(By Loyd Ford) Ah, price. It makes some salespeople rise to the challenge and others shrink away. Why is that? It’s intimidating for a lot of people to think about price increases, but you see everything looks to be going up, up, up.
It’s time to get inspired by price. Radio and all that goes into it has value. The personalities. The audience. The music, news, sports, talk, the show prep. The events, the social media, the digital content. Your advertisers want what you have: More customers. You can step right into that as a seller but plan it well.
Let’s talk about the fear of price increases.
They won’t buy, right?
They will get uncomfortable, right?
They will make that pout with their lips and say, “I’ll think about it.”
Sellers perform better almost every time if they do enough prep before seeing a client and their focus is always on developing deeper relationship with clients. If you do this well, you are well-positioned to have a discussion about price increase.
But there is a real secret about price that almost no one talks about.
Clients don’t really care about price….
—-they will buy.
—-they won’t get even the slightest bit uncomfortable.
—-They won’t pout.
—-if they see or feel the value is more than the price.
What will they do? Buy.
As much as no one likes to say it, our world rotates around selfishness. As sellers, our number one goal should be to be helpful. Be the solution that your client is looking for or help them find it. Do this often and trust is built and piled high.
But hear me: Clients won’t care about price if you prove your case that what you are selling is worth more than the price…to them. Just like they really don’t care about buying X number of ads. They want ideas that move them, make them feel left out if they don’t act.
This goes back to knowing the client and listening for the problem.
What do they really want? Really need? How do you position your product or products to be that today?
Chances are pretty good that your client is increasing pricing right now. How can increases in this environment be a surprise?
Still, my point here is this. We sell value. We sell connection to local community like no other business. At our best we sell access to our relationships. Price doesn’t matter as much as a seller thinks if the value is seen.
Give certainty to the value in your presentations and interactions.
Learn to master price increases and your fear will turn to more paycheck.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). Reach Loyd at 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
