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matters welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast the podcast where we scale up on
knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems I’m Trace Blackmore the host of the scaling up H2O podcast and Nation
it’s my hope that you are getting ready for the Global 6K I’ve been talking
about the global 6K for a while now so many people in the scaling up Nation are
participating in the global 6K and this is where we help as industrial water
treaters bring awareness that not everybody in the world has access to
clean drinking water now here are some statistics more than 800 children under
the age of five die every day from diarrhea caused by contaminated water
poor sanitation and improper hygiene now the reason it’s a 6K and not a 5k like
we’re all used to is that’s the average distance that mainly children have to
walk in order to go get that water and bring it back well imagine if they’re
walking 6 kilomet a day and back they’re not going to school they’re not
developing things that will not only help them but help their entire
community and it’s all because water is not where they are well that’s what team
World Vision does and they believe that the global water and sanitation crisis
can be solved within our lifetime and $50 that’s what the fee you pay to do
the global 6K will bring clean water to one person in need and you’ll also be
able to let everybody know not only are you supporting this cause you’re letting people know about this cause and you
will get a bib with the child that you were sponsoring picture on it and you
will learn all about their story so it’s a $5 registration fee if you have kids
that’s $25 and here’s some of the things that team World Vision has done about every
10 seconds team World Vision gives a new person clean drinking water what an
amazing statistic so that was about 10 people since I’ve been talking just on
this one segment so since 2020 team World Vision has brought
3.4 million people clean drinking water again an amazing statistic and they’ve
been doing this for over 30 years I’ve had several people who are with Team World Vision come and talk on this
podcast and they know what they’re doing they’ve gotten this down to a science I
would say so that way the money that you donate is really it’s going to this
purpose so to find out more you can go to scaling up h2o.com
6K and you got a couple choices once you go there you can join our team team
scaling up nation and you can do the global 6K at home on your tread Mill you
can go to your favorite park that’s what my company does or you can decide to go
someplace else you can do it by yourself you can do it with your family you can do it with your team now if you decide
to sign up a team everybody’s welcome to join team scaling up or you might want
to create your own team we’ll have all that information for you on scaling up
h2o.com 6K Nation I’ve been doing doing this for a couple of years and I am always amazed
at the number of people that I get to talk to when my wife and the rest of the
team and I go to a park and people say hey you’re wearing this bright orange T-shirt with a child taped on it or or
pinned that’s the bib I was talking about earlier and people want to know what you’re doing why are you doing this
and so many people are just unaware that the entire world is not like the UN
United States it’s not like the other First World countries where you just go over to another room open a tap and
clean sanitized water comes out for us to do anything we want with it in
abundance people just don’t understand that on a regular basis so just having
that conversation and letting them know that we do have a global Water Crisis and we can all be part of the solution
that’s the coolest thing of about the global 6K if you ask me but find out for
yourself go to scaling up h2o.com 6K and I can’t wait to see all the
pictures that we post by hashtagging Global 6K or scaling up H2O can’t wait
to see those I love sharing those in our social media it’s one of the best days
of the year for me Nation so many people are going to our web page going over to
to our event section and learning about all the different conferences that are
available so I’m going to encourage you to do what I just said other people were
doing and go to scaling up2.com navigate over to our events page and just look at
all of the conferences that are coming up all of the training sessions that are coming up and if you notice that
something is missing give a line out to us let us know what we need to have on
that show page we’ve got things within the United States we have things outside of the United States we’re trying to
make this the One-Stop place that you go to to learn anything about what’s going
on in the industrial Water Treatment Community one more time that’s going to our scaling up h2o.com page and going
over to events Nation I know you are going to absolutely love this interview
because this is a topic that we all need help with so without any further Ado
here’s that interview my lab partner is Casey Brown
of boost pricing Casey welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast oh thank you so
much I’m delighted to be here we are going to be talking about a topic that
everybody is probably going to lean in and turn the volume up on this is an
episode that’s all about pricing I can’t wait to talk about that with you but
before we get there do you mind introducing yourself to the scaling up Nation sure thing Trace thanks I’m Casey
Brown I’m the founder of a company called boost pricing and we are a training and consulting firm that exists
for the sole purpose of helping organizations get paid well for their Excellence well let me paint the picture
so we’re in the water treatment industry and we’re working with customers some know what it is that we do others just
know that they need it and they need somebody to do it so we go through this
extensive process where we go through our sales process we do a survey we do
Rapport building we figure out what the issues are how we’re going to solve them
and we’re thinking all these things how do we win how does the customer win and then we have to talk about
pricing and nobody likes that and we’re going to help everybody today so where
do you want to start unpacking that it’s such a fun topic for me and uh
I may be the only person that gets really geeked up about pricing that I know but I I believe that it is an
opportunity for sellers for salespeople for sales leaders business owners to unlock an incredible amount of profit
potential in their organizations very often the strategy that’s in place is is
really solid and then there in the last mile there’s a fumble there’s a there’s an opportunity to improve the execution
with the sales team so I guess you know for me the the right place to start is diving into some of that discomfort that
you mentioned that a lot of folks have around pricing well let’s start with that because most people are are great
and they’re having fun up until maybe the last page of the proposal when they
shakingly turned the page or or maybe they flipped the iPad a lot of people are doing proposals on that way now and
now it has the price so how do we have more confidence in our pricing and what
are we doing wrong what should we be doing well it’s a great question my experience with with salespeople and
I’ve met many thousands and I think let me just say right up front I think it’s one of the toughest jobs in a company I
think uh if you were in the back office you think the guys are out just out there golfing and and glad handing with
customers but the reality is selling is a really challenging profession you you face an incredible amount of uh
rejection if everything goes smoothly you usually don’t get the credit but if anything goes wrong you get all the
blame so I think the sales guys are out there taking a lot of heat on behalf of the whole company and they’re the they’re the source of the revenue for
the company that said in my experience uh talking to many thousands of sales
people pricing is nobody’s favorite part of the job they get into selling because they’re great at connecting with other
humans they like to to talk and explore and ask questions they like to consultatively solve problems they like
to connect with uh value you for the customer and and right up until the moment that they have to say what
something costs or engage in a pricing negotiation that’s when a otherwise very
confident very effective salesperson can start to get a little bit uh shaky in the knees so much so that I’ve I’ve seen
a number of Industries including this one where rather than tell somebody what it costs they’ll tell them I’m just
going to email you the proposal so they’ll hide behind not having to even say the number out loud and if they do
say it they’re just trying to rush past it what that causes well a couple things
first of all dogs and Prospects can smell fear so when we’re operating from
a place of fear that conveys a sense of desperation and fear that can really hit our clothes rate it can really causes us
to lose deals but it also especially if you’re selling into procurement as a lot of folks in the water treatment uh world
have to do that’s just like you know kind of like blood in the water and the St the Sharks start circling so we’ve
got to operate from a place of confidence the root of confidence is value so understanding how your products
and services specifically connect to the customer that you’re selling to and because procurement is such a powerful
force in in larger organizations you can’t just sell to procurement you’ve got to build a broad base of support in
the organization through engineering or operations or facilities as well so number one is understand your value
truly and very specifically to this Customer because your value to a hospital system is going to be different
than your value to Atlanta the city of Atlanta so understanding how your products and services are Valu to your
customer is number one and then the tricky part comes in which is convincing the customer of it I am fond of saying
customers will never pay you what you’re worth they’ll only ever pay you what they think you’re worth and you control
their thinking so your job as a salesperson your your really main job is
to help the customer understand how valuable you can be to them and when we really do our homework on that I think
we can enter negotiations from a place of confidence courage and strength not from a place of fear so a pricing story
that comes to mind we were working with the municipality here in Atlanta and we
were proposing the water treatment and it was after we were referred in because there was a failing program and
ultimately we had a great rapport with the people that were on site but then when we met with the people making the
decision in the procurement office all they wanted to know was price they knew
nothing about water treatment and so everything they considered however many
proposals that they had they considered that they were all equal and they were just looking off of price and I was
younger at the time so I know I could do a better job now but at the time I I
tried to explain to him that all water treatment companies weren’t the same these were how you could evaluate water
treatment companies and he just wasn’t having it and the example that he gave
was tens of thousands of dollars it might have been hundreds of thousands of dollars that he saved on treadmills
because he shopped it around for this new fitness center that they were building for the county and if that
worked for treadmills it had to work for water treatment and I just could not get
past that we did not get the business however two years later we did because that was another fa program you get what
you pay for right so in that situation how would you coach a younger Trace
Blackmore well it’s a very common situation that we run into and it can be
someone in procurement but it could be anyone that’s that’s across the table from us buying that let us know that
they’re exclusively buying on price and I’m going to break those situations into two different categories and the first
is I think the category you kind of found yourself in based on that your description you gave me which is
they’re telling the truth they only care about price now I believe at the end of the day that’s why they had two failing
programs in a row because they weren’t making a decision based in value I think if you’re a best-in-class or better
in-class provider in your Marketplace you should not Chase to the bottom a
price for a customer that does not value you that does not value what you do or how you do it those kind of
opportunities are almost always land with the bottom feeders in the industry which is why they had two failures in a row at the end of the day if the
customer is pursuing a strategy that is against their own best interest you cannot solve that as uh my older brother
says you can’t beat Stupid so do not let a customer’s bad strategy drive a bad
strategy for you and so in that in that sense and based on what I understand of that that opportunity the younger Trace
Blackmore did exactly the right thing which is try to do as much as you can to help the customer understand that
treadmills aren’t water and if if water treatment is down it is a significant L
different impact on the community than if treadmills are down and by the way you could have one or two treadmills go
down it’s there’s so many differences in terms of the the cost of failure in your
space than treadmills that guy’s going to get it or he’s not it sounds like he wasn’t going to and so you do your best
and then you move on one important lesson when you do your best move on and don’t win is don’t let that pollute your
future don’t drag somebody else’s aggressive and mercenary and maybe even
misguided procurement tactics into your next deal and let that cause you to
scope or propose the wrong solution because you’re trying to figure out how to do that in a cheaper way or scope and
propose the right solution but at too low of a price so in the first scenario
which is they’re telling you the truth they only care about price do your best win the ones you can at a price that
makes sense for you let the rest go and move on and I I’m a big believer and fail fast if someone does not value you
the quicker that you’re able to uncover that this isn’t a good fit for you you the sooner you can conserve your sales
resources meaning your time for someone you know to go find opportunities that are a better fit I love that statement
because there’s so many people that are just wash rinse repeating they’re they’re doing the activities but they’re
doing it with the wrong people and you just said something to free them of that
don’t worry about it they’re never going to buy spend your resources spend your time on the people that are are worth it
quote unquote right and and another top that relates to kind of how we spend
ourselves our own resources our own times as a seller is the touchbased
followup check back infinite Loop you know the getting ghosted by customers just getting a little more Discerning
and and some of this kind of comes back to sort of even qualifying initial qualifying but you continue to qualify a
customer and a prospect throughout the the buying process is really understanding that your value is not a
fit for everyone and to really Target you’re selling effort time messaging to
those for whom your Value Story is the is the center of their Bullseye and don’t spend time on the outer part of
the Ring because you’re going to burn yourself out you’re going to fill out a million rfps that you have no chance of
winning which means you aren’t spending enough time on the ones you are better equipped for to Truly Deeply prepare to
go through those deals line by line uh really getting prepared for the conversations and negotiations because
you’re too busy chasing the wrong deals let’s talk about the second group which is where they tell you they care about
price exclusively and that’s not true now every procurement professional is measured on price certainly that’s part
of how they get paid and rewarded and promoted most procurement professionals are not exclusively paid on that and
some are not even primarily paid on that there there is an increasing awareness in the procurement space that some of
the very aggressive and mercenary tactics that arose in the last 20 plus years have started to work against the
best interest of the buyer for example reverse auctions you know a lot of organizations are are outlawing or
forbidding those inside their organizations because they tend to attract the least common denominator in
terms of the the suppliers and if you are a better inclass or best-in-class provider you’re avoiding those kind of
deals where you know you’re being compared against someone who’s significantly less qualified than you
and it’s all boiling down to price so I see a trend away from the most aggressive and egregious uh tactics in
procurement so I I find that even if the person is exclusively telling you they
care about price that’s not all they care about that said there’s also a whole body of other folks in the
organization that do care very much about the quality the durability the longevity of the system the performance
of the system the ease of of use the the challenges it presents to their team or
not in in executing and operating the system those folks have an outsized amount of power especially in a lot of
organizations that may not present that the case in other words they say we’ve
prequalified six biders they all have the ability to provide the same products Services Solutions as you at this point
it’s down to price and then in the backdrop the engineering department or facilities department or somebody who
really understands that you are better equipped to solve their problem is nudging maybe even pulling levers on the
buying process and I’ve seen many times s that organizations have delivered that line everybody’s pre-qualified we picked
the lowest price and then when the the preferred vendor the one that that has the best ability to serve them doesn’t
win the bid they pluck them out of the middle and give them the work anyway it’s just a procurement tactic designed to create fear and the mind of the
seller so that they can get the best price possible and that is entirely reasonable buying Behavior whether
you’re talking about a procurement person or not and so they’re doing what they’re doing I would say before you
walk into an environment like that be very clear on your floor be very clear on the price you will not go lower than
and don’t take anything out of the scope of work that’s going to mean you’re not proud of the result you mentioned not
changing the scope so you’re fitting to what’s not supposed to happen tell us more about that sure so a very common
strategy when you find your pricing is out of line with competition or out of line with the budget is to start Des
scoping changing you know go from best to better quality or or phase the work
or what have you all of that is a very sensible strategy when you’re trying to manage to a customer’s budget and be
competitive however one of the things that’s really important is make sure that you’re not stripping the scope down
so far that it’s not a result you’re proud of I kind of like to give an example of you know hey let’s say we s
sell chocolate cake and it’s $10 and you say I only have eight well first of all if I cut to eight then I’m losing out on
a lot of margin and you’re thinking I was overcharging you to begin with now it hurts trust I’ll say that again
unearned accounts hurt trust it’s really important if we’re going to change the price we’ve got to change some element
of the deal now maybe I say okay I can do chocolate cake for $8 but it doesn’t
come on a glass plate and it doesn’t have sprinkles and candles if $2 magically appear out of thin air you
never had a budget limitation of $8 to begin with you were just seeing what you could get but you know to you but
sprinkles candles and a glass plate are really important so fine I get my extra two bucks or if you say no I’m I’m good
with that that works for me now it is a winwin win win for the customer they get to save their $2 win for me I don’t have
the cost and expense and risk of sprinkles and candles and plates and win for trust win for what I would call
Price Integrity which is we’re not changing the price without changing the deal in a way that hurts trust now very
importantly we can’t ever say okay I I’ll do that and I’m going to take out the eggs and sugar because now we have a
cake that isn’t delicious that doesn’t provide the value so it is fine to look at scoping as a tool to meet budget as
long as at the end the day we’re delivering a delicious cake I love that cake analogy that’s that’s just so
powerful in that vein I have a friend of mine that in their proposals they have a
gold bronze and silver pricing I guess not in that order though because I didn’t say them in the right order uh
but but you know what I mean and they they just give that as their pricing is that something you recommend or should
you hold that to later I think that’s a great question I think it does depend on
the lexity and how technical of a solution you sell and I’m sure that the
water treatment industry I know some about it from our clients but it’s not an area of deep expertise to me so I
would guess and you can tell me if I’m wrong that there’s probably a range there that there are some solutions some
products some services that are on the simpler possibly more competitive and commoditized end of the spectrum and
others that are wildly complex and wildly technical I would say that as it
pertains to what I just said The more Tech techical the solution the less I think sharing packages if you will or
tears make sense and I’ll share why you mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that some of your customers are
Savvy about what they’re buying and some have no idea they just know they need it in either case you are their expert you
are the one that they are looking to to give their trust to to give their resources to to trust their Community to
and you’re going to take great care of them you’re going to lead them you’re going to be the expert that tells them what they need what’s going to solve
their problem how to do that and again that applies whether you’re talking about somebody who really knows quite a bit about water treatment they’re not
going to be as knowledgeable about it as you or somebody especially somebody who’s quite new at it the problem with
giving choice to someone who’s looking to you to be the adviser in the room is
it sort of abdicates that expert position it says let’s it lets the customer be the expert and they’re
frankly not so it can work to provide packages or choice or tears especially
if it’s a sort of a simpler Arrangement a simpler option for someone to kind of evaluate but the more complex the
options become to evaluate the less that person is very equipped at a detailed
level to make a prudent choice between the tiers I think it actually works against their perception of you as an
expert and it could really lead them to choose the wrong option because to them they don’t know the difference and of
course we want to save money I think that’s a fantastic mindset that a water
treatment professional when they’re in the sales process their role their mindset needs to be their ATT trusted
advisor to that person I love that yeah and my experience is most salespeople are Exceptional from the very beginning
of the process at being consultative sellers they ask a lot of questions they want to understand what the customer’s
operations are what their challenges are what happen with their last system how it’s working they ask a million questions that build trust and build
confidence in the customers mind that they are the expert and then too many companies when it comes time to propose
and have pricing conversations they sort of fall off the trusted advisor cliff and get down very transactional you know
we are we are seeking in sales to be a peer to the customer a helpful peer
asking them questions telling them when they’re going off track even respectfully disagreeing with them if we see them making a mistake and I think by
and large professional salespeople are very good at that and then the second we get into price conversations
negotiations we drop down into Peddler status we start getting very transactional and then we we fall prey
to what I would call kind of pricing tricks and gimmicks like I am not suggesting by the way that you’re you’re
the one you’re sharing is is a gimmick so the the bronze silver gold can work really really well but sometimes we have
these ideas left over from I don’t know like a psych like you everybody knows everything ends in nine quote unquote
the psychology and the research around things ending in nine Falls AP in B2B sales that’s a retail trick that’s if
you’re selling you know a bottle of Pepsi for $1.99 it doesn’t work when you’re selling a tens of thousands hundreds of
thousands millions of dollar system and so we have kind of rules of thumb or things we’ve heard or tricks we’ve
picked up along the way around pricing that we Infuse into our business that really have no place there and and it is
not supported by how people actually buy and one of those is that sometimes people think well of course customers
are going to want a choice of course I’m going to it would be better for me to lay out a couple of options and I would
say that the times for that are fewer than I think is is what people conclude
um there’s something interesting about about Choice humans love Choice I’m a kind of a brain science geek and and I
look at and I’m very interested in the role of psychology behavioral economics like how our brains work and how that
influences what we choose as buyers and sellers because that’s very relevant to the pricing conversation humans love
choice we love to choose it gives us a little dopamine hit it’s fun it’s exciting but too much Choice can kill a
sale if you think about if you go to buy a car you know there’s three different trim packages you don’t choose the 70
things under those trim packages individually you’re not deciding on aluminum rims and an upgraded stereo
package and a sunroof and a those things are bundled together by your car dealer for a Reason by your car manufacturer
for a reason because if you had 70 things that decide yes or no on it
creates decision fatigue it could kill the sales somebody could walk in there ready to buy the car and walk out
without the car because they just get overloaded so the thing that I think your colleague is doing right there is
they’re not giving seven choices they’re not giving 22 choices they’re giving three but Upstream of that I would ask
myself a question does giving choice to the person sitting across from me help their decision process or not and and
sometimes the answer is no yeah that’s a great lens to frame that in he told me
that he felt he was now three different companies putting a price in so it
bolstered his hopefully likelihood to getting the business but that’s a great way to look at that this makes sense to
me and I think then if he’s kind of trying to bracket the competitive market
by providing Choice the question I would have and and and that can be a great strategy the question I would have is is
it possible to learn something before you put in your proposal what the customer is actually going to care about
what questions could you ask earlier in the sales process what investigation research homework could you do earlier
in the sales process that would lead you to know because sometimes it’s very knowable right out of the gate this is
going to be a bronze these guys are very very price conscious that’s driving their decision- making we need to go in
there as as with as sharp of a pencil as possible and propose our best price our lowest best most competitive price other
times you’re learning right out of the gate that they really want you know they want the Cadillac they they want the champagne they want the best they want
first class they don’t want a ride coach because either you know the budget’s there or they’ve got you know a
stakeholder group they’re trying to please that has a certain kind of set of criteria so some of that has to do with
just again conserving resources putting proposals together for complicated things that can take hours days weeks I
mean how depends on how complex Your solution is so why put three together when you can put one together if you’re able to know upfront that the only one
that makes sense for them is gold everything else is going to be you know possibly going to make us look
cheaper one of the things we’ve got in our industry which I’m sure every industry has is there is no shortage of
companies out there that are less Technical and I’m just going to say more cheaper I can’t that’s not a real way of
saying that but but that’s that’s how I’m going to say it so there are companies out there people just care
about price and they want to check the box that they’re giving it so I want to ask you about something that I started
doing a couple of years ago I grabbed a bunch of business cards from one of these cheaper companies and when they
are so stuck on getting the cheapest price I give them their business card and I very politely say you know I think
that there are some other issues here when you’re ready to resolve them please call us let me tell you what I love
about that strategy and it goes back to something I said previously which is that dogs and Prospects can smell fear
showing up with the confidence to walk away showing up with the confidence to say no not that you don’t want the
business not that you’re not eager to get it but if you can’t say no if you won’t walk away no matter how low the
price needs to be then you have no power you have no power and the customer holds
all the cards I think no is the most powerful word in a salesperson’s
vocabulary and it’s the most underused what I find amazing and I’m you tell me how this goes for you is when you are
willing to say if price is the most most important criteria for you were probably not the best fit here’s another firm I I
would recommend you reach out to sometimes they say no no no no no no no we want to talk to you has that ever
happened to you that has happened more often than not right it’s a version of
when somebody’s walking at I’m going to use another car dealer analogy when someone’s walking out of the dealership because they and then the the the
salesman chases them down in the parking lot right we will hear from a customer this is a hard line and we say okay and
this is you know we we’ll take them at the word at the end of the day we try to convince them of value we try to move
their line but if their line is where their line is and that’s too low for us we need to be able to know we have to walk away and then all of a sudden we
find out sometimes that line was never a firm line it was a tactic their job is
to save money so they’re trying that but that’s it’s back to the chocolate cake analogy $2 magically appeared because
sprinkles and candles are really important to me so sometimes they’re going to go and and take that business
card of that cheaper inferior option and for some of them it’s going to be good enough for some of them it’s not and
they’re going to have to learn the lesson the hard way and then they’re going to call you a year or two from now and for some of them you’re going to find out the line was never in that in
the spot that they pretended it was as a procurement tactic and then you’re going to it
reopens the the negotiation the conversation and you it’s very clear then you’re in a kind of a peer-to-peer
conversation you’re on equal footing with that Customer because you don’t need the business you want it you’re
there to earn it but at the end of the day if it’s not a fit you’re willing to walk away let me start my next question with a
story and I had just started my firm and I wanted to be known for a technical
expert uh I wanted people to think okay for Best Value best overall company and
and knowing what they needed to do think of my firm so I went out and I I worked with this one individual and I found all
sorts of things that I could do better and I laid them all out was probably the best proposal I had ever written in my
entire life and and I was going through the proposal and then I showed in my
price and they had a lower technical proficient company there at the time
anyway we ended it and I asked for the sale and he said you’re just too expensive the company I have now is much
more cost effective and I said but you understand everything that we spoke about they’re not doing what you’re
paying them for and yes you’re going to pay more but you’re going to get more and that’s going to be an R why a return
on your investment and I even showed him that in the proposal and he goes yeah we’re just going to stay with the other company and we’re going to get them to
do all of your suggestions and I was enraged and I tried to handle it as best
I could again this was a younger Trace Blackmore so I wasn’t as polished around the edges and I asked him I said well
what are you going to do when they’re other problems and they’re not able to recognize it because they don’t have the
technical proficiency he goes oh that’s easy I’ll I’ll just get you to do another free proposal how should we be
doing proposals great story and so many folks
in technical space construction um custom engineering we work with lots of
companies that have very Technical Solutions and this is always a challenge how much free work should I do when do I
put up the pay wall and say to to get more information you’ve got to engage me
and it’s a very tricky question with a somewhat unsatisfying answer which is it depends but I’m a consultant I’m I’m
permitted to say that it’s on my it’s right on my business card the reality is I mean I’m going to say some things that
that everyone listen to this podcast already knows which is it’s important to make sure that you do not put pay walls
or guard rails up around your proposal process so high that it prevents you from being considered for work and
that’s one of the challenges a lot of companies face around charging for proposals or charging a discovery phase
or or some other way to to to do that and so we of course got to understand our industry and the industry Norms well
enough to know how can we reduce the amount of free work we’re doing without
creating a competitive barrier without getting a creating a barrier that stops people from calling us to even ask us to
to participate in the process uh the answer to that’s in a lot of different places for different kinds of Industries
I also think it has a lot to do with how it’s positioned one challenge with charging for proposals for example is at
the end of that I have you know quote unquote nothing to show for it in other words the work hasn’t been done no tests
have been run no uh systems have been improved I know how to do it but nothing’s been done and so that’s one
challenge around charging for that I I’ve seen some companies get around that with a proposal fee that then is
credited towards the project or credited towards the project even to a greater degree so example and this is not from
your industry but from a engineering firm I worked with a couple years ago they had a proposal fee to stop the
re-engineering that they were doing and then when somebody engaged them to do the work they credited 3x The Proposal
fee towards the project so that really incentivized customers a it stopped them
from calling them for a check number or I got to get three bids because my boss says so and now you’ve spent two weeks
engineering a solution for me that I have I’m not even going to read your proposal I just need to you know please
the boss right it stops them from doing free engineering work and it also incentivizes them that once you’ve done
the technical work once you’ve done the proposal and the effort to really solve their problem that they’re that makes a
lot more sense for them to go with you that’s one way that can work It’s Tricky and I’m I’m trying to think about what I
would have told younger Trace Blackmore in this situation and and maybe there’s more to be again I’ll kind of go back to
what I said about the gold silver bronze packages were there questions you could have asked earlier in the process that
would have made it very clear to you that they do not value the white glove best best best of class outcome that an
okay outcome at a reasonable price is good enough for them what can we do in our qualifying process or in our early
in our sales process to know should we chase this work and if we should Chase it at what kind of level at what kind of
level of perfection because some customers care about perfection and they’re willing to pay a premium for it
others good enough is good enough so the company needs to decide where do we want
to be so they now have guard rails of when this is an appropriate customer to
continue the conversation or not so I’m assuming that if they don’t have those
guard rails that’s what they need before they continue prospecting I think you just said something so wise Trace which
is we have to know who we are we have to know where we play we have to know where we can be the most successful and of
course you know it’s nice to think like we’re going to do the best best work for the companies that absolutely value the
best stuff but you know there’s a market for you know if I can use a retail example there’s You Know Tiffany there’s
Nordstrom and there’s Walmart and Walmart makes a lot of money and sells a lot of product right and there’s a
market for the Walmart version of of uh water treatment right and so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying
we play in the middle or we play to the low end of the market or we play to the high end of the market what I think they’re the mistake isn’t choosing one
of those the mistake is not choosing any of those trying to be everything to everyone not understanding clearly the
lane you play in and clear CLE L and this is the most important bit how to communicate with the customers at the
end of that lane why you’re the best fit at that I think and if I can just mention one Pitfall I see for early
stage companies first five maybe 10 years of existence and I started my own
company and and you have and so we both know that in the early days it’s pretty hard to say no to a check somebody’s
willing to hand you right you want and you need every deal it takes an
incredible amount of discipline to to specialize and to narrow that lane but in my experience and really I can’t
think of a single industry that isn’t this isn’t true for the more clearly we
understand our lane the more specific we are about what we do who we serve how we do it who we’re the best fit for not
only the more profitable we are and the more deals we win but the deal size goes up the the revenue goes up it’s it seems
counterintuitive it seems like a paradox the more I narrow my market the more I can grow but I’ve seen it over and over
and over and over again and I’ve experienced it in my own business the more narrowly we focused the more we’re
known to be the best at this thing we’re in the blue part of our flame we always
stay in the blue part of our flame as soon as somebody calls us for something we’re not great at we have referral partners for that what that means is we
are known as the best in the world at the thing we’re best in the world at and we’re the only ones people call I think
there’s a lesson in that for companies that are trying to be all things to all people pick a L be great at it people
don’t like talking about price so price gets talked about last and then the
win-win situation that we had turns into a lose win or a lose lose or a win lose
or or any of those yeah how do we do a better job of talking about price
earlier I think talking about price earlier at least in some fashion is really important for a few reasons one
is the one you just mentioned which is that we spend a bunch of time in the sales process only to find out at the
end of the day we’re way off and we’ve wasted a lot of our time we’ve wasted a lot of their time and that’s not a win
so we do need to talk about it earlier but I’ll mention another reason I think it’s important to talk about price earlier in the process we’ve all bought
things we’ve bought things in our personal life we’ve thought things in our bought things in our business life and if you know if you’ve ever sat down
to be presented to about a a purchase that you know is going to be somewhat substantial you can’t hardly think about
anything else the whole time that person is talking except the price you’re wondering to yourself and they’re selling you on how cool it’s going to be
and how fast the car is or how um amazing this new bathroom remodel is
going to be or whatever the heck it is and we’re just thinking to ourselves am I waiting for a fall are they going to
tell me it’s 2x what I’m willing to spend why that’s costly and problematic for a seller is they’re not really
listening they’re not really connecting with value if so much of the time if
some portion of their mind share is being consumed worrying and wondering and thinking about price and budget so I
think there’s a couple of great reasons to get that that out on the table early one of the ways I’ve seen that work and
and your listeners will have to kind of figure out how to make this fit with their business is to as early as you can
and this is part of qualification process understanding enough about their
problem to throw out some ranges and say you know depends on a lot of factors and I have a lot of questions I want to ask
before I’m able to get you a specific price but in my experience a problem like this could cost between X and Y to
fix when I say that are you thinking to yourself thank you very much never let speak again or let’s keep talking you
know and I I do that in my business I just had a conversation with somebody yesterday and did something very similar I said now you hear that number are you
falling out of your chair or are you thinking we should keep talking and he says we should keep talking okay guess what not only do I know I’ve let him off
the hook with worrying about and thinking about now he knows the ballpark and so he can put that to the background
and really listen to me share about value I can know I’m not wasting my time or his time I am also now elevated Pier
toer I’m not Hawking Wares I’m not a peddler I’m not
bartering he has said that he values what I sell and it’s let’s keep talking
let me learn more so I think the earlier and this is often done through ranges because we generally don’t know enough
at the beginning to even and that range could be even quite large and you know sometimes I’ve I’ve seen this where
somebody shares you know a big range and they say well what does that depend on how do I end up at the lower end of that range and the upper end of that range so
you have to be ready to talk about why there’s a range and what drives you up or down inside that range but I think
throwing out something for a customer to react to early gives you information
That’s essential saves you time saves the customer time and stops the customer from perseverating on worrying about
pricing so let me ask this because this is how I been handling this so you get
to coach and say that’s wrong stop doing that so I I will try to qualify you know
am I talking to the right person is this decision maker is this an advocate for for later so one of the questions I
asked is the last time you changed your water treatment supplier what was that process like and then they normally tell
me oh I was involved with this I made the decision uh I then mve to do you
have a budget for this and if they say yes or no normally they’ll say yes say
can you share that with me or would you mind sharing with me is that a good way to go about that I love asking for
budget and when they say yes then of course they can you share it with me I find and you tell me if you’ve run into
this that they say no I don’t have a budget or no I don’t know what this should cost yet especially if someone’s not very experienced on or Savvy in in
doing this kind of work and they’re they know they need a solution but they don’t even know what this stuff costs right um
one of the things I like because sometimes I’ll cc go back to something I said before is sometimes there’s they’ll
say they don’t have a budget and they do and sometimes they’ll say they don’t have a budget and they don’t right The Meta lesson there is customers don’t
tell the truth about pricing or they don’t tell the whole truth about pricing customers in in in this industry in many
Industries you may have some really long-standing really warm like partnership level relationships with
customers and so it can be hard to believe what I’m about to say but even when your customers are lovely warm
wonderful honest people they’re almost never honest about pricing they’re almost never fully transparent in the realm of pricing and it’s not in their
best interest to do so if you think about the last major purchase you made did you walk in and say Here’s every
dollar I have in the bank to spend on this do your best you know give me your best price no you don’t share everything
so this is my way of cautioning and and maybe coaching everyone out there selling to introduce more healthy
skepticism in what you’re being told about pricing a la I only care about price like the earlier example Allah La
I don’t have a budget from this one lots of or I got a quote that’s 10% less and if you’ll match that price I’ll buy from
you well maybe they did and maybe they didn’t the more questions we can ask when we’re presented with something that
may or may not be true the more likely we are to understand how true it really is so back to the budget question do you
have a budget no I don’t my favorite thing to do when somebody says I don’t have a budget is to throw out a bad
first draft of a budget and then suddenly a m a number magically appears like would you say that $100,000 would
be a reasonable number for you to spend to solve this problem oh no no no I don’t I probably have that oh okay so
you went from I have no idea to $50,000 and I don’t know I mean fill in 5,000 or
five million whatever is right for your industry but suddenly you’ve given them a number to react to that’s a bad first
draft and they will improve your draft now we know what ballpark we’re operating in and sometimes then now we
know we are in the wrong ballpark like you want a different kind of solution than we can provide for you let me you
know connect you with someone who plays in the $50,000 range you know our our systems of this type are you know usually between1 and $250,000 and that
depends on XYZ oh well maybe we could find some more money in the budget right and that’s where like we’ve got to
pressure test everything we’re being told we cannot do that if every single
time the customer puts price pressure on us we leap at that number and we find a way to meet that number we find a way to
cut back and hit that number because we’re too trusting of where their line is and we’ve got to pressure test that
line so one of the really common tactics that companies run into in a B2B selling environment or b2g even is so and so
down the street can do this for 10% less if you’ll match the price I’ll buy from you right or if you can if you can get
in the ballpark you you don’t have to be the lowest but you have to get in the ballpark can you do this for for 5% less
that is a very powerful tactic it works a lot to get people to Discount because
they got last look and they think that you know of course I want the deal and even at 10% less that’s that’s still
pretty good margin and 100% of 90% is better than 0% of 100 Etc and so people
tend to Discount in the face of those kinds of competitive price match uh request and what I would encourage
listeners to think about is when somebody asks you to match a price the the message beneath the words is so and
so down the streets cheaper than you but they can’t do what you can do the way you can do it and I’m hoping to get you
to give away your Superior Service and quality and value for this low price how’s that going to work are you you going to let me get away with it in
other words they cheaper but you are better I don’t want them I want you a price match request is an objective
statement of preference for your company say it again because I cannot get this message out loud enough a price
match request is an objective statement of preference from the customer for you
for your products for your firm for your solution and one challenge you know let
me say a few things I see sales folks do when they get pressured on price match one is they match the price cost us a
ton of money I don’t love it number two some version of meat in the middle which I also don’t love that cost us money or
number three what I call the fruit salad approach which is let’s make sure these are apples to apples oh my gosh people
love the fruit salad approach and I don’t hate it I don’t think it’s the it’s always the wrong move but I don’t
like to lead with that because now we’re diving in figuring out how we compare to the competitor we’re talking a lot about
the competitor which I don’t really want to talk about and sometimes it can lead to Des scoping because we’re really are you know not Apples to Apples and we got
to figure that out or number four that I don’t like is just vomiting a bunch of value messaging at them like let tell
you how we better if we’re doing all the Talking we can’t learn we’ve got to close our mouth and open our ears we’ve
got to learn because the customer just got done telling us I like you more I
want you we know they like us more but we don’t know why or by how much and we’re never going to figure that out if
we do all the talking so one thing that we can do is ask more questions ask more questions one simple question and this
is not the end all be all but just to illustrate the con to The Listener is you’re telling me our price is too high
can we match this competitive quote if we could just wave a magic wand over these and these price difference would disappear let’s just imagine there were
no difference between these two prices am I understanding you that you You’ choose us yes okay can you tell me what
it is about what we’ve proposed about our solution about our process that has you answer that way like why would you
want us if there was no price difference because I want to make sure when I come back to you with a revised proposal I don’t take anything out that’s critical
to you and then the customer will often share something that gives you a hint
gives you an idea why do they like you more and by how much and then you can make a much more Savvy choice about
where to cut how to cut where not to cut where is this just a tactic or are we really not in a very powerful position
we can’t learn that unless we listen so asking them to articulate why they want us so much great advice around pricing I
can’t wait to get advice around my next question which is price in increases how
do we have that conversation with a customer I love this question because as
much as price freaks people out and as much as sellers don’t love the portion of the conversation where they get to
tell somebody what it costs the thing they like even less is having to tell a customer that it costs more tomorrow
than it used to cost yesterday and it is a panic inducing change for a lot of businesses now good news bad news I
don’t know but over the past couple years most businesses and most sellers have had an incredible amount of EXP
experience a lot of on the- job training of how to do price increases and built some muscle around those conversations
because of the level of inflation we’ve been through in the past couple years and so there’s been two three five six
10 price increases in some Industries over the past few years uh so sales people have gotten gotten some unwanted
practice at it the challenge over the past couple years though is that for a lot of Industries because of supply
chain challenges uh tight labor market and other things there’s been a more
pressure around speed and availability and and quality than there has been around price in other words the question
on the customer’s lips most often isn’t necessarily how much does it cost but when can I get it and availability and
speed has driven the buying decision more so than price has now the pendulum swinging back it was a a buyer market
then it became a sellers market and now it’s shifting back to buyer Market again where now they’re able to use prices
lever again because the supply chains have filled back in the labor market isn’t quite as tight it’s not as hard to get things done so price even though
people have had more practice in the last couple years what’s worked in the last 18 to 24 months will not work in
the next 18 to 24 and price increases are going to continue to be necessary so to me there there are a lot and I could
talk a whole hour about how to do price increase as well but there’s one thing I would counsel people to spend more time
and effort on they spend a lot of time figuring out their what what the price is increase is going to be they’ve got
all the spreadsheets figuring out by product line or buy service area and by customer they’ve got a a lot of analysis
going into the price increase decision itself and then they put it in the hands of the C in the in the sales team and
say go go do it go sell it they’ve spent a lot of time on the preparation of the number and very little or no time on the
preparation of the message maybe they’ve written a little letter and that’s what they think is messaging but I believe
that really good price increase messaging has to be rooted in a plan and
and a lot of times spent on that plan and that plan has two parts one is what’s the internal messaging what do I
need to let my team know how do I get them ready what information do I need to share with them what tools do I need to
give them what practice needs to happen a a simple example is what price objections are we expecting when we roll
this out what are people going to say to us I love to ask sales teams this question when you go deliver this price
increase message what are you terrified that they’re going to say what do you dread more than anything thing that they
will ask you I think it’s worth putting time and effort ahead of time not when
you’re sitting in front of the customer and get asked that dreaded question but ahead of time thinking about what’s the
worst case scenario and then putting some time effort thought and messaging around the best right responses to those
questions so when a customer says look I’ve taken three price increases from you guys in the last 18 months I’m not
taking this I know your costs are going up but I’m sorry you have to eat it what do you say to that don’t let every
individual salesperson out there in the marketplace independently derive the answer to that because you have some
folks on your team that probably are very very good on their feet they’re probably very equipped and skilled at
answering that question even without thinking that much about it you have other sales folks who you know they get
you know deer in the headlights look when they get a question they haven’t been prepared for so I think that preparing the team ahead of time I like
the idea of a price objection FAQ doc like here are all the objections we’re we’re we’re we’re expecting we might get
then let’s what are the best right talking point to that and then not just put the dock together because that does you no good if people don’t open the
dock and practice it is you know buy your team Pizza one Friday afternoon and get together and do some roleplay
practice you might have to buy you know Deluxe pizza because people really hate role playay but however allergic they
are to it it isn’t it is there is no substitute for it there is no substitute for how effective it is to practice
saying something out loud feeling awkward about it feeling a little embarrassed because your boss is sitting right there and your cowork workers here
you sound kind of silly because you haven’t figured out how to put it in your own words and style yet but the time to figure out your own words and
style is not in front of the customer because I know and you know and your listeners know human nature dictates
that we won’t do it when we’re in the moment when we’re in the heat of battle and the customers breathing down our
neck we won’t try the new different scary thing we’ll resort to what is ritual and routine which for some of the
sales folks has just Cen it’s just discounting it’s folding like a cheap suit so we’ve got to invest more in
internal messaging and preparation I think companies can do more and should do more on external but the internal
messaging preparation and getting your team really confident and solid on the reasons why and how to defend it is the
biggest Miss I see in price increase execution I love that you bring up
roleplay I don’t know what’s wrong with me I’ve always loved role play so we need to bring that back and the great
thing about roleplay is exactly as you said we get to practice handling objections in a safe place with people
that want us to succeed that want to train us so with all that being said
what are some objections that we need to be ready for well in every industry it varies of
course it’s this is outside my budget this is too expensive this is uh higher than the competitive quote this is more
than I paid you yesterday I’m not eating this price increase you eat it uh I need you to match competitive quote can you
sharpen your pencil it goes goes on and on and on and you’ve heard it all and I’ve heard it all and your listeners have heard it all one thing I would like
people to think about when they’re facing an objection and this applies in in the pricing objection space but
really any kind of objection that’s uh your customers throwing in your path uh for an obstacle to the sale and a
customer says we can’t because X or this is outside our budget the best answer to
an objection isn’t an answer at all it’s a question I think questions are a
salesperson’s superow and they are largely underused in the price portion and the negotiation
portion of the process as I described before sales folks are great at questions early and then when we get
into price negotiations and price conversations then we stop asking questions and we start doing too much
telling questions are such a powerful tool and I’ll share one reason I think
this is the case pricing specifically is an area where we’re we’re pushing back and forth there’s resistance we’re
pushing for a higher customers pushing for a lower price resistance exists and
resistance is friction to a sale we want to reduce the resistance if we push and they push back and we push back and we P
then now we’re in a tug-of-war over price instead introduce a question that evaporates all the uh resistance so
there’s something from another uh another psychology and brain science um term here is it’s called instinctive
elaboration instinctive elaboration is where our brains get hijacked by a question and we’re really very
physiologically incapable of contemplating anything but that question at least for a very short period of time could be a microsc so for example if I
say Trace what color is your shirt for a microsecond your brain is consumed with
that question it’s thinking about the color of your shirt or you’re thinking why is she asking about my shirt you’re not thinking I disagree with what she’s
saying or I don’t know what I’m going to have for lunch your brain is consumed by that that stops you from contemplating
resistance from contemplating disagreement from contemplating your next move from strategizing how to
negotiate with me and so this is about pattern Interruption so I think that
questions can evaporate that resistance in large part the other thing is we learn a lot when we ask questions now it
can’t be a dumb question don’t go ask your customer what color their shirt is this is where preparation goes a long
way before you go sit down with that customer give yourself 15 minutes with a notebook sit down and write 10 really
challenging interesting compelling questions that you can ask that will move this price conversation forward and when you do incredible
things will happen now I want to give a piece of advice here uh many people when
they get nervous and I’m one of them talk too much lots of people start filling the silence when we get nervous
and we’ve already said that pricing is an area that generates fear and nerves for a lot of people and so we tend to
talk too much so when you ask a question it’s very important to wait for the
answer and I have because I do most of my selling on Zoom I have in the corner of my uh monitor a little Post-It note
that says the word weight w AI T but what that stands for is why am I talking
so we’ve got to remember to shut the heck up and let the customer do the talking the most successful salespeople
I know in the world do the least amount of talking in a meeting they might do 10 or 20% they’re mostly asking questions
they’re listening and then they’re able to cue back to what the customer already told them was really important now the
customer feels hurt heard they feel seen they feel understood ironically the best
way to build trust is not by communicating a bunch of stuff it’s by asking the right questions that help the
other person see that you understand their real situation so I would say that when you get an objection you know so
and so down the street can do this for Less well tell me um if the prices were the same who would you choose why would
you do that tell me um what’s most what do you like about their proposal that that we don’t have covered the answer is
nothing because they’re cheaper and less but you got get them to say it what do you like about our proposal that isn’t in theirs I could probably come up with
a hundred questions given a a couple of minutes that I could ask somebody when faced with that objection the more we’re
prepared with the questions it kicks the door open just to crack and that’s a lot
of times all we need to be able to help the customer understand how we can solve their problem better than that other
option Casey this has been fantastic I think we’re going to have you come back for a regular pricing segment on this
show just a wealth of knowledge uh I do have some more questions for you though we’re not quite done I have the
lightning round questions all right so first question if you could go back in
time and talk to your former self as your first day as a pricing consultant what advice would you give
yourself relax it’s all going to be okay don’t take yourself so seriously be
yourself I’ll share that I uh I grew up in poverty I’m the uh truck driver’s daughter from the wrong side of the
track four boys in my house and me and I my experience uh as a young professional
have an engineering degree and a business degree and a Spanish degree is the more prepared I am the more the more
buttoned up I am the more professional I seem the more people will take me seriously and I I think uh you know it’s
very clearly a case of impostor syndrome and the the older I get and the longer I do this work the more I realize that
just vulnerably saying sometimes I have no idea I don’t know what the answer to that question is the more myself I am
the more successfully I’m able to connect with people which means the more I can help them so I would just tell me
my my uh 20s something year old self to just relax it’s going to be okay what
are the last few books that youve read great question I just read outlive
by Peter ATA the it’s a book about longevity and not just living a long time but living healthy a long time and
I’m in my late 40s and I’ve got aging parents so it’s it’s topical for me uh I read uh
make the noise go away by uh Larry Lynn it’s about how to have a great
relationship with your number two your right-hand person and how to get the most out of that person and make sure that you’re not clipping their wings and
I just reread and it’s not been out very long but it’s such a good book I’ve read it twice already which is 10x is easier
than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy uh it’s really changing the way I think not
only about my business but my health and a lot of things in my life I think it’s an excellent book when they write a
movie about Casey Brown who do you want casted to play you oh Julianne Moore I
love that I could see that freckles and I’ve I just say that because I don’t
know it probably sounds braggadocious to say I’ve been told I look a little bit like her because I think she’s uh a very
attractive woman and I don’t think I hold a candle to her but uh yeah Julian Moore she’s also very um she has a lot
of emotion and I’m a very intense person last question if you could talk
to anybody throughout history who would it be with and why man what a good
question well a whole bunch of very famous and influential and important
humans come to mind uh but I think for me it would be my my grandfather my my
dad’s dad he died before I was born and I’ve heard a million things about him and uh I would just love to ask him some
questions I would get to know my dad’s dad Casey this has been so informative I
wasn’t kidding when I said we need to have you back I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that are thinking I
need to get more information from what she does how should they contact
you great yeah and I we have a lot of free resources available to folks I put out a lot of videos and blogs and so
anybody who wants to you know get little pricing nuggets from time to time you can find me on LinkedIn at Casey Brown
boost uh the company name on LinkedIn is Boost pricing uh you can find us on the web at www
I don’t know why anybody says that anymore you can find us on the web at uh boost pricing.com uh there’s a contact
us for on the website there’s a subscribe Forum on the website in case you want to follow our blog uh you can
email us at info@ Boost pricing.com it’s boost like the energy drink pricing like the best way to make money Casey Brown
boost pricing thank you so much for coming on the scaling up H2O podcast
thanks Trac it’s been a delight Casey thanks again for coming on
the scaling up H2O podcast I know myself I love talking about what I can make
better from somebody else’s water treatment program to the one that I’m going to put together and I can’t wait
to talk to the customer about that but I never like talking about price and I
know you’re probably out there with me we’re of course proud of our price and we can justify our price but in many
cases that’s what people don’t like talking about Casey you came on and you
let us look at that a little bit differently so we can position our pricing a little bit differently and I
love the fact that we talk about it up front so that way if it is a problem we learn about it and hey what a gift our
customers our potential customers are giving us if they say I’m sorry my budget is half what your minimum is well
great shake my hand if you ever need any help please call me no it’s going to cost you twice what you’re used to
paying but I’m here and now I’m going to go out and find the right customer that
feels that we are the right vendor for them so I think casy said that perfectly so thank you for that I also love that
we’re talking about value and not price and I think we as industrial water
treaters always talk about the value that we’re providing but I’m not sure how well that translates to the customer
to the people that own the equipment that really in some cases don’t understand the equipment that they own
so I think it’s important for us not only to go in to do a survey but to
educate the customer all along that survey so they know what to look for and
in many cases they can discover on their own things that they’re not getting and
why they should switch to you or maybe they need to understand why they need to
stay with you if we’re not telling our customers what the value is that we
bring when somebody comes in and they start talking about the value that they’re going to bring if you didn’t
have that conversation where do they see the value coming from so maybe that’s a
conversation you need to have with your customer making sure that they
understand that every time your special juice pumps in that system what is it
that it’s doing what are you you doing when you’re on site and making sure that
all the great things that you’re telling your customer they can connect back to Value another thing on value is so many
people out there will talk to their potential customers and just ask what
they are paying and then saying well what about 10% less than that Nation you
can run your water treatment practice however you wish but I don’t think anything good comes from that it allows
us all to reduce the value that we bring as industrial water treaters and it also
doesn’t allow the customer for True success if all they’re looking at is
pricing they don’t understand the value that true good industrial water treaters
bring so in that if you are ever in a price negotiation and a customer is not
able to meet the price you you said for all the services that you were going to
provide my recommendation is is you talk to that customer and you figure out what services can they do without or maybe
add in at a later date if you’re going to reduce your price you have to reduce the things that you’re bringing to the
table otherwise the customer is going to look at maybe a couple ways one hey I
won they were trying to get something over me and because I negotiated I now
won so they’re not seeing value they’re seeing price or maybe they think that
person just lied to me and because I called them out on that lie I now got
the price that I should have gotten all along either way how they look at that
you’re not in a positive light and you are promoting price over value I just
can’t imagine how our industry would be if we properly educated our customers
and we use that education on a value based platform I think people would
understand industrial water treatment more I think people would demand more out of their industrial water treaters
and I think that would really Elevate the bar within industrial water treatment so I think if you have a sales
team if you have people that are going out and talking with customers this is the episode that you want to forward to
them so they can start thinking about how do I make sure I’m always talking
about value and how am I setting that customer up for Success so we can have
the best relationship possible well somebody who’s trying to help us have
the best relationship possible with industrial water treatment knowledge is James McDonald here’s a brand new drop
by drop with [Music]
James welcome to drop by drop with James the podcast segment where we Wonder
explore think about imagine and learn IND duster water treatment you guessed
it drop by drop together in today’s segment we’re
thinking about a line I read in an article called awt recommendations and
guidelines for corrosion coupons and cooling systems found under resources in the members only section of the
association of water Technologies website this section of the article was discussing the proper order of
installation for corrosion coupons the line said quote in reality if an
appropriate water treatment program is in place the actual coupon order will make little or no difference to the
results end quote that line made my brain stop for a
[Music] minute the actual order will make little or no difference to the results if an
appropriate water treatment program is in place hold up I have had the ganic series drilled
into my head for corrosion coupons the most active or least Noble metal or alloy must be placed first the farthest
Upstream what kind of crazy talk is all [Applause]
this of course in a perfect world we wouldn’t do a lot of things the article
goes on to explain further though it says quote there is an argument for
limiting the number of factors to be considered when analyzing results and if if the coupons are installed according
to the galvanic series any High loss rates will not be blamed on or associated with galvanic differences
parentheses regardless of whether these could or could not impact results close
parentheses close quote so to keep things logical and free of noise that may only confuse the issue we should
continue to install corrosion coupons according to the ganic series regardless of how good our water treatment program
is where else do we apply this logic in our
day-to-day industrial water lives where else do we try to eliminate variables so
we can see the true problems do we mix and match our sample bottles or do we
Reserve Select ones for higher Purity samples and others for higher conductivity samples do we test our
conductivities from low to High vice versa or random mix that’s some food for
thought right there eliminating
variables I’m James McDonald and I want to encourage you to be like water by forming bonds with those around you
dissolving new knowledge and making worthy ripples drop by
drop Thanks James nation in just two Saturdays we are going to be doing the
global 6K together I cannot wait to see what you post on social media I think
this is going to be the best attended 6K that we have tried to promote yet and I
thank you for bringing awareness to the global Water Crisis Nation we’re going to have a brand new episode for you next
week until then take care everybody [Music]