Selling the Price Increase. Jeb Blount

forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

      As humans, we feel first, then we think. This is why relationships matter, interpersonal connections matter, and approaching price increases through the lens of human emotions matters.

      This is why you matter. Emotion is the glue that connects customers to you and those emotional connections are the ultimate key to maximizing price increases while retaining your customers.

Customers Are People

      Business-to-business (B2B) relationships are different and more complex than consumer-based relationships. B2B relationships may involve large sums of money, contractual agreements, strategic relationships, and layers of influencers and end users. Relationships tend to be long-term rather than transactional.

      On the outside looking in, these business relationships appear to be, as they say, “nothing personal, just business.” However, on the inside, at the core, in B2B relationships, customers are still people. They are irrational humans who are driven by emotion just like you. Not companies, not departments, not org charts, not job titles. People.

      Emotional people with their own agendas. Sometimes complaining, belligerent people who seem to lack any semblance of logic or reason. They will almost always default to their own self-interest, despite a price increase that may be fair and deserved.

Perhaps, then, this is the most important lesson: Selling price increases is human. You aren't selling price increases to a company; you are selling them to other people. At the granular level, it is just one person (you) influencing another person (your customer) to accept the price increase without resenting you for it.

      What's important to understand, though, is that your leaders are sending you in personally to have a conversation with your customer because they are counting on you to mitigate potential negative outcomes. With price increases, you cannot lose sight of the lifetime value of the relationships you've developed and nurtured.

      This is our focus in Part Two, “Protect Customer Relationships.” In this section we're going to do a deep dive into:

       Avoiding price increase mistakes that harm relationships and open the doors for your competitors

       Timing the price increase conversation

       Communicating price increases

       How to earn the price increase

      Exercise 6.1 Relationship Inventory

      Reflect on some of your relationships with customers that really stand out. Pick one that's particularly good, one that's been a struggle, and one that isn't very close at all. Identify the people you either look forward to working with or dread hearing from. What makes the relationship work the way it does?

      Best Client Relationship

      Account Name:

      Key Relationships:

       What makes this relationship work really well? Give an example of a time when you and the client worked together to solve a problem:

      Difficult Client Relationship

      Account Name:

      Key Relationships:

       What about this relationship do you struggle with most? Give an example of a time when you and the client worked together to solve a problem (or at least tried to):

Distant Client Relationship

      Account Name:

      Key Relationships:

       What do you think could change if you were able to strengthen this client relationship?

      What Can You Learn?

       What do you do in your best client relationship that you can apply in your weaker relationships?

Note

      1 1. Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994; rev. ed., Penguin, 2005).