Sales Negotiation. What if You Couldn’t Discount?

When I first started my career, I was a media buyer, not a seller. After a very short time I learned a lot about sales negotiation. I realized who would drop their price immediately and drastically, and who would not discount a penny.

If you believe price matters you’d assume I bought the most from the cheapest vendor, but truth is I spent more on the outlets that did not budge on price.  

I bought from the non-negotiators even though they wouldn’t reduce my investment!

How were they successful?

Those sellers knew they could not discount, so they found other ways to close the deal.

What if you could not discount your sale?   How would you survive a sales negotiation?

1. Research your targets to make sure they are good sales leads for you.  Not every business is a good fit for your brand and price point. About 1/3 of buyers are hung up on price.  The others are open to hearing your argument.
2. Early adopters are less price sensitive and are actually willing to pay more just to be the first to try something new.  Find out who they are!
3. Talk about more than just the product.  Otherwise it can become a comparison of prices between widgets.
4. Be able to explain how your company is different from the rest – history, success stories, customer service.   Use your past customer experience as a sales story.
5. Be Confident! Have confidence in yourself and your product.  (And if you don’t – go back and watch my video on confidence)
6. Find a problem to solve for your customer and offer the solution. Get to know their needs and business and background
7. Ask probing questions around the price objection and find ways to show value around the investment.   Will other expenses go down?  Productivity improve?  Profit Increase?  Make work life easier?  Don’t be afraid to do some math!
8. Develop an honest and personal rapport and always offer exceptional customer service.
9. Build on those relationships and collect lots and lots of happy customer stories that you can use on your next sales call.
10.  Price is for today, but a great value can last forever.

So this week go into your sales meeting with the mindset that you can’t change the price.   Practice the value based selling techniques I talked about and Go Crush It!

This article was written by Christine Miller of Miller Sales Consulting. With extensive experience as a highly strategic sales motivator and sales coach, Christine has excelled at building and structuring sales organizations. More sales advice can be found on her LinkedIn page, as well as Medium. Subscribe to her videos on YouTube.