Sales. Intimacy is a premium product

Intimacy is a premium product

Never emphasize technology in a sales process:

  1. There will always be new and improved bells and whistles. If your pitch is “gee whiz” you are conditioning the prospect to wait a little longer till the next generation comes out.
  2. On the flip side you are also conditioning the prospect to mark down the price of technology and think “hmmm, I don’t really need the pretty green button, I’ll save money and get it from a cheaper, low frills, vendor.”

However wondrous the technology is, the decision maker and the others are on their side of a conference table and they’re anticipating where your product will break down.

Each person on the opposing side of the table has their own ‘ideal’ solution in mind and they are measuring your product against that. Amongst themselves they are not even in agreement on what the ideal is.

For example, someone at the table is worried about losing their job to the new thing, and another person is worried about it not working and being humiliated in front of their boss and fellow employees.

Here is what everyone agrees on but may not say out loud: Intimacy is a premium product

The technology aspect of a ‘thing’ should be articulated, then de-emphasized. 

Make the technology lighter on their purchase decision ‘scale’ and add the weight of intimacy, high value human interaction.

This means you should communicate outright that you will own the relationship within your company and be their service advocate. This should also be implicitly demonstrated during your meetings with them so that they can see that you have great collegial relationships within your company ‘they like you’.

You are resolving their fears of the ‘thing’ breaking by implanting the perception that they can trust you to get ‘it’ fixed

Every prospect expects things to fall apart, to be slightly ‘oversold’ and disruption, that’s okay. They measure a vendor by the recovery.

The prospect won’t know how your company will respond until something does indeed break down, but if they have sustained, informed, intimacy in the sales and servicing they will be generous and in their projection of the future, they will imagine a human ‘fixing’ response.

Charge more for the human.

The End?

Now read this:  SALES. WHY PEOPLE PAY MORE. OUR CASE STUDY: BANK V CHECK CASHER because banks vs check cashers is a fantastic example of this in an industrial, retail, lower income environment.

This is a long essay that I have divided up into its component pieces:
  1. The Cultural Shift
  2. Define It or the Prospect Will
  3. Exploiting the First Mover Advantage
  4. Reverse Engineering a 300% Price Increase
  5. Each Sales Office is a Franchise
  6. Why Good Salespeople Fail
  7. Why The CEO Should Not Be Selling
  8. Intimacy is a Premium
  9. Breeding Your Competitors
  10. SDR’s. Million Dollar Solution. Hundred Dollar Problem