Sell Value, Not Price

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Sell Value, Not Price

Written by Liz Wendling

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Afraid of Rejection? Get Over It!

Un-managed fear destroys success and great salespeople aggressively work to eliminate fear. The only limits to your sales success are the ones you impose on yourself. The competition is in your own mind. When you do what you fear; the fear fades away and success appears.

Lose the Fear - Make the Sale!

The number one fear of sales professionals and entrepreneurs is rejection! Handling rejection and overcoming those negative feelings are critical to having success in sales. This chronic and debilitating condition has taken down many sales careers and is one thing that stands between salespeople and the success they want. Fear of rejection is the one condition for which there is no cure, no little pill and no quick fix. The choice is yours - deal with it or get out of sales.

This fear of rejection is so powerful that it turns otherwise confident and courageous people into insecure and trembling cowards. Does the ability to handle rejection have a direct relationship to sales performance? Absolutely! In fact, it is one of the most critical attributes of highly successful salespeople. "You weren't born with the fear of rejection, so anything learned can be unlearned," says George Ira Carroll, a Master NLP Practitioner who sees this every day in his practice and helps people overcome the fear that is holding them back.

Afraid of Rejection? Get over it!

No matter what sales process you have in place, the irrational fear of rejection is a major obstacle to success in sales. The simple act of picking up the phone, calling or meeting a new customer is a gut wrenching experience for most salespeople. Many ultimately fail because their fear has crippled them from moving through the sales process.

I was recently hired by a company to work with its sales team on how to communicate more effectively with customers and institute a sales process. Although the project was successful in addressing those two issues, they were only a small part of what was really going on. It wasn't long before I started to witness the blaring signs and symptoms of fear of rejection permeating the entire team. It was contagious and spreading rapidly, and the only cure was to dismantle that fear so true sales success could occur.

Rejection is tough to deal with, but it simply is part of sales. Changing your thought processes and developing a new and different perspective are the keys to overcoming the fear of rejection.
As George explains, "In caveman days, when deadly animals showed up, adrenaline flooded the body as a protection mechanism and was extremely useful when running from a bear or when you needed to fight, but not when you're making sales calls or meeting new customers!" As soon as you identify the mental programming that lies at the core of your fear, you can begin to question it, challenge it and find experiences that contradict it.

Un-managed fear destroys success and great salespeople aggressively work to eliminate fear. The only limits to your sales success are the ones you impose on yourself. The competition is in your own mind. When you do what you fear; the fear fades away and success appears.

How you handle rejection is simply a matter of perspective. Remember, every salesperson gets rejected, every one of them. Big deal. Move on, suck it up and go sell something. Remember -- it's not what you sell, it's how you sell.

Sales professionals who don't know how to sell value, at some point won't sell at all. Closing sales based on the lowest price is neither a long-term, nor highly profitable growth strategy. Even in today's marketplace, you can still be a solid competitor without being the cheapest. You just need to sell value, not price.

Master the Art of Selling Value
Salespeople need to master the art of selling value and stop using the same overused mantras on why they can't sell in today's economy, mantras like "if I just lower my price, I could close this sale," or "if I am cheaper than my competition people will buy from me."

People don't always buy based on the lowest price, and no one believes that the lowest price ever equals the best offer. Customers who buy a product or service because it's the cheapest are not loyal.

If you don't believe me, think about this: if price is the only thing that matters and people are just looking for "cheap," then everyone would be driving a Kia, Nordstrom would be empty, flying first class would not exist and we would all be drinking Folgers instead of Starbucks.

In this highly competitive sales environment, salespeople find it difficult to differentiate their offer from their competitors' in any way but price - but price-cutting is a losing proposition. This dilemma is faced by all business types - whether selling sophisticated high-tech products, real estate, intangible services, or individual/commodity products.

How Does the Customer Benefit?
Selling value requires that salespeople have the ability to justify in dollars and cents how the customer will benefit from their solution. Selling value is not some short-lived sales fad; it's a comprehensive set of knowledge, tools and techniques that can be incorporated with any sales approach you are currently using.

If the lowest price is your business model, then go for it and sell on price. But if it isn't your business model, you need to disqualify customers who want the cheapest price and spend your time creating the value you and your company were designed to deliver.

To break out of the price trap, you have to work extremely hard at differentiating your offering on results and the return on investment. Don't learn to sell price! Spend your time learning to create more value than your competitors and focus on showing you can create greater outcomes. If you believe that lowering your price is the only way to make a sale, you have two choices; either learn how to sell more effectively or get out of sales altogether.

To attract and gain new customers, you need something dynamic and memorable to set yourself apart and not fall into the low-price trap. If you think of yourself as offering a solution to a problem rather than offering the cheapest price, then you are well on your way to succeeding in sales and in your business.

For more resources on the art of selling, click here.

Liz Wendling
		About the author:
		A much sought after motivational speaker, owner of Insight Business Consultants, certified Color Code trainer and sales coach, Liz Wendling has been positively impacting individuals for over 12 years. Liz is a passionate sales coach! She is determined to teach women how to take the fear out of selling and show them how to step into the sales process with power and confidence to take their business to a higher level. .