Biggest Mistake Salespeople Make #2

Here is another common mistake salespeople make.
I used to do this one as well. My comments are below, however here is best selling author Dave Kurlan's take:
When attempting to close sales most salespeople have a tendency to use either a good/better/best, option A/option B, or price 1/price 2 method of proposing and/or presenting. Everyone likes options, right? Yes, people love options. The only problem is that options prevent most people from being able to make decisions. In their new book, Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Dan and Chip Heath provide statistical evidence that people, when presented with options, go into paralysis. And the paralysis gets worse as the number of options increase.

Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball (2005), points to the importance of identifying the compelling reasons why someone, or some group, or some company would buy and buy from you. It points to the importance of demonstrating your expertise and differentiating yourself from your competition by asking good, tough, timely questions. It points to the importance of identifying whether the prospect is able to spend the money that solving their problem requires. Those accomplishments provide the information for you to present a single, ideal, needs and cost appropriate solution. If you are indeed an expert and you did ask the right questions and listened effectively, then there is only one possible ideal solution. Present more than one and you cause a prospect to question your expertise. Worse, you provide them with something to think about.

Make your solution ideal, both in terms of it being needs and cost appropriate, with no options, and if you did what you were supposed to do throughout the sales process you will make it easy for your prospect to make a quick decision.

http://http//www.omghub.com/salesdevelopmentblog/tabid/5809/bid/13259/This-One-Tip-Helps-Salespeople-Close-More-Business.aspx



As I said at the top I used to be guilty of this mistake. I was taught if you give a high price with lots of extra stuff in the package, a low price with nothing but the basics, and the price you want is in the middle with all the things a client WANTS, the prospect will pick the middle price and package. While this worked well in about 33% of the proposals I would pitch, there were times when it was obvious the client was in brain overload. I also couldn't understand why I would get so many "think it overs" when the package they want is right there!



The answers are simple:
1. It is easier to explain and for a cleint to understand one package or option.
2. It also doesn't make it appear that they will be treated "differently" because they have a smaller package than other clients.
3. One option is easier to negotiate if you need to.
4. One option also makes it easier to decide to "Take it or leave it."
5. Presenting one option reinforces that you were or were not listening and asking the right questions. Use one option as a visual reminder to yourself to ask and listen what your client needs. If you can't come up with one ideal solution, you probably need to listen more or ask more questions.

Try the single package option in your next ten proposals. I bet you get fewer "let me think it overs" than you did before. I did.


Thank you for reading!

Ev