Practical Eloquence Blog

In Part 2 of this series on dealing with the price objection, we saw that the first key to getting out of the commodity trap is to find points of differentiation and then connect those to customer benefits. Thus the two most important words in sales are: “SO WHAT?”

Suppose I say, “Our product is engineered to be the most reliable in the industry.” I might instead say, “This means that you know it’s going to work when you need it.”

Notice something subtle about that last paragraph. Thinking “so what” changed the pronoun from the first person to the second person. They don’t care about you—they care about themselves.

The next step is to get the right people in the customer’s organization to agree to the value. So,the next two critical selling words are: “HOW MUCH?” And, just as we saw that there are many ways to differentiate when you take a broad look at the offering, we will also see that there are many ways to assign value to these benefits.

There is no such thing as a commodity. Whenever I make this statement in a classroom, it’s usually good for an argument, and I expect to start one with this article.

First, a couple of definitions: A commodity is an offering that is only differentiated by its price, so that customers would be silly to pay a penny more for one offering over another. The word offering is also important, because no product exists by itself—it’s always part of an offering. Offering comprises every possible aspect of the buying and ownership experience that will affect your customer.

We’ll begin with your offering. For the price your customer pays, they get much more than the physical product itself. That’s why even products that are physically indistinguishable can command price premiums. When is the last time you bought bottled water? You can get it as much as you want from a tap for about three-tenths of a cent per gallon, or you can drive to a store and pay up to $4-5 per gallon. Is it worth it? Apparently people are willing to pay for the “difference”: global bottled water sales are expected to top $86 billion in 2011, about equal to the GDP of Bulgaria.

People are willing to pay the difference because sellers tout differences in purity, taste, packaging, and image—even when those differences are undetectable in blind taste tests. If they can do it with water, you should have no problem.