{"id":1181,"date":"2014-05-15T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2019-04-03T08:46:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T12:46:02","slug":"thoughtful-thursdays-avoid-being-fooled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/15\/thoughtful-thursdays-avoid-being-fooled\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughtful Thursdays &#8211; Avoid being fooled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever had the feeling your prospect might be&nbsp;using you as a lever to better their position with the existing supplier? Fair or not, it happens. With&nbsp;forethought and planning you can lessen the chances of it happening to you.<\/p>\n<p>I will assume your product\/service is not a commodity.<\/p>\n<p>There are signs to look for&nbsp;that may indicate the presence of a&nbsp;second agenda.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You may have called on the prospect for a long time without any&nbsp;great degree if sales success&nbsp; and a request comes from what appears to be out of the blue<\/li>\n<li>The prospect says that the matter is urgent and needs your quotation right away<\/li>\n<li>The volumes are unexpectedly high<\/li>\n<li>The prospect tells you that your pencil needs to be sharp<\/li>\n<li>The opportunity sounds a bit too good to be true<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you get a sense the real need is&nbsp;to drive&nbsp;prices down&nbsp;and that even if you come in lower, the business will stay with they current supplier you are probably correct. Before making your offer consider the following tactics.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ask the prospect what has changed<\/li>\n<li>Why is it suddenly urgent? (If it is truly urgent, price should not be the deciding factor)<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t put the offer in writing without receiving a commitment to buy if should your proposal be favourable<\/li>\n<li>Conduct some quick competitive research. Has anything changed the competitive landscape that would compel the prospect to come to you?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Be thoughtful and ask yourself why before jumping in and risking needless price erosion. It only takes a second to drop price and it will seem like an eternity before you can implement an increase. Don&#8217;t be blinded by&nbsp;an opportunity that may not really exist.<\/p>\n<p>Good selling,<br \/>\nRichard<\/p>\n<p>Have a question about sales? <a title=\"Contact Sakanashi and Associates\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sakanashiandassociates.com\/contact\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Contact me<\/a> and I will respond.<\/p>\n<p>Please share Thoughtful Thursdays posts with people you feel may find the topic interesting and helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever had the feeling your prospect might be&nbsp;using you as a lever to better their position with the existing supplier? Fair or not, it happens. With&nbsp;forethought and planning you can lessen the chances&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/15\/thoughtful-thursdays-avoid-being-fooled\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5,8,3,1],"tags":[60,35,47,73],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sales","category-sales-tips","category-selling-skills","category-thoughtful-thursdays","category-uncategorized","tag-sales-2","tag-sales-tips-2","tag-selling-skills-2","tag-thoughtful-thursdays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3560,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/3560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}