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Product Value and The Lowest Price?

discount-0814Does the value of your product really come down to the lowest price? In an effort to sell more, dealers and systems integrators are often setting the price of their technology based on an aggregate price that they believe will help make the sale happen. Sales may happen, but the value of your brand, manufacturers and dealers, continues to diminish as the beat-the-internet-pricing games drives a race to the bottom — where even if you win, you lose.

The value of a product is directly related to how well that product solves a problem and/or enables a better solution.

This has little to do with price and everything to do with the value proposition; that is, what kind of total value is attributed directly to how well the product provides a solution.

In the house of worship market, like every other market, there are plenty of applications where certain products are going to be fantastic solutions and other applications where they’re not-so-great of a fit. It is in understanding these differences that the product positioning and alternate product options (even from the same manufacturer) provide helpful apples-to-apples comparisons specific to each context and venue.

Likewise, in selling to the church market, it’s important to not sell “what” the product does, but “why” it’s a great solution for each unique application. This is called consultative selling and is the single best way to ensure the value of your product (and, simultaneously the value of your brand) is deemed to be high. You must learn to connect the client’s local predicament to your technology application.

There’s much the Audio/Video/Lighting industry can learn from these simple truths, both from a product development standpoint (define the various “wins” of the value proposition) and a marketing standpoint (associate value with context and application). I’ve written about how this all ties together in this month’s House of Worship Trends and Future articles. Be sure to click here for the Trends article (The Race to the Bottom for Technology in Churches) and here for the Future article (The Future of Selling to Churches). Then, comment and share your experiences and opinions with me. I love a good dialogue!

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