Daily Inspiration 8-8-13

"I can't compete with them.

They're giving them away over there."

 

-- Heard from several hundred salespeople in my time

As a salesman and sales manager most of my life, I've heard salespeople make so many excuses of why they lost the sale, and it was almost always that the competitor had a lower price, and such.

One of the studies about buying motives that I saw many years ago showed that price was number eight on the list of reasons people bought. Number eight. But according to all the salespeople, it was number one. Another study I ran across was that thought 100% may talk about price, only 4% actually buy price. This last one helped me more than anything throughout my career to put talking about price into perspective. Of course, we all also know that inside, we want to feel like we got the best deal we could and that we didn't get ripped off.

I read Seth Godin's blogs and have read most of his books. One book he was discussing in a recent post was his book titled, Purple Cow - Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. It is a great book that I recommend to all business people.

In the post, a person asked what do you do when the lowest price is all that seems to matter to customers? Here's a bit of his response that I resonated with:

"If you tell me that price is the only thing that matters to customers, I respond that nothing about this product matters to them.

When something matters to you, you talk about it, care about it, research it, tweak it. . . If all that we've got to care about is the price, then the price is the discussion, not the item itself.

Businesses have worked overtime to turn things into commodities, telling us that they sell what the other guy does, it's the same, but cheaper. No wonder we've been lulled into not caring.

Every time you say, "all they care about is price," you've just said, "the don't really care, they just want to get the buying over with, cheap."

The thing is, it doesn't have to be a commodity if you don't want it to be."

Cars, trucks, laundry soap, milk, eggs, coffee, bread, clothing are all commodities and based on this we should all be focused on price alone, but we're not.

At the Chevy car dealership I spent so much time in, the salespeople always thought their biggest competitor was the Chevy dealer in the next town. In my city, many people shop at Wal-Mart, yet there is a Safeway, three Raley's Stores too. I shop at Wal-Mart too, but Raley's far more often. There is a list of reasons and none of them are price.

Knowing what I know about cars and trucks and having worked with Ford and Dodge dealers along with Chevy dealers, I know that price is number eight on the list. And, it is number eight for the same reasons I shop at Raley's.


Price Gets Way Too Much Press.

Spread Some Joy Today--Give value where ever you go today.