Sales Training Series #18

Insights from recent trainings

Welcome back to another Sales Training series!

These posts are intended to give you access to some of the golden nuggets I give clients during our training sessions.

Note: I intentionally keep the descriptions of my clients vague for privacy reasons.

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What we’re covering in this post:

- Why pricing solely based on ROI as a startup is a mistake and what to do instead

- Reframing the “Budget” conversation + my “A.W.F” approach to Budget

- How one small mistake can derail an entire meeting, why it happens, and how to prevent it from happening again

- The prospect has a buying process, and you have a sales process. How to engulf their process so you don’t betray yours (including word tracks)

- The “alley oop” approach for an instant Status boost

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This costs how much??

It is common practice for companies to price their product based on the potential ROI the buyer can expect to get as a result of using the product.

Most competent leaders understand that this is only part of their pricing strategy.

But what happens if that is solely how you price your product?

and you are a startup that nobody has heard of?

Then you get reactions like this to your pricing:

Why this happens

Too much contrast.

Even if you aren’t “the same” as your competitors, the buyer will still compare you to them, and anything remotely similar, because that is how the human brain works.

Humans need contrast in order to make decisions.

Our brains, by design, compare things in order to make decisions.

This is how a buyer reacts to pricing:

Yes, the stakes, consequences, and economics of a problem is important.

But what’s more important is how your product compares to what exists in the buyers world (remember the buyers perception is reality in sales) and how it makes them feel.

Buyer don’t just make typical comparisons of features / benefits, pricing, implementation.

They also make comparisons to their own Biases, Preconceived notions, and Beliefs surrounding what it is your company does.

What emotion does your product bring up in them? And what is their relationship to to the emotion that is being brought up in them?

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If you don’t have a lot of, or any direct competitors, then that’s another issue. On some level the buyer is thinking this isn’t a proven product.

It’s too new. And new is scary to most buyers.

Competitive verticals, on the other hand, are a good thing for buyers because it signals safety (Abundance of choice = Safety… to an extent of course)

These subtleties & nuances are incredibly important when it comes sales as a whole, including your pricing strategy.

Take the case of a client who recently joined a startup and is struggling to hit the ground running in the new role.

Their software can do the job of multiple of people thereby saving / making the buyer hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.. only for a “reasonable” payment of ~$100k/yr!

So the product should be selling like hot cakes shouldn’t it?

Not so fast.

When I asked them the logic behind why / how they priced their product they showed me a fancy spreadsheet showing all the savings and revenue they can generate for their buyer.

In their presentation they mentioned “And if we replace more headcount the savings go up..”

I said “pause right there”

🐲: You are operating under the assumption that they are willing to reduce headcount in order to capitalize on and get these savings

Client: Yes because we know they want to save money and automate a lot of this

🐲: And if they were so keen on doing it this way then why are they not buying?

*crickets*

So first thing we needed to do is Reframe our approach to how we sell this thing, and then tackle pricing..