If you won’t buy it yourself, then you’re not sold yourself! If you can’t pass the simple test of being willing to buy your own product, you’ll never be able to sell others in large numbers.
You have power when you’re sitting at the closing table and can look the prospect dead in the eye and show him that you’ve already made the exact same purchase that you’re asking him to make. Your personal conviction and believability will take your career to new heights when you’re fully sold. Buy the product yourself and you’ll become a miracle closer and will be able to handle objections that ordinary salespeople can’t! Be totally sold on the products, services, and the company you work for and watch your prospects turn into customers!
CHAPTER FIVE QUESTIONS
What is the most important sale you have to make?
What are four things you have to be sold on in your life?
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2.
3.
4.
Define “unreasonable.”
What does the author suggest is the make-or-break point in selling? (Define it.)
Write down three lessons you were given in life that suggest you should be reasonable.
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2.
3.
How convinced does the author suggest you become about what it is you are selling?
CHAPTER SIX
THE PRICE MYTH
IT’S ALMOST NEVER PRICE
If you were to survey all of the salespeople in the world, you’d find that most of them believe that the number one reason they lose a sale is price. This is absolutely not the case, and, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Price is not the buyer’s biggest concern. It’s actually at the bottom of the list of reasons why people don’t buy. Most sales are lost over unspoken objections—not the obvious and apparent objections like price, payments, or budgets, but the ones that the buyer doesn’t voice. Getting the sale isn’t about money; it’s ultimately about the buyer having confidence that the product is the right one.
If there is a price difference, the customer wants assurance that your product has advantages in excess of the cost difference.
THE PRICE EXPERIMENT
Most salespeople believe that if the price were lower they could sell more. But the truth is, they wouldn’t sell more because they haven’t correctly named the problem, and therefore they can’t get the correct solution. I once had a salesperson who said that if the price of my seminar tickets were lower he’d be able to sell twice as many. Even though I knew that what he was saying was bordering on idiotic, I practiced the first rule of selling—”Always agree with the customer”—and told him that I often wondered the same thing and, in fact, would be willing to test his theory.
So we offered a Grant Cardone seminar in Detroit with tickets at one-tenth of the normal price. Detroit has always been one of our best-attended seminar markets, and the person who made the suggestion about the price cut was thinking that we would have the biggest audience ever. There was only one stipulation to our deal to properly test out his little idea: He could sell the tickets only by sending out a marketing piece offering the seminar, the date, the price, the website address, and a phone number to call. He was not allowed to do a full sales presentation. The reality is, if you take the price that low you won’t be able to afford to do a presentation anyway.
That seminar had the lowest attendance of any I have given in twenty years. It didn’t even cover the cost of my airfare, and the salesperson’s commissions didn’t cover the cost of the mailers. I asked the audience why they thought so few people had come, and they said that they hadn’t thought I would actually be there in person; they had expected that the seminar would be a video feed of me. If the price gets too cheap, people won’t see any value in the product. Additionally, if price alone were the reason people buy, then the company wouldn’t really need salespeople and that would be a problem for 25 percent of the population.
Success will always take a professional salesperson who takes the time to sell features and benefits.
IT’S LOVE, NOT PRICE
After the experiment with the cheap tickets, I doubled the original ticket price, and attendance at my future seminars increased by more than 100 percent!
Price is almost never the issue for buyers, even when they say it is. More often than not, the real issue is love and confidence. Do I love this product? Because if I do, then I’ll pay whatever it takes. Is the buyer 100 percent confident that this product will get him what he wants? Will this service do the job? If the buyer is head over heels in love with the product and can’t live without it, he’ll buy it regardless of price, assuming he can find the money to pay for it. If the buyer has full confidence that the product will solve his problems and get him a real solution, he’ll buy it at almost any price. People will give their right arm for love, and they’ll give their last dollar for a real solution.