Zach Selch recommends Tom Riley's 1999 book Price Objections as the foundation for handling price pushback on high-ticket sales. The method: understand customer needs first, then show how your solution solves them so price stops being an objection. Selch uses it to train his sales reps and revisits it regularly.
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Hi, I'm in Narita, the Tokyo airport, and I'm talking about Price Objections by Tom Riley. It's an old book, 1999, but it really is a classic and one of the key elements that you need to know to sell complex products and high-ticket items. I've always sold relatively complex solutions. Virtually my whole 30-year career, I've sold the most expensive competitor. So I've always been highly priced, and it's really important to know how to deal with getting past the price objections, establishing value. And it's not tricks, it's a method of laying out your value from the beginning. Understand the customer's needs, understand how to state those customer's needs in a way so they understand the value, and then the price doesn't become an objection. You can get past it. So this is really a book I read very close to 20 years ago, and it's been very helpful. It's one of those books, probably one of the very, very few reference, business reference books I keep on my shelf, and I'll pull down every year or two to take a look at. And I've trained people, I've used this as a core for training my sales reps. Basically, you had them buy it look at it and work with it and developed pricing models according to it. So it's a really, really helpful book. Not the easiest read, I would say. It's not the type of thing you want to read in the bathroom over a couple of minutes. It's more the type of thing you go back to again and again. But really, if you're selling— now everybody should be selling at a higher price than the bare minimum. Even if you're selling a commodity or even if you're selling selling a relatively low-priced item, you should read this. It'll help you understand how to maybe get more money. But if you're selling a high-priced, high-ticket item with an advanced technology, with advanced benefits, this is really a key book to help you build up your pricing model and price those price objections. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
