Put Your Prices Up
Interestingly when I held a chat at one of my customers about ‘credit crunch’ busting sales tactics, I mentioned that one way was to raise a cheeky price here and there. There’s I guess a pretty famous marketing blog by a fella called Seth Godin which I stumble across every now and then during recreational surftime via links on sites I regularly read. Although I don’t really class myself as a marketeer, there’s clearly overlap between what such people (whom reps often think of as lowlier than other competitors, battling over the title of Sales Prevention Dept) and I do. Here’s a cracking recent musing from him:
“No such thing as price pressure”
Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.
It’s not true.
You need to increase your value. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because you’re not delivering enough value for the money you’re charging.
You’re not selling a commodity unless you want to.
I couldn’t agree more. Whatever obstacle may arise, there’s general acknowledgement that you get what you pay for, so if you charge a higher price than alternatives, then surely you must be giving back more in return? The key is to select a genuine usp, one that should be in demand, and create the buzz that you need through the price differentiation of it.
In the example from my recent experience, the sales team in question had a new product. Management were keen to push this as a unique, new-to-the-market offering. Initially the reps were disengaged. All the typical reasons applied; scared of cannabalising existing sales, worried it would take too much time to get results, anxious that it’d be tricky to sell something ‘new’ first, disappointed at marketing ‘support’ somewhat unaligned to how selling works, antipathy to being told what to do by management.
Yet I felt their rush of excitement as the dawning began to spread around the room. Could it really be that they could make serious money with the provocative stance of being proud at the seemingly ‘high’ launch price?