One of the first things we change when we start working with new clients is the way they’re doing their sales meetings and subsequent proposals. And, you guessed it-it’s often because they’re emailing proposals and pricing at the drop of a hat (or rather, at the whim of buyers). Well, here are 3 reasons why you should stop doing that…
No Opportunity to Up-Sell
My client Janet owned a printing company. She was used to emailing quotes on requests and quantities. That’s just the way the entire industry did business. When we started looking at how she could be up-selling her other services such as the new Corporate Office Wall Design and printing, she started doing things differently. Getting into a meeting for talking strategically about big projects with buyers became Janet’s number one new goal. With the sales conversation methodology that I taught her, she and her sales reps were now able to engage decision makers at a higher strategic level of solving the company’s bigger problems. The meeting was no longer about cranking out a printing order, it was about solving their client attraction problem through printing solutions. When you email a price, you never get the meeting or the larger opportunity.
You’ll Give Them Sticker Shock
Most of my clients learn that I don’t want them to be a commodity and I certainly don’t want them to be the cheapest in their industry. Typically those kinds of clients don’t hire me anyway since I’M not the cheapest in my industry! When you email your prices and you are not the cheapest, you have no opportunity to prepare the prospect for the possible sticker shock they’ll be getting. You won’t have gotten them in touch with the pain of not having your solution. You won’t have picked their brain to come up with the true cost of the problem you’re solving for them. Most of all, you won’t have a chance to overcome objections. All you’ll get back to your price email is silence. Instead, set up a follow up meeting to walk in your price and proposal so that you can control the sticker shock.
You Won’t Have The Authority and Budget In the Decision
Typically when businesses email pricing, they’re sending it to only one decision maker in the group that decides. Statistics show that it takes an average of 3 buyers to decide to rehire vendors they’ve already had before! (up to 7 decision makers for new hires). When you don’t walk in a proposal or even build the proposal with the prospect by getting their consensus along the way, you let go of the opportunity to have the alignment and buy-in of the managers who are responsible for both budget and the purchasing authority. And this gets you to prolonged meetings and deals that time kills.
So don’t give up before you begin, stop emailing your pricing and proposals. Set up meetings to walk them in instead and see your close rates jump.
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