THE DIARY OF A PROTEAN SALESMAN

With

Rasheed Adewusi

(Rasheed is a Sales Manager in one the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He also runs the personal blog, Wise, Wide and Wild)

This fundamental is the trickiest to control of all the fundamentals. It is very tricky in that be it selling above or below the recommended price, either way, it is detrimental to the sales and growth of the business. Normally, you can recommend prices to resellers but you are still at the mercy of the forces of demand and supply; and even discounts and seasonal incentives actually look like bottlenecks in the long run. But if pricing can be got right, sales become very easy.

In reality, Price is Perceived Value. In a normal circumstance, the price we pay for a particular product/service is what we believe is the sum-total of all the values we will derive from it, and values could be physical, emotional, sociological, psychological, could even be political. Thus, pricing of all products/services must always align with the intrinsic and perceived values derivable from such products/services; and these intrinsic and perceived values must be determined from the customers, point of view.

In essence, Price must be directly aligned to value, it must not be higher or lower. Price Determination is always a product of scientific research, and it is usually handled by Management, but it is the sole responsibility of the Sales Professional to ensure adherence. Of all the sales fundamentals, this is the most difficult to deal with. The Resellers in the Chain of Distribution are either selling “above” or “below” the recommended price, and this hampers growth in many ways. Many factors are responsible for this, ranging from the forces of demand and supply to some clandestine business front, and even product counterfeiting.

As a Sales Professional, the first step to take to avoid Price Distortion is to do a due diligence on the direct channel partners to ensure the business is a legitimate endeavour and not a money laundering front for some clandestine business; or a route for pushing counterfeits of your products into the trade channels.  Failure to carry out this due diligence will lead to the channel partner undercutting price or pushing counterfeits into the trade, this will in turn edge your legitimate channel partners out of business because they will not be able to profitably compete, and will also lead to loss of consumer confidence, and might even lead to sanctions from several regulatory bodies.

Also, the onus falls on the Sales Professional to ensure Direct Sales Agents get the products/services to unit resellers/retailers at the recommended price and without pressure or prejudice. Most times, Direct Sales Agents do mark-up the prices of products and services, and equally do selective supply based on personal preferences. These create artificial scarcity and also entrench ill-feeling towards the products/services a la transferred-emotion. Thus, effective monitoring is compulsory to ensure those who are supposed to be sales-enablers will not become the cogs in the wheels of growth and progress.

Paramountly, constant and in-depth education of the entire chain of distribution, including consumers of your products/services positioning, benefits and features, differentiation, and genuineness in alignment with the Price will go a long way in helping to keep price stable. Kindly note that Pricing is one of the fundamentals of sales, and not the only fundamental; therefore, it relies on the effectiveness of the other fundamentals to be really effective.