How You Can Help With The Upcoming Flight From Price to Results

Over the past few months, I have witnessed more and more companies moving away from price as their dominating decision-criteria, opting instead to pay more for the results that they need. In one case, the client said: “Look, you cost more but I don’t want you to do anything about it. We know that this is what it is going to take to get the results we are after.”

Educated, the Hard Way

It has never made sense that costs can continue to be driven down while quality improves. You can’t continually peel the profit out of any product, goods, or services and expect them to improve. You can only expect that everyone will at some point reach some minimal level of performance with gains coming only from a willingness to invest more to acquire those gains.

We tend to think everything operates like Moore’s Law, with the chip speed doubling and the cost being halved every eighteen months. You can certainly buy a computer for $349, but it isn’t going to perform or last anywhere as long as a higher quality, better performing, state-of-the –art, and more expensive computer. But Moore’s Law isn’t a truth that can be applied universally.

Over time, your dream clients have been being educated. They have sought to reduce the price that they pay for goods, for services, and for solutions. This has been especially true over the last few years.

Now, many of your clients and your dream clients have learned the age-old lesson that you get what you pay for. More are re-learning this real universal truth now.

The companies you call on have been promised greater results at a lower price, and they have received neither. They have been given poorer results, and they have commanded lower prices only to realize the far greater cost that comes with poor performance. Many are ready to take the red pill and to invest more to get the results that they need.

You are going to have to help your clients to do so. Here are a couple ideas.

You Need to Help Me Prove It

There is still a great deal of economic uncertainty. This uncertainty is still the source of much fear, and it has many companies and their people focusing on prices instead of cost. If you are going to help them to invest in the result they need, you are going to have to help them prove your case within their organization.

You might need to do a traditional ROI. You might need to do a pilot program to demonstrate and prove that you can do what you say you will do. You might need to show them case studies and analysis of the results you have provided to other companies that were faced with the same challenges. Or maybe you will have to come up with something else completely.

The point is this: if you are going to help your clients to make the investment, you are going to have to help them prove that the investment is going to pay off as promised. The easier you make it for your client to defend your case internally, the better odds you have of getting the investment necessary.

You Need to Execute and Deliver

Once you make the sale (and help your client to make the sale), you are going to have to execute and deliver on your promise.

Your clients have been told that can get an improved result and pay less money. They have learned that this is not true (or they will be learning this soon). You cannot be the one to teach them that they can pay more and still not get the results that they are after. You have to ensure that they receive that value of their increased investment.

This is what will be required of you if you want to ensure that you are able to command the price you need to produce the results that your clients need.

Questions

Do you always get what you paid for?

Do you ever find the highest quality and the lowest price in the same product, service, or solution? Why not?

How do you help your clients to make the investments they need to produce the results that they need?

How do you a rem your clients to sell making a greater investment within their own organization?

Why is it critical you deliver if you acquire the greater investment?