If there’s one thing in this business (or just about any business for that matter) it is the concept that if price is your only competitive advantage…you’re dead before you begin.

When selling technology, you HAVE TO manage the only four resources available, to your advantage.

1. Information

This is anything to do with your product or service. Information can be shared verbally or in a written format such as email, word documents, white papers, etc.

2. Resources

This is one usually falls under the category of people. They could be people who are referenceable customers for you. They could be pre-sales engineers or implementation consultants or subject matter experts.

3. Price

This one should be self explanatory. However, I believe that price should be introduced at a very specific point in the sales cycle. Usually sales people make the mistake of sharing pricing information too soon. Unless you are selling a simple subscription based service that doesn’t change or require any add-ons to complete then price should not be shared immediately. Another time when price should not be shared is if you are a service provider or consulting organization where you need time to properly build a scope of work. In short, you should never share price until it is clear to you that the prospect understands the

4. Value of your offering

In the absence of value, you don’t have anywhere to go and the prospect will assess your offering on the lowest common demoninator: price. Learn how to help buyers understand your value and you will win more sales. More importantly, you will disqualify time wasting prospects sooner. This is because research shows time and again that if you go the distance in a sales cycle with a buyer who doesn’t undertand and believe in your value, they usualy don’t buy. Then you have wasted valuable time and effort. So you might as well use value as the litmus test as to whether or not you’ll proceed with the client.

Too much of this type of ‘price-based’ selling is deadly. It is deadly because soon you will be commoditized in the marketplace and competitors who know how to sell on value will land your customers…and that’s why I say ‘don’t rely on price - it’ll kill you.’

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Sales Managers, Sales Reps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.