buy the lot so whatever I could do on price would be appreciated.

I knocked $2K off my asking price, the exact amount I negotiated years before from the original resort owner. He happily accepted. I could have held firm on my list price and he would have bought. His desire was that strong. But, I also believe in fairness and letting the other side feel they’ve won in a negotiation. (After all, the business course I teach is called “All-Win Negotiating”!)

Strong desire creates weak price objections.

Try this: Start looking at price objections through the lens of desire. Is the objection a strong one because desire is too low or just a token attempt because desire is so high?

And this: Focus on building desire. Build off the “hot buttons” and buying signals your client gives off. Build it so high that their “desire cup” runneth over.

See if that doesn’t make handling price objections much easier.

Good luck and have a great week!

Bob