The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

What is the best response when asked, “Is the price negotiable?”

Your first reaction might be to lower the price to close the deal.

• Interpreting their question as a request will result in lowering the price.
• Offering to lower the price, only to find they will continually ask for more.

A better response is to demonstrate the value of your offering.

• Work with your prospects to help them better understand the value of your services, products, and deliverables.
• Show them the great deal they are already getting when evaluated in terms of the specific value you’re bringing to their company and how doing business with you will help them meet their goals.

Hunters and farmers are crucial for a balanced and effective sales team. Hunters actively seek out new business opportunities, while farmers nurture and grow existing client relationships.

Setting benchmarks for these two distinct roles requires a nuanced approach to recognizing their unique strengths and contributions.

Most of us have posted so much on social media, it’s hard to remember it all. But the internet doesn’t forget. When was the last time you did a brand audit of yourself?

If you’re a professional in sales or leadership, will your online brand send the message you want?

It takes a lot of work to get a first meeting with a prospect.

While connecting with a prospect and getting a meeting is a series of events and second chances, that’s not the case with your needs analysis or discovery meeting. The discovery meeting is your one chance to gather information critical to creating a proposal the prospect will be interested in purchasing.

Let’s look at seven signs that you might be doing your needs analysis wrong.

Culture is defined as a way of life for a group of people. When in doubt about what to do, the members will fall back on what they have learned from their culture. They don’t even think about it—they know what their culture would tell them to do.

Business organizations all have a culture, and when you walk into a business and take an instant like or dislike to being there, you are experiencing their culture. Sometimes they don’t even have to say anything—it’s an attitude you can almost feel.

Business-to-business organizations don’t often have potential customers walk into a physical location. Often a salesperson is how the client and prospect experience your organization’s culture. What is your sales culture telling them?

If you’re in sales, you spend a lot of your time asking other people to buy what you sell. What about the last time you purchased something? Coffee on the way to work, an app on your phone, or maybe a new home appliance?

Why did you buy it now, instead of later? I find my tipping point is often based on my experience during the purchase process.

What is the best way is to start a conversation? Ask the other person a question. 

We learn by asking questions.

Smart business people never stop asking questions. Your prospect probably forms their opinion about you based more on what you ask them, than on what you tell them.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers” - Voltaire

Our founder, Steve Marx, used to say that things should be no longer than they need to be, but also no shorter. Applying that to the sales process, it should take no longer than it needs to be effective, but also no shorter.

In the sales process, some prospects are traveling toward you; others are traveling away. It would seem that we should just pitch and close the ones that are traveling quickly toward us, right?

Steve’s advice would be that it should take no longer and no shorter than we need to accomplish our objective. In sales, that’s achieving their business objectives.

To pick someone up has been used as slang, according to Dictionary.com, since at least the 1600s.

Today's pick-up line means a rehearsed remark to strike up a conversation with the goal of pursuing a more gratifying relationship later.

Many salespeople have a rehearsed line meant to initiate a relationship with a prospect to satisfy their need to make another sale. Even when you’ve tried to find a Valid Business Reason (VBR), you might still end up sounding like you’re using a pick-up line.

How can you tell if your VBR has value to the prospect?

Your biggest competition in B2B sales can be what might be described as the comfort of the blue pill, as made famous in the Matrix series.

In the movie, Morpheus, describes the blue pill as waking up in your bed and believing whatever you want to believe.

There's a natural desire for prospects to want to believe things are good and have a preference for doing nothing. At least nothing in relation to your product or service.

The blue pill and red pill choice that Morpheus gives Neo in the Matrix comes into play in sales when you have insights. The red pill is one that may prompt the prospect to make changes in their status quo. It’s a choice the client must make for themselves, but your approach will have a great influence on that choice.