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Can You Give Me A Price?
Last week, I was working with a brand new client on sales strategy. They had an opportunity to pursue a significant opportunity and were being asked to price their services. They asked me how to handle it.
The problem was that there was nothing clear whatsoever about what was expected or what issues needed to be addressed. The prospect, “wanted to get a feel for what to expect.” While I certainly understand that, there was probably no dumber question to ask than, “what’s the price?”
While my client agreed with my observation, we both understood that in today’s world, procurement exerts an awful lot of control and even when their requests don’t make sense, if you don’t play by their game, there isn’t much you can do. You can’t, after all, tell procurement that they are being dumb.
Flying to Winnipeg this morning for a series of speeches, I had the rare chance to read an actual newspaper and look at the comics. In it was a Dilbert cartoon that tells the story.
Now you’re armed. The next time a buyer asks you for a price prematurely send them this cartoon, with a recommendations that they first diagnose their situation to apply the appropriate action.
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4 Responses to “Can You Give Me A Price?”
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by dougdavidoff: What Dilbert can teach buyers – and sellers. http://su.pr/2csa5U (Today’s post)…
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Such a timely blog! My favorite is always, “Just tell me what you think it’ll cost” and then you never hear from the prospect again.
This is great! I have frequently responded to requests like this with the tongue in cheek response “it should be somewhere between one and one million dollars”. Most people laugh it off, but I have gotten an occasional dirty look.
As an Internet marketing and web development firm, we frequently are faced with vague RFPs or nebulous ideas that people need quotes on. It takes a little while to help them understand that it takes some time and discussion to properly scope a project. They usually get it in the end.
Thanks for the laugh. It made my day!
Erich Hanson
Gini – well said.
Erich, happy to have given you a laugh – we all need one from time to time. I’ve always found one way to get people focused on the scope faster is to ask them how they will know if the implementation will be a success.