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Do your price quotes have ED, also known as Expense Dysfunction? Do you just throw out prices and assume your prospects and customers understand all the added value and sales help you and your company are bringing to the transaction?

The Summarized Price Quote
You’ve been working hard putting together a price quote for a customer and you’ve reached the point where you have to send them a price. During the sales cycle you’ve given them all the brochures you could find and used all your best sales skills including some from this sales blog, I hope. Shouldn’t you be able to simply provide them a bottom line total price with the words “all items included” next to it?

“If the customer starts to fuss about pricing then we have some ammo to respond.”

Why This is Bad Sales Advice
By going the “all items included” route you have missed an opportunity to tell the customer all the added value they get by buying from you. Oh, I understand, you’ve shown and told them everything already. Forget it. They’ve forgotten everything. The best place to show the customer the details of the hidden value they are getting from you is alongside the bottom line price. This is the one place you know the the customer is going to focus their attention.

Assumptions, Assumptions, Assumptions
Have you ever noticed that the word “assumption” has a negative connotation? Want to know why? Because in most cases we assume something that isn’t true. In sales we assume that the customer knows all the additional value we bring to the table. The fact is, they don’t. It’s our job to remind them of their return on investment by doing business with us and the best place to do this is by including the details right by our final price.

Examples
Free Delivery N/C
Project Coordination N/C
Safety Training N/C
Pre-sale Design Services N/C
Customized Packaging N/C
Assigned Account Manager N/C
Post-sale Engineering Support for 90 Days N/C

There are a million of these depending on your industry and product. You get the idea.

One Final Note
One additional feature is this gives us some negotiating room too. If the customer starts to fuss about pricing then we have some ammo to respond. “If we were to lower your price by 10% we wouldn’t be able to include the additional services at no charge as we have proposed.”

Related information: How to handle: “Tell me your price right now.”, A #1 Proposal Tip

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Tags: negotiation, pricing

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