Saying the Price, Delivering the Price, Believing in Your Prices

Can you confidently state the price of your product without feeling like you’re dropping a bombshell? Uncover the secrets to mastering price delivery in sales, and learn why timidly muttering numbers or hiding them between features can erode your credibility. We share vivid anecdotes, such as the tale of a travel agent struggling with high holiday costs, to illustrate the pitfalls of the "cappuccino price delivery" and the "price sandwich" methods. By the end of this discussion, you'll grasp the importance of presenting prices with unwavering confidence and truly believing in the value of what you're selling.

Drawing inspiration from sales legend Zig Ziglar, we emphasize the critical role of confidence and enthusiasm in every sales interaction. Discover how mastering your language and genuinely conveying belief in your product can transform your sales outcomes. Sales is more than a transaction—it's about transferring feelings. Your conviction can be the difference between closing a deal and missing out. This episode is packed with practical tips to enhance your price delivery technique, ensuring your entire sales process is not just robust but also convincing. This skill is crucial for sales success. 

To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation, visit www.realitytraining.com.

Transcript

Effective Price Delivery Techniques in Sales

Speaker 1 0:01

So how much is ?

Speaker 2 0:02

this thing . Yeah , it's £424.50 .

Speaker 1 0:07

I'm sorry , I didn't quite catch that .

Speaker 2 0:09

It's £424.50 .

Speaker 1 0:13

Oh , you're saying that as though you think that sounds like quite a lot of money .

Speaker 2 0:16

Oh sorry , I was just drinking my coffee at the same time . Really lovely coffee you've given me here , really nice , so are we going to install this then ?

Speaker 1 0:24

Is that you trying to distract me from the price that you just given me here ? Really nice , so are we going to install this then ? Is that you trying to distract me from the price that you just told me ?

Speaker 2 0:27

Well , it's quite expensive . Yeah , Okay , let's try the other way .

Speaker 1 0:32

So I've got this really nice product for you , Jeremy . It comes with that feature that you wanted , the other feature that you wanted .

Speaker 2 0:39

It's £375 , and you also get the other additional feature , a new feature and £375 , and you also get the other additional feature , a new feature and some things we hadn't even talked about . Have you heard those last three features ? I just told you about £375 ? What are these other things you're telling me after having already just told me the price ? Sorry , you started to womble on , but I was just trying to take it . Did you say £375 ?

Speaker 1 1:02

It's something I've been trained in to give you some features , give you the price and then give you some more features in the hope that you will , but I can't hear those can I ? Oh , why's that ?

Speaker 2 1:11

well , because I just was focusing on was it worth 375 ? So sorry , I'm not even listening to those features and obviously they're secondary features . Yeah , yeah .

Speaker 1 1:36

Ladies and gentlemen , this is our subject . On the reality of sales training , we are looking at the thorny subject of delivering price . How should you deliver price ? So at the beginning of the podcast , we gave you two examples . Jeremy , can you take us through your example ?

Speaker 2 1:54

That is the cappuccino price delivery . So you either say it in such a low , unconfident whimper that we can't hear it , you go it's £875 . And so you're underconfident or , jokingly , you're sort of swinging your coffee halfway through the price because you think it's expensive . You don't fully believe in it . And they're also asking at that point how much is it you think ?

Speaker 2 2:20

well , I've got to tell them but , I , don't want to tell them , but if I say it quietly maybe they won't really hear it , and I'm just not confident in delivering the price and all the value I think it contains . We then switch to you , Bob , with some interesting training you've been given there . What was that called ? Well , that was called .

Speaker 1 2:38

I won't give you the rude word for it , but it was the price sandwich . So you show some features , say the price , and then , before they can react , you give them some additional features , which makes it sound amazing , and you've massaged the price in there somewhere . Now some people swear by that method . I think it's really misleading , because you're clearly still embarrassed that the price is quite so high that you're trying to cover it up with additional features subsequently . So those are two very , very popular methods , and when you were talking about the cappuccino one just now , it reminded me . Once I was doing an observation in a travel agency and one of the travel agents was showing a customer a holiday that was about 12 grand . It was a luxury holiday to the Maldives and for the travel agent the cost was so much that she couldn't say the price . She just moved the screen towards the customer and showed them the price . So she didn't actually say it because it was just such a lot of money she couldn't comprehend .

Speaker 2 3:42

Was that it's coming in at ? Do you remember that Absolutely coming in at ? Do you remember that Absolutely Coming in at it's coming in at ?

Speaker 1 3:47

And I think she actually said that's a little bit on the expensive side . Even before he'd reacted , she told him that was an expensive amount , even though it might have been a honeymoon . It might have been the best holiday of his life . He might have been very , very wealthy . She judged by looking at him that he literally couldn't afford this holiday . Now let's deal with that first issue . When you come to talk about price , it should be the most confident and strongest thing you talk about . Now , this is something we spend a lot of our time working on in our training business , because lots of the people we train don't buy or have the products or services that they're selling and are never likely to , and so therefore , for this particular product , it's £10,000 . I would never consider spending that amount of money on something like this . I can't see that it's worth that , and so my feeling about that price is that it is too much , and that's going to come across when I come to deliver that price to the customer . Now , this is really important .

Speaker 2 4:50

What we're saying here is when you're talking about price for the first time , either in a business to business context and it could be that you're selling your magazine , advertising and price hasn't come up to this point and you're delivering it for the first time we're not talking about long protracted negotiations . We're talking about the revealing of the price . What does this guitar cost ? What does this flooring cost ? What does this relining of my ceilings cost ? However dull or exciting , whatever it is you sell , you first have to broker and bring out what your prices are . Now , of course , one thing that the internet has done is it made bandings appear on websites . You know , a typical installation is between X and X , or we have a range between X and X , but we're talking about the physicality of selling , the verbal language leaving your body . So we're going to give you a few absolute top tips on this .

Speaker 3 5:50

This podcast comes from Reality Training , creators of the five principles which so many brands now use as the basis of their sales models . This gives them consistency and certainty . Find out how we can help you sell more at realitytrainingcom .

Speaker 1 6:13

The first thing is induction training . If you are employing new people , especially if they haven't got experience in selling your products or services before , you will spend a lot of time giving them the product knowledge about the stuff it is that they're selling . I think you should spend as much time working on how they deliver the price of that stuff , because you can give them all that knowledge and they go look , look , it's got all this , and then get excited . You know they'll get across that knowledge to the customer and then , because they think it's a lot of money , they'll go and it's four thousand seven . They'll just diminish the price because they're so terrified of it , whereas actually what you should do is spend time saying look , for this sort of customer , this amount of money is not a problem for this product . For this sort of customer , this amount of money is absolutely fine , and this is what people have , this is what businesses have to spend on these things , and so , therefore , we need to know that it's absolutely worth the money when you deliver it .

Speaker 2 7:13

Well , it is likely to be comparable to other prices that other salespeople would deliver to them , looking at similar range of products and services . I mean the simple rule is you have to ask yourself a question have I demonstrated value and am ready to deliver price ? Because if the customer says , how much is that , there's no harm in saying let me tell you everything you get for it . And then when I tell you the price , you can tell me if you think it's worth the value . So you get this , this , this and this and this . And if they're going , oh right , I hadn't appreciated that and that's why we charge X , whereas if you just call out a number , it doesn't mean anything . When somebody says to us , how much is training , well , what training ? The training ? You're going to have a fixed product , you still can't call out the price until you tell them what the product does , until you tell them how it works .

Speaker 2 8:06

The best consumer example I've had of this was I rang up a guy to come and clean all the carpets in the house when we were trying to sell a house and it had carpets all up the stairs , the rooms . I've got three children . We had felt pen that had gone into carpet sections you know makeup , it was awful and Tash had looked at the car and said , oh , there's no way we've got to pay to clean the carpet . So I thought it's going to be a fortune . So I ring up this first person whose name I see in a parish news magazine of all places . And so I ring it up and I say hi , I've got X rooms with two sets of stairs . I want to sell my house . Can you tell me how much it is to clean your house ? He said sure I can .

Speaker 2 8:48

I went great , he said , but first let me just explain to you the machine that I use . And I said , okay . He said I park it outside , I plug into your water system that creates a pressure of X amount , which means when I go into the fibers of your carpet there's almost no way because the power . And he went on about the machine and how it worked and the pressure . He then told me where all the waste , dirty water would go , that he would remove it from sight . He then explained how he'd put down matting and so on and so on and so on . It was just extraordinary . So by the end I'm going wow , this guy's got the best possible kit and he goes and to do your entire house . I've already worked out it's going to cost you £20 a room and the stairs are going to be £30 . And if you add all of that together it's £327 .

Speaker 1 9:32

And I went wow , when can you start ? God , that was a big house , wasn't it , jay , with all those rooms at the other man that was amazing , was that ? Was that was all the stairs , was that when you're in the mansion ? So that was when we're in the up and down house . That's so funny . Once again , your , your maths tutor is called out on that . I think the other point is that we all need to consider that . I'm very pleased you blamed the tutor . Yeah , not the student . The point we're making here is that one should deliver the value and then deliver the price and then shut up . That is how it should be . Here's all the value . That's the amount of money . The next person that speaks should be the customer . Now , they can think it's expensive , they can object , and we'll handle that in another episode . But the best way to deliver price is to go through the value , state the cost confidently and say nothing more .

Speaker 2 10:23

There's a lovely Zig Ziglar thing and I just looked for it in my books and I couldn't find it , so I'm going to paraphrase it . And he talks about when you're asked to name the price of your service or product . He would say I'm really pleased we've got to that stage . We took the decision as a business to explain cost once , so we never had to talk about prices individually again , and what I mean by that is this is how we make our products and this is what they cost , this is what you will pay for them . And we want to spend time doing this with you now and I'll go through it very , very carefully so that we don't have to have conversations again and again where you say how much is that ? You're fully aware of our entire way that we charge , the way that we've come up with the prices and exactly how we have costed them . And he would talk about explaining cost rather than individually going £10.50 , £1.50 .

Speaker 1 11:16

Now that's a really great example . I would say that 50% of the people listening to this podcast will not understand how the companies they work for have arrived at the prices they're charging for their products . Good point . I think that's a really really good lesson . If you are selling something and you don't know how the company has arrived at the cost for it , that's a great question to ask , because then you're much better able to say look , we did research and development , we created this thing . It has all these things going for it . We stand for this as a brand . This is our ethos , this is why we do things the way we do and this is why we're charging a fantastic price , which is this , for this amazing product .

Speaker 1 11:53

Now , that is a much more positive way of selling rather than actually devaluing what you're selling because you don't know that it's worth that amount of money and you say you get this and this and this . You can't even say it because you think it's such a lot of money and that is poor selling and it's poor training . Now some of you sales managers and team leaders listening to this will have people in your teams who are appalling at delivering cost because they think it's a lot

Mastering Sales Price Delivery Technique

Speaker 1 12:20

of money . That is a training issue . It takes a few days of focusing in on this and getting them feeling confident with a language that will transform your results , because sales is a transference of feeling , and this is something else that Zig Ziglar said . If I feel enthusiastic about something , I feel it's really worth the money , that's going to come across in my tone and the way I speak to you . If I don't think it's worth it , then it will come across that I think it's a bit of a con .

Speaker 2 12:48

It's a vital aspect of your sales training skills how you deliver price and it should not just be glossed over . Don't be a great questioner and then fall at this hurdle .

Speaker 1 12:58

We will see you on another , the Reality of Sales training , very soon . Thanks for listening .