If you sell a solution, you will command a Price, I mean a Good Price; but if you sell a Product you will Discount!!!!

Direct from the Horse's mouth.........not Zig Ziglar though.........lol

Theoretically, selling is an art but for most of the salesguys discounting is the only way of selling and that way I guess everyone can sell or should I say a good product sells itself, we are actually redundant.

Selling Product instead of a Solution: The problem with salesguys is most often they sell the products & their features and fail to sell a solution or the benefits of the solution. And when that happens price becomes the sole criteria for purchase and for salespeople, discounting seems to be the only way of selling / closing the sale.

The Best Offer Dilemma: The most frequented mistake salespeople commit is giving the least possible price after adjusting all the possible discounts from the highest authority possible only to their dismay that the client makes a counter offer of 10 - 20% less than your final quote and the next statement the client makes is "You may raise the invoice / collect the cheque at this price". And boy.....the deal never happens, it just entered a loop, we need further approvals and ego comes into play - ours as well as the clients........

Always REMEMBER, whenever a client is negotiating NEVER expect the client to close the sale on your final offer.....whatever be your final offer the client will make a counter offer of 10 - 20% less than your final quote. So your final quote should always have a margin of 15 - 20%, just to ensure there is no back & forth and the sale happens with ease.

The best deals are those when there is minimal arm-twisting involved and when we close the deal at the client's offer price allowing him to take charge of the situation.

And isn't that true, when we buy something at a price that we feel is right (or the salesguy agrees to sell at our offered rate) we are just too happy to buy, probably too happy to pay and glad to use that product!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Negotiating on Price: When we negotiate, we always negotiate downwards......and the negotiation is always on price.........and not on the package..........remember the client can always pay 15 - 20 - 100% more than the actual budget communicated to us. Ideally Negotiation should be on the value of the solution that the client will get in return of the price and not just the price.........we can always propose different value propositions at different price points............but sadly, we prefer to discount.

We always try Logic: Most often we try to sell logic but we forget that we sell to humans and they are emotional and not always logical............so we can manage them and their queries differently.

I shall revisit some client FAQ's in some weeks.......till then Happy Selling & please sell at rates that wouldn't embarrass your conscience...............lol.........