\u201cThanks so much coming out today, would you be able to give me a price for the proposed work and we can go from there?\u201d Coming from an interested prospect, these words might sound promising; but be careful. Stingy prospects sometimes ask sales people for a price estimate just so they can use it as a bargaining chip or glean important information from it. This doesn\u2019t apply to all sales situations but when a considerable amount of planning and\/or analysis is needed to give an estimated price, a sales person should be careful before agreeing to give an estimate. Rule #25 in \u201cThe Sandler Rules\u201d book warns sales people about this situation, and gives some helpful advice for dealing with it. Mattson suggests asking the client what will happen if an estimate is given. For example, \u201cI\u2019d be happy to start working on that. \u2018Let\u2019s pretend\u2019 for a moment that when I come back with our preliminary plan you are completely comfortable with my approach, the estimated costs are within your budget, and the completion dates meet your deadlines\u2026 what would happen at this point?\u201d By saying this, you are letting the client know that you aren\u2019t free research. You are happy to give an estimate but not if they aren\u2019t actually interested in buying. In sales it\u2019s important to take care of the customer, but if you aren\u2019t careful you can easily over-extend yourself and lose valuable time and resources. What are your thoughts on balancing generosity with thriftiness in sales? I would love to hear them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThanks so much coming out today, would you be able to give me a price for the proposed work and we can go from there?\u201d Coming from an interested prospect, these words might sound promising; but be careful. Stingy prospects sometimes ask sales people for a price estimate just so they can use it as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":1079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}