What is your biggest sales objection? Price? If not the biggest objection, it’s got to be very close to the top. Why do I say this? I’ve been in sales for over 3 decades and have had a small business over for twenty years. Not to mention talking to many sales people, entrepreneurs and small business owners over the years about this very subject.

If you think about it, it’s like a game that’s played, really for no reason at all, but I guess in a perfect world it wouldn’t happen. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world, as the saying goes. But, if you break down, the typical scenario is something like this, the potential customer wants your service as cheap as they can get it and you’d like to make as much profit as you can.

Next let’s strip away some of the negative areas from this scenario. It’s just you and the customer, each trying to maximize each other’s outcome. The biggest problem I’ve seen is incorrect perceived value. I think this is the area I’ve heard more feedback from, both from customers and sales people I’ve spoken with.

So, I know this may sound like another insurmountable negotiation issue, but I think it could be simplified. What I found is, it can be less of a negotiation issue and more of an educating issue. Many customers/clients are willing to pay for value if they know what the truth value is or identify their perceived value. If their perceived value is not the price you are proposing it call be an immediate deal breaker. The real key here is for you to know the real value yourself, then you can convey it correctly to your customer. The result can be closing more sales and having happier customers and more repeat customers.

One last important part I’d like to share with you on this and it’s the customer budget. So, it the perceived value will not matter it there’s not an established budget. How many times do you get in front of a customer/potential customer and they tell you they don’t have a budget. Let’s think about this, if they don’t have a budget, and don’t know the real value, perceived or otherwise then how can they make a wise decision and if your price is “higher” than someone else you could just be wasting your time. Plus, do they have and money at all?
Where does this mentality come from and how is a company operated properly if they don’t know or have a budget? They could certainly make a bad decision either way. THIS could certainly be a disaster for both of you, so what do you do? This is where you can really earn your keep and have a lifelong customer. This is a tough one, if you can’t show them or educate them basically why your product or service is better than the competition you haven’t done you job.

What have I done in these bidding situations? The problem I have seen and have done myself is, if your proposal is mixed in with other proposals and the customer does not know enough to value the difference between your proposal and the one with the lower price then the proposal with the lowest price will most likely win the bid. The one thing I can offer here is this, make sure you know exactly what the potential customer is needing, wanting and cover every area, before you give them a price.

Last but not least, true story: here’s a scenario that happened to me. I met with a potential client a year ago, we discussed everything that he needed (I thought), he didn’t have a budget, so he didn’t have a real value in his mind, nothing happened. The client contacted me a year later and said he wanted to revisit my proposal/services, etc. I knew he didn’t have a budget, maybe no money, not sure, I sent him the proposal and even gave him a great price for professional level services. He emailed me back and said, the other proposal offered additional services. These were services I would had gladly offered, but I was already offering a low price. I truly believe I would have done a better job. So, I feel like he was not fair because I was not told about the additional services offered.

Moral of the story: