Money Maker #121 You will never experience or achieve what you can’t imagine yourself achieving.

Vision, The Number One Controlling Factor for Success
Your vision of yourself, your life and what it can be is the number one factor controlling how you will do in life. Just as our lack of vision and imagination can limit us, they can free and enable us. Big vision, big motivation, big imagination, equals big results. “Walk like a king, you’re a king” goes the saying. This is true for all of us. “If you think you can or think you can’t you’re probably right.” Working with your personal vision is not only telling yourself you can, but also telling yourself you can, Big. Don’t let others limit you. But more importantly, don’t limit yourself.

Work. Health. Wealth. Family.

What is your vision? Write it out to move to the next stage of your life. Give yourself a vision to aspire to, and you will be on the way towards that next stage. If you do not give yourself a new vision, you are on your way to being stuck where you are. Winners take control and responsibility for how they are doing. Losers do nothing and blame their lack of results on the world.

Money Maker #13, Having a well thought out, powerful and inspirational response to the question “Why Should I Buy from You?” is one of the keys to professional selling.

In the book, “Sweaty Palms, the Neglected Art of Being Interviewed,” the author, Anthony H. Medley, gives many strategies on how to interview well, but the most important is to have an answer to the question, “Why should we hire you?” He points out that your interviewer may never ask that question directly, but there will always be an opportunity to give your answer to that question. If your answer is powerful and inspirational you will get the job.

The same is true for the response to the question, “Why should I buy from you?” A great answer to this question will overcome many objections. “I don’t need any new suppliers.” “I don’t buy from brokers.” “I’ve already got twenty guys calling me.” These and many other objections can be handled by a well thought out answer to, “Why should I buy from you?” As with the job interview, your potential customers will probably not ask you this question directly, but many of their objections will be overcome with a planned response to this question.

In the February issue of Merchant Magazine, we contributed the following article:

Competing on price is often just being in front of the wrong customer, with the wrong product at the wrong time. Avoiding that situation is a subject for another article.But in the hyper-competitive lumber industry, we are often in front of the right customer, at the right time with the right product, and we still are forced to compete on price.

Use these techniques to battle price:

1. Assume the order. “When we put this together” not “If we put this together.” Act as if the order is yours.
2. Don’t bring up price until the customer does. When we hold off on price we show confidence in our proposal. This relaxes our customer. When our customer is interested, they will ask about price.We can close from “What is the price on this?” - “That’s the good part, we can get this to you at $350, when would you like to take delivery?”
3. Propose don’t Quote. Questions like “What are you looking for?” or “What do you need?” Make us shopping services or quotron units. When we propose solutions to our customers, we are proposing something unique, special, all our own.
4. When customers say, “Your price is too high.” We say, “Oh, (really), we’ve been selling at these levels, what were you thinking/feeling/hearing about price?”“What are you thinking?” is a discussion question. “What do you want to pay?” gives all the power to the customer and will produce a lower price discussion every time.
5. Quality with a Similar Story. “Mrs. Customer, the quality warrants the price. I have a customer in Texas, a real price shopper. For six months I tried to get him to try this product and he wouldn’t. A couple of weeks ago he was caught in a bind and had to try it. He loves it and has re-ordered. The quality makes it a great deal for him and for you also, let’s put this together!”
6. Fear, Scarcity and Urgency Closes combat price.Example:“I know this is more than you are thinking of paying Tom, but people are paying these prices and we are running out of stock, so let’s take care of this before they’re all gone. What’s your PO# on this?”“Tom, you’re a busy man. You can shop this thing and maybe save a few bucks, but your time is worth a lot, and when you come back these could be gone. Let’s get this one off your To Do list. Give me your PO number, this is a great product.”
7. Is price the only thing standing in the way of us putting this deal together? We bend ourselves three ways from Friday to get the price right, AND THEN, there is another slight problem… Ask this question early and save lots of time! The beauty of this question is that it is a Closing question. Either way the customer answers, we are moving towards a Close.
8. Just because that is a good deal doesn’t mean this isn’t a good deal also. (Or, that’s a great deal, and this is also.)When a customer tells you they can (or did) buy something similar for less money, DO NOT ACT DEFEATED. These supposed lower prices are a test to if we believe in our product and our price.
9. Don’t lower the price without customer participation. Don’t negotiate with yourself. If your customer won’t talk about price don’t fish for a lower number alone.
10. Best Quote Price Vs Best Sell Price. When we try to ask customers where we need to be on price, they say, “I don’t play that way, you tell me the best you can do and I’ll let you know.”

Change the paradigm.

“Mr. Customer, we sell this product all over the U.S., do you know who gets the best prices from us?” Most of the time the customer will answer, “Probably the customers that buy the most from you.” You say, “No, the customers who get the best prices are the customers that work with us.”

Go on to explain, “Mr. Customer, I am giving you my very best Quote Price, but we will have to work together to get my (our) very best Buy Price.”
Sell “teamwork” to our customers when they try to make us their adversary.


Let’s treat price as just another detail. Propose unique solutions and use the above techniques to compete against the price objection.

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