302: Clients Forget The Price

<p>Have you ever paid for something that you found was very good and which you used for many years.  You will have forgotten perhaps the price you originally paid, but you have not forgotten the quality you received.  You always maintain a positive mindset about that company and the product or service. On the other hand, if you paid for something that didn’t deliver what you expected, over time, you will forget the exact amount of money involved, but you will always recall that the quality was poor and not acceptable.  This is where salespeople make the mistake of concentrating on price and don’t make the effort to bolster the quality aspects of what they are supplying.</p> <p> </p> <p>Not only does the item or service suffer from a negative association with poor quality, the salesperson’s personal brand is also damaged and maybe irrecoverably.  When you find a bad deal, you make the determination to never buy from that supplier again and by extension from that person again.  Not only that, you will also make a point of warning others not to deal with that person, because they are not reliable or they lack integrity or they are a rip off.  In the market our reputation is everything and we cannot afford to allow it to be stained with ill repute.</p> <p> </p> <p>Sometimes even good quality firms have problems.  Machines, supply chains, people are not perfect so there can be problems. How these problems are addressed says everything about the integrity of who you are dealing with.  No one likes people who want to justify the unjustifiable and you would think that no one would be that stupid, but you would be wrong.  Yes, there are people who will try to slip out of any and all accountability and who run from taking any responsibility.  We can all accept that things can go wrong, but what we want is for it to be fixed and fixed pronto.  We will forget the price we paid, but we will remember that the problem was sorted out fast and with integrity and no arguments.</p> <p> </p> <p>Given all of this logical discussion a