In today’s economic environment, savvy buyers
are attempting to drive down price by commoditizing the products
being offered by their suppliers. The following ten strategies
may assist sales management in maintaining the integrity of
their company’s pricing strategy and margins.
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Develop a corporate negotiation strategy and
process that integrates with sales processes.
Ensure that you include all components of value in the
negotiation, such as terms, conditions, implementation
strategy and added programming.
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Measure (and pay) your salespeople on margin
or profit, not top-line revenue.
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Avoid the creation of an artificial “end of
quarter” sales blitz. These frequently result in last minute
“desperation discounting”.
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Define your organization’s key
differentiators and the impact in terms of value that they
have for the customer. Ensure that your sales people can
clearly articulate this differentiation.
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Ensure that salespeople clearly understand
the customer’s current situation and the impact of your
solution prior to submitting a proposal.
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Provide the tools, collateral and resources
necessary to help the salesperson develop ROI messages for
the final-approver.
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Measure ROI for your organization by account
and allocate assets based on the profitability of the
account, instead of total revenue.
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Develop vertical and horizontal integration
of your company into the client organization. Avoid patterns
in positioning with buyers whose performance is measured on
“best price” versus “best value”. Team-sell
cross-functionally, your tier one accounts.
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Consult with your clients to help them take
costs out of their system by improving existing processes.
Benchmark before and measure after to ensure that your
organization gets visibility from their senior management
for the value that you provide.
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Conduct research to ensure that your pricing
structure is appropriate for current market conditions and
level of product maturation. Customer expectations are set
by high discounts on mature products, resulting in similar
expectations for those that are newly-launched.
