How often do you think price is the major determining factor in a successful sale? The answer should be “rarely.” If you focus your message on making your prospect more competitive, more profitable, and more valuable, you will find fewer circumstances in which price becomes an issue.
Take iPhones and Apple computers, for example. Why do so many people buy these products? They’re more expensive than other smartphones and computers, and there are plenty of other fully featured products on the market. So why do people buy them? They buy them because they believe their cost is justified by the value. What is the value? It could be the user-friendly interface, longevity and reliability, design identity, a gestalt with which people identify, or any number of other factors.
In Escaping the Price-Driven Sale, Tom Snyder and Kevin Kearns address this phenomenon as they consider “The Unassailable Value Equation.” Here is the equation:
Value = Benefits – Cost
So what exactly are benefits and cost?
Benefits are by no means limited to classic benefits. Rather, they include the “insight and discovery that the customer receives from the buying experience.”
Cost is “not just the price – from the standpoint of the buying experience itself, it is the time and effort that the customer is devoting to being sold to.”
In terms of efficiency, the benefits include not only the energy savings, but also the insight and discovery that the customer receives from the buying experience. Your expertise and the quality with which you deliver your product or service could make “price” a much smaller factor in the decision-making process.
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