Against something cheaper? Try "Priming"

Came across a salesguy called Stuart Glimstead at one of my customers earlier today, who had a response for when a prospect starts going on about cheaper competition. 

His first retort is simply “why do you think they’re cheaper?” 

He finds this begins to place a seed of doubt in how they perceive the competition. It gets them thinking in the direction that you want and that is all the negative experiences that they have had with things they have considered ‘cheap’. This is apparently called priming – they will start recalling their ‘cheap and nasty’ experiences and this will allow you to setup the qualification of your pricing. They will now have a negative association, at least for the time that you are there, with ‘cheap competition’.

I used this technique in the 90s with some pretty good success.  The way I went about it was asking what was the last item the prospect had bought for their home, like a microwave or washing machine or telly.  How many were on their shortlist?  Had they bought the cheapest?  Invariably not – so why not….?