Coping with price resistance is one of the most important competencies required to be successful in selling high-end products and professional services. Buyers of such products and services generally work hard to get the best deal. With easy access to the Internet, numerous studies have shown that information asymmetry has been reduced between consumers and skilled professionals in virtually every industry and market niche.

Conventional wisdom about reducing price resistance has long centered on marketing and sales arguments that focused on how companies compare based on common criteria. As a result, a lot of time is spent discussing better warranties, better service, and better product quality. In short, you’ve been working hard to be different, but when your competitors copy your every move, it ends up being different in the same way as your competitors.

This is a recipe for marketing disaster; a sure path to brand obsolescence.

Here are 3 powerful techniques to reduce price resistance on prospects and customers.

1. Develop an effective USP

A unique selling proposition is the particular sales pitch that definitely differentiates your business from any other substitute or alternative for the benefits you offer to the market. Traditionally conceived as a concept for the commercialization of specific products and programs, the concept of PVU can be applied to your company as a whole in such a way that it creates a protective cover for your company against the competition.

For a USP to be effective in reducing price resistance, it must authoritatively establish its difference in benefits that are priority for the market. You cannot assume what these priorities are. The best way to develop this is through a well-developed market research process (even if it is only within your customer database) that helps you definitively articulate what is important to your market.

2. Business model innovation

In the book “Blue Ocean Strategy”, W. Chan Kim and his colleague Renee Mauborgne advocate designing a business strategy that exploits the margins of the current market, industry, or business definitions.

A business model is simply a representation of how a company makes money. You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 multinational to innovate your business model. Simply adding a product or service offering that is valuable to your customers can sufficiently differentiate your business model in a way that decreases price resistance. In my Denver business consulting practice, we help Denver professional service companies and manufacturers implement differentiated business models using innovations as simple as:

Information publishing profit centers
Strategic partnerships and alliances
Market repositioning

3. Implement CATO Persuasion

CATO is an acronym that stands for “Comparison of apples to oranges.” By comparing your offerings to more expensive and inconvenient alternatives, you frame the context of your sales and marketing presentations to highlight the particular benefits of your products and programs.

Direct response guru Dan Kennedy gives an example of this kind of “apple to orange” persuasion in his book, No BS Sales Success. He shares how he was able to sell more than a $ 180 package of information products by comparing those products to the credible alternative of having to incur expenses of more than $ 1,000 for similar information at conferences directed to the same professionals.

Conclution

These are just a few of the many strategies you can employ in your business to reduce price resistance for your prospects and customers. Other methods include the aggressive implementation of social proof elements, using a multi-step marketing campaign that involves generating information posting opportunities to sell high-end products and services.