How to Dissolve Price Objections

Do you get price objections? Or do you attempt to avoid them by setting your prices according to what you think you can get, as opposed to what your services or products are really worth?

In this article I’m going to share with you a valuable technique that you can use to stamp out price objections - permanently.

When someone objects to your price, what they are really saying is, 'You haven't convinced me that I will receive value equal to, or greater than, the amount you are charging.'

So price objections are really VALUE objections, and they can be avoided when you take the time to establish - in advance of revealing your price - the value that your product or service represents to the buyer. You need to establish this value so completely, and demonstrate such a large and compelling return on their investment, that it is practically impossible for the prospect to say no, regardless of price.

This technique is known as 'selling money at a discount'.

Let me give you an example. A consultant to retailers specialised in preventing theft from employees. He had boxes full of testimonials from store owners citing specific amounts of money saved in the weeks or months following his seminar. In many cases the savings ran into thousands of dollars per store. Some large companies reported savings as much as $100,000 in a couple of months applying what they'd learned from him.

The trouble was, he had no idea what he was worth. He was charging a paltry $500 a day for his seminar. Luckily for this consultant, he ran into a marketing expert who understood how to 'sell money at a discount'. Together they revamped his entire marketing programme and geared it towards demonstrating that he was offering the store owner $10,000-$10,0000 in return for his new higher fee of $2,500.

And his business exploded. Of course it did. If someone could convincingly demonstrate to you that in return for $2,500 you would receive at least $10,000 within a matter of weeks, wouldn't you take them up on it? I appreciate there might be some scepticism, but the key word here is convincingly, and that means taking time to spell out and quantify the return on investment so specifically, that it is proven beyond doubt.

And that's why many people miss out on the benefits of this technique. It takes time, effort and creative thinking on the part of the seller. But the payoffs are huge. The consultant above increased his fees by 500%. How much are you leaving on the table by not sitting down to quantify, in precise and specific detail, the benefits to your clients? How much more you could be charging, how much more profit could you be making, if you started to apply this technique?

'But that doesn't apply to my business!' I can hear some readers say. True, you may not be in a business where there are direct and apparent cost savings or profits easily demonstrated. Actually, that places you at a significant advantage by applying this technique, because I can guarantee that the majority of your competitors WON'T take the time to quantify the benefits in the way I am describing here, and that leaves an opportunity wide open for you.

So let me give you a couple more examples of services where cost savings or profit improvements are not readily apparent. Ingrid Burling is a coach who I featured in a newsletter a couple of months ago. She shared this story: 'A client recently said to me that one of the tools I have taught her to use is saving her an hour every day and has completely changed the way she works. If you take her hourly fee and multiply this up over the year, she is effectively saving £9000 per annum. She achieved this in one standalone session with me - which was two hours of face-to-face work and for which I charged £400.' Bingo! Ingrid now has one example that demonstrates more than a 22-1 return on investment.

Like Ingrid, you may need to take the time to delve a little with your existing clients and work with them to calculate their return on investment. A few years ago, I ran a day on negotiation skills for a client whose 'goodwill' budget was being cut, and they needed to learn to say no to clients without alienating them. When I followed up with this client a month after the training, they had seen an immediate improvement of more than £5,000 in their budget following the training. You can be sure that was one testimonial I made a point of including in my sales proposals to other clients from then on. But you'll only get this type of information from clients if you take the time to follow up and ASK. I'm willing to bet that you have helped many more clients than you realise right now.

What if you're not selling to businesses, but working with individuals? Let's say you're a hypnotherapist specialising in weight loss or smoking cessation. The smoking cessation is easy to demonstrate a cost saving with - because in the UK a 20-a-day smoker is spending over £180 a month on their habit. But there are costs too, like higher life insurance premiums that could also be taken into account.

What about your weight loss clients? Well I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't take much effort on your part to search the internet and get a figure for the amount spent per year on diet products, slimming club and gym memberships, books and videos, by the average yo-yo dieter. Establish that cost first (not to mention the emotional cost) and your fee - even if it is three times higher than what you currently charge - will pale in comparison.

Whatever business you are in, price objections will dissolve when you can demonstrate that your product or service - and not the buyer - pays for the purchase. It might take some creative thinking and some research on your part, but I assure you that the benefits you get from this technique are worth all that and more.

Would you like to use this article on your website or in your e-zine? Reprints are welcome so long as article and by-line are published intact and all links made live.

About The Author:

Bernadette Doyle publishes her weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then sign up for her weekly e-zine now at http://www.clientmagnets.com