Selling the Price Increase

5Stop Worrying, Start Preparing

Mark Twain once said, “I've experienced many terrible things in my life, a few of which actually happened.”

From a purely evolutionary point of view, worry can be a good thing, because people who avoided danger in the first place were more likely to perpetuate their genes. But there is a big difference between avoiding something that might kill you and allowing worry about approaching customers for price increases to derail you.

Worrying about customer responses to price increases that have not yet happened is the genesis of unnecessary anxiety. When, in your mind, you see your customer yelling at you, canceling their orders and contracts, and rejecting you, it creates insecurity where it didn't previously exist, causing you to overthink, procrastinate, become paralyzed, or avoid approaching your customer with the price increase altogether.

Preparation and Practice

Preparing in advance of price increase conversations is a key to easing worry and maintaining emotional discipline. When it comes to these crucial conversations, winging it and leaving outcomes to chance is exceedingly stupid.

Savvy sales professionals build their plan and practice price increase conversations in advance. Planning allows you to:

• Develop and practice messaging.
• Build a business case.
• Determine best- and worst-case outcomes.
• Plan for questions or objections that may surface.
• Consider fallback positions.
• Set targets and limits when negotiating.
• Review the list of stakeholders, ...