Do you want the sale, or not?
Dilbert today riffed off of one of my frustrations.
When putting together a budget request, you often need a ballpark estimate of something. I spent an hour on the phone before trying to get one of those estimates. Got bounced from rep. to rep. b/c the person who had my territory was out of town. Left three voicemails asking for an urgent call back.
Never got that call back.
This little tale has happened more than one time, with more than one product.
If you're in sales, and someone is calling to put you in their budget, don't you want to tell them some number? They aren't calling to ask for a demo, they sound like they are ALREADY sold on what your product does. You're going to have to tell them the price eventually. No one is going to write you a blank check.
When you don't ever call back with that ballpark estimate, my assumption is that your price is higher than I'm going to pay...
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2 comments:
That would probably be because most vendors' experience is that "give me a budgetary planning number" means "give me something to use against your competitor to get them to lower their price, but I'm going to buy from them anyway."
Then they should call back with that pricing and a very hard sell. Demos, whatever.
But you don't STOP calling the customer back because they ask for a price.
You open negotiations.
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