Dear Debora: What is the Difference Between "Best Price" and "Best Value"

I have to admit that I am really confused with the discussion we have about best “value” vs. best “price”.  Doesn’t our customer view them as the same?  Value Confused in Veribest

It’s important to identify the changes that have occurred in our customers in order to truly understand their perception of value.  In today’s environment our customers believe, most times, that they know more than you do and feel that their time is wasted with you unless you have something else to offer.  Today, according to Tom Snyder and Kevin Kearns in their book Escaping The Price-Driven Sale, it is the value of the expertise that they want:  it is not the easily accessible product or service expertise that they are looking for; it is sales expertise.

As we have said so many times, our buyers either want the best value or the lowest price.  If a buyer really wants the cheapest price they really don’t need a Sales Counselor.  They have so many tools available today that if that’s all they want they CAN literally find it on the Internet and go out and buy it.  However, if the buyer actually wants help and guidance in finding the right home that solves their family’s problems, the cheapest price is NOT what they are looking at.  So when a buyer comes in and asks about incentives or discounts it’s very important for us to determine whether this is truly a price or a value concern during the course of our discovery.

While reading this book I had a great “light bulb” moment.  The authors state that, “it is vital that the sales experience itself produce value to the customer – else why interact with a salesperson at all?”  This statement totally explains the customer’s unwillingness to engage in rapport building with us when they walk in.  Their past experience with other Sales Counselors has led them to believe that there is no real value at all in the sales experience.  So they try at all costs to elude the Sales Counselor, gleaning the information they need from viewing the model, looking at the brochures, price list and specification sheets in an effort to make their decision without wasting their time.

Snyder and Kearns go on to explain that if the salesperson doesn’t do enough discovery and create enough insight in the selling process to outweigh the customer’s investment of time and effort, the customer will simply seek cheaper and cheaper experiences, or we might say prices.  They further explain, “unless the customer is getting from the sales experience itself something that they cannot get in any other way, then they won’t participate in it.”

So, my dear Value Confused in Veribest, if you want to stop having the price discussion with your customers and truly establish a great relationship with them, you are going to have to have a sales presentation that brings your customers extraordinary value;  a presentation based on their interests and needs instead of yours.  Truly if you can accomplish that task you will have created a selling situation that becomes valuable to all parties.