Why Price Isn’t the Problem (and What Really Is)
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Brooke Greening: Some people tell me I'm too expensive and I need help figuring out how to better share the value of what I'm offering. Do you have a framework to think through this? This comes from "More Value Please." Do you have a framework to think through how to be able to build value? Well, I've got my matcha, so let's get going.
The answer is to "More Value Please" is yes, I have a framework. I have a whole SERVICE framework that I use in regards to how to lead sales conversations, and in the V of that framework is verbalize the value. And so we are going to talk about that in just a minute. How do you make sure that you're able to verbalize the value because you're not alone in this.
I bet you people who are listening to this right now are absolutely shaking their heads and they're like, yes. I know I deliver a great product. I know I can help my customers, but there is some sort of disconnect because they're not working with me, and so we're going to be talking about that. Before we do, I just wanna encourage you because you actually had about two different questions in this one.
You're saying people are telling you you're too expensive, and then two, you're trying to figure out, well, how do I actually verbalize that value and that I'm not too expensive and that they can work with me? And I just wanna encourage you when things go on like that in regards to where we think that we're too expensive and we're saying, people are saying we're too expensive.
Mindset can come into a play, can come into play when this, when this happens. And so one, maybe we were told like months ago that we were too expensive by one person. And so that's like resonating in our head. And so we think that we are. Or two, maybe no one's really told us that, but that's just what we think, and we're unintentionally now showing that to our customers, and that's beginning to come back to us.
So I'm not gonna go into that in a full spiel right now, but if you have other questions about that or the mindset of what's going on with pricing, please ask and I'll be happy to answer that in future episodes. But for right now, let's talk about verbalizing your value. This is the one thing I want you to take away right now when you're listening to this and you're like, okay, how do I verbalize my value?
Because you hear it all the time. Layer the value. Make sure they know the value because we know if someone is saying no. Or if they think it's too expensive, there's a great chance that they don't understand the value. They're not seeing what we call the return of their investment. They're saying, okay, I'm gonna give you this amount of money, but what am I actually getting back?
They're not seeing that. And so that's what we mean when we say we wanna kind of verbalize the value, but there is a problem. Because no matter how much value you're adding, no matter how many great testimonials you have, no matter how many great things that you know that you can do for your new potential customer, if we get the problem wrong, it doesn't matter.
So in my service framework, I have R for recognize the problem, and then V verbalize the value. What happens so many times is we try to verbalize value and layer value onto something that they don't care about. And so what I mean by this is it can happen in two ways. One, we don't even know their problem.
We've just assumed we know what their frustrations are, and now we're trying to fix it, and now we're gonna add value in regards to how to do that. That's not going to work. Or two, they've shared one problem. We get really excited and then we try to solve it immediately. And that doesn't work either because most of the time when they share their first problem, that's usually never the one that's going to motivate them to buy.
That is the emotion behind their buying decision. Yet we hear that one problem and we try to fix it immediately. So that's what happens. We get the problem wrong. So it doesn't matter how much value we're adding 'cause it doesn't mean anything to them. So let me just give you an example. In my real life.
In real conversations going on in our house because I believe that our sales conversations should reflect our real life conversations and be just as authentic. So many times we tend to be like, okay, this is how I talk in my regular world. But when it comes to sales conversations, that's different. And I would argue it's, it's not supposed to be.
So let me just give you an example. My husband and I have been married for 18 years. Love him to death. We have bipolar views of what vacations should look like completely, and we probably didn't even know this, probably going into your like four or five. And then we started realizing, oh, this is really getting frustrating when we try to schedule vacations because we're not seeing eye to eye.
So no big surprise. I love all the excitement, thinking about things, preparing for things like for months, trying to figure out, okay, what are we gonna do? Where are we gonna go? Who are we gonna talk to? What strangers are we gonna meet? Like all of these fun things that I get super excited about and that I wanna talk to and I wanna build.
My husband on the other hand, doesn't care. Lovingly, I would lovingly say he doesn't give a rip because he wants to disengage, he wants to relax, he wants to be able to rejuvenate. He does not wanna talk to a bunch of strangers or do a bunch of crazy stuff. So this is what happens. I get all excited and it doesn't matter if I found it for free, if I'm giving it to him and I'm saying, okay, this is what we're gonna do and this is gonna be great for our vacation and this is gonna be amazing.
He's not gonna be interested 'cause that's not really the problem that he has. I missed it. I didn't understand truly what was motivating him for a vacation as opposed to what's motivating me. Okay. It's the same thing for our customers. We can miss what they're, what they're under underlining questions, concerns are.
Because we're so focused on us being able to show them what we can do, or they've maybe shared one problem and we just dive into it. So the way that we solve this is we wanna validate and we wanna clarify, okay? So in the next sales conversation you go into, you are going to listen and you're going to hear what they're frustrated with.
Or you're gonna ask them a question in regards to what's frustrating them about their business. And they're gonna start talking. And you're gonna look at the, you're gonna look at the clock and you're gonna say, okay, for the next five minutes. I'm not gonna try to fix it. I am just going to listen. I'm gonna validate and say, oh yeah, that sounds terrible, or, I'm so sorry that happened, or whatever the appropriate validation is.
And then ask clarifying questions. How does that affect da da da da? How is that affecting your personal life? How is that, how did that affect your business? Oh, I'm so sorry that that happened. What happened afterwards? Like you're just asking clarifying questions, validate, clarify, validate, clarify. The reason we get the problem wrong is just we don't ask and we don't give space for people to be able to share it.
So that's what I want you to do because once they are starting to actually share the real problem and what's motivating them to buy. Then you bring in what you can do to be able to solve it, just what they've shared with you, not a whole bunch of things, and hoping that that can resonate with them, but just they've shared the main problem.
You validated, clarified, we're, we're solid. This is what it is now, how can you help with that? That's how you verbalize the value, and when you do that correctly, when you truly understand what their problem is and you can verbalize how you can help with that exact problem. Okay. Then price usually becomes irrelevant.
So they may come and they may say they had horrible customer service. They may say that they thought they were getting this grand experience and the onboarding was awful. It probably is not going to be the exact deliverable that you're going to give them that is going to bring that value. There is more to it.
They're trusting you to help them grow their business, fix their business, whatever the case is. And so you have to know what are those underlining concerns to be able to bring in to how you can help with that. When you do that, then that's when pricing is not really an issue anymore. All right. You had a great question.
Thank you so much for asking it "More Value Please." let me know what other questions you have and let's just remember everybody needs a little bit of help with their sales.
