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Trust or Price?

trust or priceLast week I got an email from one of my biggest dealers that was so out of the ordinary that I had to read it three times. Even then, I had to call my contact there to verbally confirm what I was reading. It was just … wild. No matter how old I feel some days, it’s nice to know that I can still be surprised sometimes. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

A long time ago, in what ended up being the best sales training course I ever took, the presenter had a simple thesis: you can sell on trust, or you can sell on price. His point was simple; if you’re selling on price, that’s all you have to offer. If someone else is cheaper, the customer will go there instead. But, if the customer trusts you, and you’ve built a relationship based on trust, then suddenly price doesn’t matter as much. You have more to offer, and your experience and expertise count for a lot. The customer is willing to pay you for them.

That’s why when you position yourself so that you don’t sell on price alone, you have to be prepared to present to prospective clients the reasons why you and your products and services are worth more than just the lowest price. Alas, like all sales pitches, you, the salesperson, won’t win every time.

This brings me to my point and the story I wanted to tell. Earlier, I had told you that you can sell on trust or you can sell on price. Well, conversely, the customer can buy on trust, or they can buy on price. The customer may think that when they’re buying on price, they’re getting the best deal possible, but that’s not always true. Now to my story.

So, it’s like this: my dealer has a client they were working with on a significant hardware deployment. The client, deciding they could do better than the wisdom and experience of my dealer (who has lots of both), went shopping and found a better price for a major component of their deployment from an online reseller. They purchased from the online reseller and planned to get my dealer to complete the deployment minus that part of the hardware sale.

But wait, there’s more! Due 100% to user error, the client ordered the wrong product from the online reseller. Like, not even close to the right one. And, it gets better. They ordered 800 units of the wrong product. Oh, and did I mention that the online reseller doesn’t accept returns?

So, if you’re just tuning in, in order to save some money and get the best deal possible, the client made a HUMUNGOUS error and is stuck with thousands of dollars worth of a product they don’t need, can’t use and can’t return. On top of that embarrassing sunk cost, they STILL need to purchase 800 of the correct units, and let’s just say my dealer is not feeling super sympathetic or charitable at this point.

That was the story my dealer related to me. And when we were both done laughing, I agreed to ask around and see if anyone I know in the channel might be interested in 800 in-the-box units of this thing at Fire Sale pricing from an end user who is, shall we say, a “motivated seller.”

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