Sales obstacles - tips and hints

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“I like your product, but it is too expensive” This is a classic and we will be meeting this obstacle very often.

We need to evaluate if the prospect is just horse trading with us of if there is a genuine concern that our price is too much.

The important thing is that the prospect is talking to us. we have not lost the prospect. Our hard labour is bearing fruit. It means that the deliverables are acceptable and that is the first mini-victory.

Is it then all about the money? Not necessarily, there are options here to ‘sharpen the pencil’. We just need to find out what we can do to counter this.

We may start by confirming that the deliverables are the ones that are of interest. We can ask if there are elements we should do away with. An example can be that 50,000 impressions are to much and we can reduce it to 25,000 impressions. That is one way of reducing the cost.

Are the amount of banners sufficient? Is the size OK? We need to ensure we have the elements right. Confirm it!

Now we might turn to the numbers. We can start asking what price the client could have in mind.

It is an old ‘trick’ to get the client to quantify our proposal. If the prospect is actually providing you with a cost they could consider, we can start haggling.

Go from the facts: Your suggestion is a bit steep, but what if we keep the price and reduce the number of impressions and take the banner size down? Will that work?

Or: I can’t go that far on the price, but what if we settle on 15% discount instead of your 25%?

Or: let me talk to my manager and see if we can do that price. But let me clarify: if he/she says yes, do we then have a deal? Can we then get the PO this week?

It could also be that the prospect is comparing our price with what IOL has proposed. Ask the good question: are you comparing our price to a price from our competitors like IOL or Timeslive? Do they have the same deliverables?

Maybe: if I can reduce the price below theirs, do we have a deal?

Never give up

About the author Ivan Otterstrom is born in Denmark in 1957.

He moved to South Africa in 1991 being a sales person NCR/AT&T. Ivan has always been in sales, starting his career in IT sales in Denmark. With a degree in Computer Science and a degree in Economics from School of Economics in Copenhagen, he has managed to combine sales and financial considerations into high-end and hi-tech sales environments.

Ivan and his wife Sybil are running a very specialised sales company. Their company is providing sales assistance and specialized courses to a few select clients.

It is this base of high-end clients that forms their expertise in sales management.

Ivan is active in several private enterprises and values the company of his wife Sybil and daughter Ntsiki.