The most frequent objection sales people hear from prospects is “the price is too high”, Every sales leader trains staff to focus on the value of the offering, instead of the cost. Still, sales people report that price is an objection that’s hard to overcome. Twice this month, I helped clients facing this issue through a presentation we developed for a client 15 years ago, that proved Value Can Beat Price!
Our client was in the packaging business, using corrugated cardboard to create displays for products (e.g., drinks, books and other products). Knowing our expertise is helping clients win big deals, we were asked to help their sales people develop more effective presentations and train the sales people to deliver them more effectively. Several months into our relationship, we received a call with bad news: one of their major clients (A) had merged with another company (B) and the general printing vendor for B had offered to provide all cardboard display packaging for free, in exchange for the contract to provide other printing services. As a result, our client’s business from A – which had been 50% of their business – dropped to zero.
About six months later, we get another call. Company B is issuing an Request for Proposal (RFP) for the package design work. Did it make sense to even compete? After discussing the matter and looking at the quality of the incumbent’s work and my client’s capabilities, we decided to prove to the client that leading brands use powerful graphically designed packages to promote sales and to close sales they needed a vendor who could provide such quality. The presentation goal: demonstrate that renown leading brands were succeeding, in part, because they used the company’s high quality graphic packaging.
With that, our work was cut out for us: we needed to show the judging team that well designed displays were powerful sales tools worth paying extra money. We decided that the “medium is the message” – our presentation had to be a design masterpiece and not just a traditional powerpoint packed with words and numbers. We looked for some state-of-the-art animation software to create a presentation that showed the power of a gift box when you remove the ribbon, and presented samples of the company’s graphic packages in “books” organized by industry. We flipped pages within each book quickly, rather than move to different slides, to make it exciting to watch. (Today this is easy to do; years ago, it wasn’t.) Finally, we trained the presenters to speak convincingly as a collaborative team, using “power” words and letting the pictures do the talking.
A week before presenting, the client learned that in addition to the live presentation to the judges, three teams from Company B would be viewing the event from remote sites throughout the country. Recognizing it was more than likely that the software we used couldn’t be seen in remote feeds, we developed a second presentation on PowerPoint that was sent to each team. The presenters introduced themselves, noted that the live presentation was using animation and since it wouldn’t display remotely, they had a PowerPoint version to show what the judges would see. (Note: we’re following our A.D.A.P formula: Audience-driven sensitivity with both the design of the whole project and the viewing needs of judges and viewers; being Authentic by making the focus of the presentation something we believed in very strongly: the Power of Great Design to Sell.)
After the presentation, which was well received, the lead prospect-judge asked everyone for questions. There were none! At which point, she turned to the presenters and said “I guess you said it all!” Within 2 hours of the presentation, our client called to share what happened (timely feedback is mandatory with our clients), and asked what “you said it all” meant. I responded that they hit a home-run in design and delivery, and had a great chance of getting some of the business. Indeed, our client was awarded half of the work! The buyer was persuaded that when having the best graphic displays was key to their success, paying for them was smart.
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