Paul S. Goldner Price Or Value The Choice Is Yours

This was the title of a presentation given at a ‘software for sales’ event I attended in Chicago way back in 1998.

It in part deserves recollection as being a needle of personal selling skill discussion in a haystack of mainly technical monologues.

Despite the ancient geocities look of the above logo, the speaker appears still involved in sales training and has authored a book on cold calling. Anyone that’s experienced for themselves the game changing structure of an Ari Galper cold call will though view his kind of teaching as well meaning but, at best, outdated:

Sample script for responding to the “we have no budget” objection.

I understand that you may have current budget constraints. However, my goal is not necessarily to sell you something today, but rather, to build a lasting relationship. I’m going to be in your area on January 6 and would like to stop by. Are you available at 3:00?

Still, a dozen years back he made some good points that remain relevant. Early in his sixteen slides he delivers a cracker.

“Successful sales people differentiate themselves on the basis of the quality of their ideas”

His two chief critical success factors are to “be a consultant” and “set the playing field”. All well and good, yet it is for his lovely true lifetime cost example I enjoyed his spiel.

He took two competing fork-lift trucks. Nearly every salesforce I’ve worked with compete against cheaper alternatives and battle to get their Total Cost of Ownership message across. It’s a neat example to drop into any such sales chat with at the very least, your prospect-side Champion and apply yourself outside of the sideloader-stacker world. I played quickly on Powerpoint to re-fashion his slides with a more contemporary feel:

As a footnote, he signs off with the well-known “worse to pay too little” Ruskin quote, beloved of value focused salespeople everywhere.