You Can’t Define Your Value Without Talking About Your Price

Salespeople are commonly taught to refrain from disclosing price information about their product or service too early in the selling process. The thinking behind this is that the prospect can’t possibly understand and have a context for our pricing until we can make them understand the value they will receive from our product or service. So, let’s not risk scaring them off by talking about price too soon.There are many problems with that approach, but here’s the main one. How can you define the value of your product or service without talking about its price?Value doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Value is not an abstract concept; value has to be quantifiable to have any meaning to your prospect.And no matter what measure you use for value—whether it’s cost savings; improved customer satisfaction, productivity or throughput; reduced customer support costs or decreased churn rate—in the end, value must always be translated into dollars (or whatever currency you use) to have any meaning to a buyer.For instance, if you don’t share your price, how can a prospect estimate the ROI on the investment you are asking him to make? This could be an essential element in his decision whether to keep investigating your product. And, without this information, the conversation will stop.For instance, what good is it to claim that the customer can realize a 19 percent improvement in revenue in the first three years of using your product, or any other claim, if they don’t know the size of the investment required to achieve that value?If you’ve heard me say it once, you’ve heard me say it a thousand times. Your job as a salesperson is first and foremost to quickly provide your prospect with the information they need to make an informed purchase decision.Price is often the number one piece of information prospects want when they reach out to you. Before they call or email, they have researched your company and your products and services online and hold facts and features in hand. Now they want to understand the value your products and services will provide them. And, in order to calculate that value, they need to understand the price.Value is also at the core of qualification. Qualifying a prospect means that you reach a tentative agreement that the value they will receive from your product or service is worth a certain investment from them. It doesn’t mean that they are in love with your price, but instead, that they agree the benefits that they will receive from using your product will have a certain monetary value to them. You can’t qualify a prospect without talking about value and price.If you can’t reach agreement on value with a buyer, you shouldn’t be investing sales time with him or her. Instead, move on to another buyer who respects the value of your solution. Trust me. It’s a big world and there are a lot of them out there for you to find.