Knowing what your customer values most should be a bright guiding star on their journey though your pipeline, but assuming they value what you value is a common error that can lead you in entirely the wrong direction. 

In this episode Darryl is joined by Pricing Expert, Speaker and Author Mark Stiving, and they're here to flip your thinking on pricing on its head. Darryl and Mark to signpost three buyer journeys that demonstrate just how fluid price sensitivity is, illustrate how those journeys shift the perspective of price, and outline what your activities should be regardless of the customer's journey (or your own perspective). They'll also remind you that you are not normal. 

🔗 LINKS

Find Mark on LinkedIn, at the Impact Pricing website, or at his website.

His latest book is called Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices and you'll find it on Amazon here. His other books are Impact Pricing and Win Keep Grow.

You can see the Value Journey Map here.

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn.

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How's everybody doing today, friends. It is so good to have you back. Ugh. I was just I was just talking to our guests in the green room. Right. We talk about the green room and the podcast. Like, I just love the idea that we have this concept that come carries over from television called the green room.

And yet secretly as we record these things. He's staring me in the face right now, staring me down, being quiet, being polite, waiting for me to ramble, nonstop to you. Ugh. And you guys okay. I, I like to ask this occasionally, how many of you just do the auto jump? Like, go ahead a minute, a minute, a minute until you get past my ramble.

And as you get into the core of it, it's okay. You can tell me I'm okay with that. If you're so inclined. So this is wait a second. Okay. If you're still here, all those people that jumped ahead, weren't they morons they're missing the best part. All right. I'm having fun with you. I just got off the train.

I ran from the train. I was in Toronto and now I'm here producing this show and you know it, it's funny. We talk about how do we navigate the podcast? We talk about me being on a train and then hopping out here. Life is full of journeys, brothers and sisters. It's journeys, journeys, journeys, but have you ever sat back and thought about.

The journeys that you, you take. Right. So I'll ask you a simple question. How do you, how do you, how do you, how do you buy? All right. So there's different ways I buy I'll start with that and maybe you can relate. So. As many of, you know, once upon a time I was a chess player. Now I'm just a pretender. But you get some bad habits when you start playing a game like that, which is I was a chess player and I was a coder.

So I got that one, two negative punch of everything I do. I'm very analytical about it's all about logic. And so whenever I'm buying something, I will spend. Like hours researching stuff, right. Even if I'm buying used, I'm buying on a Craiglist or something, you know, and I see a good price. I kind of know what I'm looking for.

I don't necessarily know a brand. Then I find the right price, cuz price is my driving factor all the time. I'm cheap. Then I go backwards and say, does this brand that I found at a good price? Have the features and functions and reviews and capabilities that I needed to have. So I do a very analytical approach.

And then what I might do is I might go if I, if I, if I like the price and I like the functionality, then I go to the reviews. And I go for is, is there validation there from the communities? So I don't know the people who are given reviews. I have to put on my little filter that says there's gonna be wines and complainers and outliers.

So disregard that, but is the general sentiment good or is the general sentiment bad? And I do that because who wants to spend money and then feel like they got duped. Nobody does. Nobody likes feeling like they, they thought they were getting one thing and they got much less than that. Or it, it over promised and it under delivered, you feel like a heel.

You feel like a moron, you feel like you're just INEP you should know better. And I don't know about you. I've done that more than once. And I don't like it and it's weird. It gets to the point that I don't tend to rave to my wife about the deals I get. Once I realize that what I bought was less than high value, I don't talk about it, but then.

If somebody else is looking at a similar product, I will share my story about how that was not a good brand or a good purchase. And this is why. So I add to the noise and somebody else can take my opinion and that influences how they buy. So that's my journey, but another journey kind of segueing to what I ended up on is I get a word of mouth referral.

From a friend who says, oh, you're looking for this. I did the research. I bought one six months ago. And here's what I learned. I ended up buying this and this is what I like. And here's what I know. And here's what I do differently. How much do you pay for that? Blah, blah, blah. And I trust the friend. So if they got, you know, good vibes out of it, then I tend to just, I tend to go that road.

And what's interesting about me and I don't think I'm abnormal. Is that I'm actually willing to pay more money for something knowingly, even though I'm cheap. Remember, and I, I emphatically am frugal. I am willing to pay more money for something. If I have a higher level of confidence that it will.

Delivered to me, what I want or last longer, or deliver a greater experience or a greater return on my investment. So price is not always my number one driver, despite me opening and describing myself as tight with my money. I've used three different ways. I said, Fergal, cheap and tight with my money. You can come up with other adjectives, share them with me in social media.

I'd love to hear them. Where does all this. Well, I'm glad you asked all this goes to how people buy. What are the typical journeys people experience and what is the role that value? Cause I've talked about this multiple times in my narrative play in that journey. Why should you care? Well, you should care because if you don't know all the different ways people buy, you will likely default.

Without even necessarily knowing this to assuming that people buy the same way you buy. And if you have that bias built in, then that means you're going to sell. You're gonna approach the prospect with that bias and you could be losing out on deals cuz you don't understand how they measure value value.

Isn't always money value could be lots of different ways. So. The whole point is if you're gonna be a rockstar salesperson, you need to understand. Value, you need to understand the journey and you need me to figure that out really damn fast.

And my boys, my girls, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, Mark. I'm gonna get the last name wrong, cuz I was blanking. I got into my story. I'm gonna say Stiving, and if I get it wrong, he's gonna correct me. All right. I'm gonna say it's Mark Stiving has come out with a brand new book and okay. It's a cryptic title.

You're ready. It's called. Selling Value, Selling Value, How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices. And you're saying, but Darryl, you told me he wasn't a sales expert yet here he comes out with a book on selling value to win more deals at higher prices. How can that be? Because my friends, not only is he a PhD.

He's a pricing expert. So he understands the semantics. He understands the nuances and more than anything, he understands selling value. And the journeys you go on, mark, how you doing today my friend?

I wanna circle back. The book is great. Check it out. It's you can get it on Amazon. You can go to Mark's website. You can get it there. Mark's got a couple different places you can go. One is ImpactPricing.com the other is Mark Stiving, Mark with a K not as my cousin Marc likes to say, which is C for cute and cuddly.

It's Mark with a K Stiving S T I V I N G .com. So either one of those, you can you can find your way to the book and learn more about Mark follow him on social media. He's on all the usual places, especially LinkedIn. But Mark, we're gonna talk about chapter six today, specifically, cuz we were debating guys.

You know, where, where do we start? It's such a broad topic. And so we were bonding over chapter six and it's called Typical Value Journey. So I'm gonna set the stage. I'm gonna read this the first paragraph in chapter six, and then we're gonna let sit back and Mark and I are gonna have some fun.

So here's the first paragraph. It's very fast. It says "Buyers may take many different routes through the value journey map toward making a purchase decision," which is just what we got on talked about a minute ago. "However, three of these journeys provide insight into the buyer's price sensitivity, and the types of activities, marketing and sales should drive. By identifying which value journey your buyer is on, you're gonna gain insight into the kind of information that buyer needs, and how important price is in the decision."

And what did I say to you? I said I'm cheap. Price is important, but I will also pay more. If I perceive value in other ways. So I don't think, as we know now that I am not normal, but I don't think I am too abnormal in that statement. So that's the that's the I've set you up, Mark. Let's talk about those three different ways. Which, which one do you wanna start off on first?

I'm not buying anything. If I don't think I get more value than it's costing me in dollars out of my wallet. Is that a fair statement? And does everybody understand that?

I'm always trying to do value based pricing and understand how people perceive value. And yet I'll talk to salespeople, marketing people, anyone inside a company, and they so rarely know what does value mean to their customer. And that's what I find fascinating about this whole topic and why I wrote the book in the first place.

So, so we're going to get to the point where can we start to understand. How is it that our buyers are really thinking about value. Next step buyers almost always make two different decisions when they buy something. The first decision they make is I call it a will I decision? So will I buy something in this product category?

Do I need a new guitar? Do I need a new car? Do I need a new CRM? Right? Am I gonna go buy something in the product category? Typically in most situations after they've said, yes, I'm gonna go buy something, then they move on and say, okay, which one am I gonna go buy?

And now I'm looking at you versus your competitor. And I'm trying to make a decision on where am I gonna get the best bang for the buck? Where do I get the most return for what I'm gonna spend? Those were two different decisions. And those were two very different ways that customers perceive value. when customers are making a, will I decision? Am I gonna buy a new car?

What they're thinking about is what's the value of solving the problem that I have. So my car just broke down. I don't have a way to get to work. I better go buy a new car. Right? What's the value of that? It's huge. My favorite example of will I, in which one is having air. Or is air, how much do you value having air to breathe?

I'm guessing a lot.

Has freshly captured Reno air to be, you know, drop, shipped into me here. It's it's so huge. And it's funny cuz you know, that's a journey, right? It's almost, and I don't know if I wanna make it a comparison between, is that the difference between sales and marketing? You know, marketing's out there saying how badly do you need the air?

You know, I'm gonna convince you. You really need air. Okay, fine. I need air. And then sales comes in and it's competitive cycle. And do I want Mark's air do want Darryl's air? Well, Mark's air costs money cuz it's Reno darryl's air is right here. I I'm gonna take Darryl's air. Right? So now it's an objection.

Sales has gotta overcome that. Maybe Mark's air is a designer air product where Darryl's is just off the shelf, plain of vanilla air. Right. And maybe there's health properties, you know, associated with that Reno air that might benefit me some. Suddenly I'm willing to pay it. I love that analogy. Cuz you get so many extremes in that.

So, but it's a journey, right? It's a journey. It's basically, it's a two step process. You just took us through. We, we, we agreed. Finally we wanted it. We were open to it. We thought we wanted it. Will I, then we said, yes I will. So there was a, a, an inflection point where we committed, then there was okay, what's the next step?

Is it your air or somebody else's air. And there was another decision people. Are you familiar with all those different inflection points in your sales process that I mentioned, the books called Selling Value. You can multitask and go look it up. I'll let you all right. Carry on my friend.

And actually buying. And so if we think about the two by two matrix, we call it the value journey map on the bottom. On the left, we have the will I decision. People are gonna make a will I decision. Do I need this? Am I gonna buy this? Is this a place where I should spend my money to go solve these problems?

After someone said yes to that, they often then go to the right hand, half of the journey to say, okay, which one am I gonna go by? And now we're looking at competitive alternatives. the other part of the value journey map. The Y axis, the top of it is without sales people involvement. And in most cases, people realize they have a problem without salespeople asking them, Hey, do you have this problem or convincing them that they have a problem?

And eventually they go from, Hey, I've got this problem. I need to go solve it to saying, I'm going to ask a salesperson. I'm gonna talk to a sales, these are the four different quadrants that we have then that, that people are gonna move through. And if we think about what's probably the single most common journey that someone takes is they start in the top left, which is where they say I have a problem, but they haven't talked to a salesperson yet.

Then they go on the internet. And they start researching all the different alternatives. Who's am I gonna buy in fact think about buying a car. This is just a great example for us as consumers. We're gonna go online and we're gonna do as much shopping as we possibly can, because the last thing we want to do is go talk to a salesperson, right?

We don't want a salesperson trying to convince us that we want something that we don't want. I'd rather do all that research up front. And then eventually in order to buy the car, I go talk to a sales. Okay. So then I move, get some sales people involved in the process. Now this is probably the most common of all the journeys.

It's also the journey where people are the most price sensitive because they've done all this work. They're really trying to compare feature to feature and, and yours better than mine. And, and so that's, it's a tough one for us to deal with. And it's probably the hardest one for us as salespeople to be really effective at.

However, if you want to be really effective at that, there's two things you're gonna do. One thing is clearly understand your differentiation. How are you different from your competitors? And what's the value of that differentiation? What problems do you solve that your competitors don't solve? Because of that differentiation.

And then the other thing that you could do and should do is go back to the will I decision and help people figure out are you really making a good decision? And in the act of doing that, you might build some decent trust or relationship with that client, which might give you a slight competitive advantage.

So what Mark's saying here is we started off from the top left in this journey. This is what he calls the analytical journey. And he says, you know, will I come to this realization? I want a new. Without sales help. And the answer is yes. Then you shift to the which one. So I'm moving from the left column to the right column, but I'm still don't want sales help.

And now I'm analyzing which one I want. Then from there, I shift down to the bottom right quadrant, which is which one with sales help, which he calls the bake off, which is really okay. I'm gonna nail whoever probably gives you the best price. And what I love is in the. As he goes down in the book, he explores it a lot more, but he makes a comment here.

He goes, individual contributors or mid-level managers will typically drive the analytical journey. They don't wanna be wrong. They wanna be well informed about the technical details to answer any questions a higher up may have. So that's a huge takeaway and it's very true because they're expecting to get hammered by the higher up and say, why this, why this recommendation defend it, you know, help sell me on it all over again.

So they wanna have all the answers.

Next journey is called the relationship journey. Ooh. All right. Well, I know, I almost wanna give, I wanna give Mark a hug right now.

Go talk to John. He's a great guy. He's gonna fix you up. It's just, it's the car you need. And so instead of spending a bunch of time on the internet and researching a bunch of cars, you just go to the Lexus dealer and talk to John. And you're having this conversation with John he's he's helping you understand why you need a new car.

What kind of car, what kind of problems you need to go solve? and eventually you you've, you've fallen in love with John. I mean, he is this great guy. He's done a fantastic job helping you a lot, but you can't just buy without looking at somebody else. And so you say, John, thank you so much. I appreciate the help.

I need to go look at some other alternatives. And so maybe you go to an Acura dealer or maybe you go to a Mercedes dealer, but in the end, you're probably coming back to John. Because he helped you so much from the beginning, helping you with the decision process. And so Darryl, I'll let you explain that on the two by two matrix, but, but that's the gist of the story.

The right column is which one the top row is without sales help. The bottom row is with sales help. Now remember on the analytical journey, we went from the top left quadrant over to the top, right quadrant and down to the bottom, right. Which was the bake off. And this one, it's a completely different journey.

We go from the top left quadrant. Will I realize that I need to buy a new car without sales. Yes, I will. Then I go to the bottom left quadrant, complete opposite of where I was on the other journey. And that is, will I get sales involved? And the answer is yes, because I think they have, you know something to help me out with the example that Mark just gave was, you know, you know, a buddy.

They're a car expert, they're car salesperson or whomever, and then you go to them right away. And then from that, then you go over to the bakeoff and in John's examples, even in the bakeoff all things being equal, who you gotta buy from the person you have the best relationship with. Why? Well be kind, cuz you trust them a little bit.

I wanna use that word carefully cuz of our next journey. All right. So for those of you who are selling, what is this. And this said another way. This is a referral boys and girls. This is where somebody says, you really need to go talk to my buddy, cuz they're in the market for this. And they could, you know, what we talked about, they could really use.

So you're getting that trusted referral and introduction to the account, which already starts your relationship off on a dramatically different point of view than if you were to cold call them. So that's why you ask for the referral. So I'm trying to think what I wanted to steal from this one. This one you you're saying the bakeoff way, point of the relationship journey.

So that's when they finally decide, okay. I went and did price shopping, but who am I gonna go with is often less rigorous than the analytical journey because of the established relationship. Remember, it's a. I know this guy, or I trust this guy, or I got a relationship with this, with this gal these buyers like people and want to trust them.

So it's probably more about gut feeling compared to every other product specification. This is the best point here buyers using the relationship journey tend to be less. Now. Emphasis is less. Price sensitive than those in the analytical journey, even though they consider competitors' products, salespeople have more influence in this journey since they can gently guide the prospect through the process.

Okay. So bring it back. I've talked about it's a referral. What's the other thing you hear me talk about all the time. You, I say a couple things, let's say you have to establish relationship. Part of that is social selling. As an example, they wanna know they wanna have seen your name. They are, they want to be referred to you so I can get a referral into account.

Or if I just see Darryl's name all the time. Cause I see his con on LinkedIn. Then when I have a problem Darryl's top of mind, I already trust him and go there two different ways of doing that. So that's what you want to do. That's the, the biggest thing I will say to you about that one. The other thing is we talk about beyond selling value.

We talk about. You sell value so you can control the agenda a little bit. Right? So that's what you're doing here. Now. They're still gonna do their own analysis, but that's where the pricing comes in. They believe you. And now all things equal. I'm gonna go to what I know. It's it's, it's what feels most comfortable.

So relationship selling. The relationship, journey, referrals, social selling brand, where it is, this is why you do those things. Last journey. I feel like we've kind of given it away already, cuz we used the word trust. Already so over to you.

Yeah. But yeah, but, but let's go through the exact same story. We just went through your car, broke down. You have a friend, they said, you gotta go talk to John at the Lexus dealer. You go to talk to John at the Lexus dealer. He helps you understand what you need, what your issues are, how you're gonna solve all these problems.

You say, thank you, John, where do I sign? You never go look at a competitive alternative. This is by far the least price sensitive buyer we have. Now I can imagine every salesperson out there that's listening right now saying yeah, yeah, yeah. That never happens to me. I guarantee you that you're wrong. I guarantee you that there are situations where buyers never looked at a competitive alternative.

Typically these are things like did they buy from you in the past? And now they're just gonna buy from you again without going out to shop around were they referred in, is it an option to something that they already have as a. , there are lots of places where people will buy from us without looking at competitive alternatives.

And we need to be able to recognize this. Because when we recognize this, we know our buyers are not price sensitive, by the way, I still haven't given you the most important point. I'm gonna wait until after I hear your comments. And then I'll give you the last, most important point of all of this.

I you're starting right from, I've made a decision on my own, and then I'm just buying from this person because again, I trust them now. How do you get there? Cuz you're right. That already happens. There's a couple different ways you can do that folks. We've talked about it all here on the podcast before I can point you in the right direction.

One is when you're selling value, part of selling value is quantifying the pain they're in now. So deep discovery will really help you say if you do it right, and you go deep enough with your probing and your questions, you can physically start to say, these symptoms are causing you this much financial.

Or other pain you can quantify it. So then when you get to the price point, you can then do a comparison to say, it's costing you a million dollars a day. My solution costs you a hundred thousand dollars on day one. You're already a 10 X ROI and it just goes up from there. I really don't think price is the issue.

It feels to me like time is your enemy. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner we can make this go away. So that's one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is handling the objection when they come back to you and they say, well, I really should go price shopping. I should talk to your competition.

The question then becomes fair enough. And Benjamin Denne, he's done a really good job of this. You sees him his content. He's been on the show several times, but I know when I talk to Ben, we have this conversation over and over again where he'll do the old why, which always throws him for a loop. Well mean, why, why you gonna talk the competition?

Well, get a better price. All right. So was, is there a price that you need to get. Because we've already talked about the issue and what is causing you, right? Well, no, well, I mean, is there something I've said that scared you away? No. I mean, and you do agree it's urgent right now. Right? Right. And you agree and we've agreed that, you know, you've seen for yourself, I've shown you that my solution can solve the problem.

Right? Yeah. So I don't understand why. and now I'm making this sound way simpler than it is. Benjamin does a great job of doing this as to many other experts out there, but you see what you're doing. So you're trying to understand the why they would even never go away. So two different ways you can do.

But you, the whole point is you, the what's key to both is truly quantifying the impact of a delayed decision and demonstrating the ROI of your decision. If you, you will know, you've not done that when they try to negotiate hard with you on pricing, you can always just with a little bit of negotiation, but if they try to negotiate hard, hard with you, then you, you totally miss that step.

And that's why this doesn't happen often. Cuz too many of. Missed that step. That's the road, according to Darryl Mike Mark, what did I, what do you think? Did I get it right? And what are you holding back on?

And what's so important about a trust journey versus a relationship journey versus a analytical. and that is whenever we find a client, a customer, whenever we're talking to somebody, we have to talk to them as though they're in a trust journey. And what does that mean? That means they're looking at what's the value of solving the problem they're not looking at.

Am I buying from you or a competi? now when, when they're thinking about the value of solving the problem, we're now thinking of what's the ROI of the solution, right? What's the value of having air to breathe. It's infinite, right? That's where I want to, I want people to get to, then we want to know.

Eventually we want to know, are you talking to competition, but we want to talk as though there is no competition. They're the ones who have to bring it up. And the question that I love to use, which implies there is no competition. If you don't buy this, what are you gonna do? And if they're gonna buy.

And, and now we know to shift our conversation when we're in that, will I conversation? We're talking as though they're in a trust journey, the only thing we're talking about is the value of solving the problem. What problem do you have? How do we solve it? What's the value? The moment I know that they're moving into a, which one?

So they're moving into that right hand column. Now I need to make sure I understand. How am I differentiated from my competition? What's the value of that? Differentiation? What are the problems I can solve that my competitors can't solve. and that's where the real magic here happens.

You wanna build rapport, which ironic goes back to the relationship side. We talked a bit about that. This is something you've heard me. The next thing that you've heard me hammer you on yet. I see too many of you just do not get this. I love you, but you're leaving money on the table cuz you don't do it, which is demonstrate expertise about the buyer's business.

Statistically, the number one thing they want from you is that, you know, their business, all right. That way, that's how you build that trust and relationship. And then finally the third way is explore how much value they'll receive from your so. Which is why I go back to the point about if you do proper discovery, you'll quantify it.

And then you can actually go and convince them and get them to agree with you and buy in. And consequently, they will see that any kind of negotiation or looking at any other solution is both a lost opportunity and waste of time. And it's just moved forward. And with this, now, Mark goes through the whole thing.

What I liked about this book beyond Mark being a cool cap was this every single one of your reps are taught these amazing tactics. Like, you know, that you should do social selling. You know, you should go and get a ask for a referral. You know, you can do objection handling on why you're gonna go look at the competition.

You know, that you need to go and quantify the impact of your sale on their business. Nothing I've told you here should be new to you. If you are a practitioner of your craft in sales, nothing we've talked about here. Is new to this podcast episodes upon episodes about each of these topics individually.

But what Mark has done is he said those are tactics. There's a reason why, because there's a journey and this is how people buy and I bring it back full circle to his analogy of error. Do you value it? Yes. Do you wanna pay money for this renal air? No. All right. That's a journey. That's why the book selling value is gonna help you understand all of this.

Then you can bring your tactics in that you've been working on and now it becomes this wonderful concert, right? You're just using tactics left and right. And center when it's right throughout the journey. We'll stop there. I like his tagline. We're gonna end it on how to win more deals at higher prices.

I could say it another way, which is how to make a boatload more commission. So whatever you want, you know, would you make a small investment and a little book like this, Anthony and Reno said at best, and you probably saw if you're a regular show, you heard him say it the other day. He goes. And if you haven't seen that up, still go see it.

He said Darryl, cuz Anthony is a voracious reader. And, and I asked him, why do you read so much? Not that you shouldn't. I just asked him why. And his comment was Darryl. If I can go and get another expert and I can pay roughly say a penny of page or something to that effect. And it spend four to six hours and be brilliantly murder afterwards and make more money.

Consequently, why would I not do that? So. Again, I said it before. I'll say it again. Are you gonna invest in yourself? You've made the first investment, you know how you subscribe to the podcast, but there's a lot of people out there who don't know about the inside inside sales show. So my friends, you need to go spread the word, but it's not done because my good friend.

Mark has a podcast too. It's called impact pricing. You can check it out on the impact pricing podcast, go look it up. Or you can just go to impact pricing.com and you can see it right there under resources. So lots of things, lots of information. A lot of it's free. Mark. What's the best way to get a hoodie?

Is it LinkedIn? Is it somewhere else?

And his last name. S T I V I N G it's Stiving just for the hint. It's not ST-EE-VING. It's not ST-EE-VING. I know this cuz I asked. It's Stiving. So there we go. All right folks. I had fun.

We went a little long. I hope you don't mind. I hope you stayed for the whole show. Thank you for indulging in us today. I had a lot of fun and I mean it, if you get value from the show, others should know about it too. So share the news. Go give us a. We'd be grateful. In the meantime, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, my colleagues, and arms go kick some ass today.

Go sell stuff, explore the journeys, sell value. My name's Darryl. That's Mark. I'll be back next week. Same time, same place. I'll see you then. Bye. Bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.