Sales training ideas – Showing how investing in your product may actually save the prospect money.

First let’s start with a basic sales presentation premise: During your presentation, your objective is to show the prospect that he or she will be better off with your product or service and worse off without it. You want to use both pleasure and pain (carrot and the stick). If you have a prospect who sees a need for what you’re selling, you’re halfway there. If, on the other hand, the prospect does not necessarily see a need for what you’re selling, you have to change his or her perspective. One way to change perspective during the sales presentation is to show the cost (pain) of not owning your product. 

For example, if the prospect believes your product costs too much, you need to change her perspective to the point where she understands that it is costing more not to have your product. If she is spending $1.00 a day for something because she doesn’t have your product and your product costs $100, then after one hundred days she’s making money with your product. Then the point of your sales presentation will be to shift her thinking from up-front cost to long-term cost. 

How about lifestyle? Does your product provide a better way of life? If so, what is it costing mentally and emotionally not to have your product? You simply must work these into your sales presentation. Once you build value to the point where it outweighs cost, you’ve got a sale (assuming the prospect is qualified to buy). 

Here is another way to look at this: Once you shift the cost from the prospect’s “hang on to my money” side of the ledger to the “buy your product and save money” side, the sale is made. In addition to comparing long-term and short-term costs, what other cost factors can you use in your sales presentation? 

1) Cost of labor.

How many working hours, and thus dollars, are being spent—daily, weekly, monthly, annually—by NOT having your product or service? 

2) Cost of maintenance and materials.

If the business has an old copier, how much more expensive is the service contract? How many hours is the machine costing in lost production when it’s down? How many more hours do office personnel spend fixing the current machine? How about the number of ink cartridges and their cost compared with the newer, longer lasting ones? 

3) Longevity.

How long does your machine last compared with the competition’s? If the competition’s machine lasts ten years and yours lasts fifteen, the prospect will have to buy three machines for every two of yours. Point this out. Give the prospect a “per year” price as opposed to a total price, and have numbers ready to support your claim of the lifespan of your machines versus the competition’s. 

Your challenge is to find as many cost factors associated with your product as possible and work them into the sales presentation. Show your prospect what it is costing him or her not to own your product or service and make the evidence so overwhelming that the prospect is compelled to buy. Some of these factors are easier to put into numbers. 

Let’s look at a few examples in which we take some otherwise intangible items and make them tangible. 

Let’s suppose your prospect has an old, outdated piece of equipment. From experience you know that an old machine will require company personnel to spend time repairing, using another machine, waiting for another machine, or working on various other activities as a result of problems with the current machine. The prospect may realize this or he may not, so your first step is to discover whether he is aware of this, and then encourage him to take ownership of these “costs.” 

Your side of the conversation during the sales presentation might go as follows: “Mr. Prospect, obviously your old equipment is costing you man hours as your employees spend time repairing it, using another machine, waiting for another machine, or doing various other activities because of problems with the current machine. Am I correct in that assumption?” 

Once your prospect agrees, present him with the number of manpower hours the old equipment is most likely costing him (based on your experience). Next, have the prospect himself figure out the number of manpower hours the failing equipment is costing him. Say something like following: “Mr. Prospect, in my experience the old equipment is probably costing you about ten man hours per week. But from your end, if you had to guess how many hours it’s actually costing you, what would you guess?”

If the prospect gives you a number, whatever number it is, use that number in your calculations. If the prospect says no, he has no idea how many hours, say, “I’ll tell you what. My experience says it’s probably about ten hours. To be conservative, let’s use half that, or five hours. Will you agree that between repairs, waiting, and other activities it’s taking at least five hours per week?” 

Using whatever number he gave you or, based upon the five hours, do your calculations and put a “cost” on the old machine and then work this into the sales presentation. 

Note: It’s important for your prospect to give you a number—that way he can’t argue with it later. You’ll also need to get the salary in dollars per hour of the employee who is wasting her time. Your prospect may not want to reveal it, but you’ve got to question until you get a ballpark figure that he’s comfortable giving out. 

Now, do the math. Five hours a week at the hourly rate of the person wasting his or her time. Say, “So five hours at $15 an hour is $75 per week, or $750 for ten weeks, or roughly $3,750 per year. Is my math right? So, in personnel hours alone you’re losing $3,750 per year by not having our new machine. In addition, you’re losing the added productivity of that energy, or 250 working hours a year that could be put into doing more profitable work elsewhere—isn’t that correct? But that would be a little difficult to calculate, so we’ll leave it out for now. Just realize that there is some ‘real’ added cost there, okay?” 

Next, jump to the price of a service contract. “Joe, you’re currently paying $800 per year for a service contract on your present equipment correct? The service contract on a new machine is only $550. That equals another $250 per year, so now we’re up to $4,000 per year that the old machine is costing you. Correct?” 

Now, jump to other maintenance and supply issues such as toner cartridges. During your sales presentation, continue to build the “cost” in each area until you have overwhelmingly shown that it is less expensive to buy the new machine than it is to keep the old one. Your ultimate goal it to show that it is much less expensive, but if you can at least show it is less expensive by any amount, and the prospect trusts all your numbers, you’ll be in a good position to close the sale. 

Note: Again, you want to be using the prospect’s numbers. If you help him come up with the numbers, make sure he “owns” them. If you use your numbers, they are open for debate. If you use the prospect’s numbers, they are law. 

You can also work more difficult intangibles such as: quality of life, sick days, safety issues, longer life, less stress, and getting more enjoyment and happiness out of life into your sales presentation. These are more difficult factors to put dollar amounts on, but you want to use them where possible. 

Some companies, including many insurance companies, do put dollar values on these more difficult intangibles. They have numbers on obscure things such as how much one extra year of life is worth or how much an arm or a leg is worth. You may find it helpful to refer to some of their statistics as “evidence” when making your case in the sales presentation. 

In legal disputes, dollar amounts must to be assigned to almost everything, including intangibles. You can gather numbers from court judgments, insurance claims, and so on, or you can build a psychological case and ask the prospect how much factors are really worth. An example: 

“Mr. Prospect, studies have shown that this therapy can add years to your life. Suppose it only added one year, or six months, or even only one month. Would you agree with me that one month would be a conservative number? 

“Mr. Prospect, the insurance companies and other industries can actually put a dollar amount on one extra month of life. But let me ask you, what is one more month of sunsets, one more month with the ones you love, one more month of enjoying life really worth? 

“If someone told you that you had to leave this world today, and let that sit with you for a while, and returned ten minutes later saying, ‘Okay, I’m giving you one more month,’ what would that extra month be worth then?” 

Let the prospect come up with the “priceless” psychological value. In a case such as this, the prospect doesn’t have to put a specific dollar number on it. The psychological number will always be higher. 

Ultimately, you need to build as much real and psychological cost as you can of not owning your product or service into your sales presentation. At the same time, this will build your product’s value. 

Note: In competitive situations, you want to show how it will cost the prospect more money to own the competition’s product than yours. Equate the intangible—headaches, lack of peace of mind—and the tangible issues, such as the documented life of your machines versus the competition’s and the “real” cost involved. We will look at this in depth in the Competition Section. 

Use the ideas above to really hammer home the pain (stick) of not owning your product or service. The more pain you can associate to non-ownership, the more effective you’ll be during your sales presentations.