One of the biggest complaints that most salespeople have is that their customers are only interested in price. These sales representatives go into a sales call, try to pitch the advantages of their product, and invariably their customer cuts them short and shifts it to a price discussion. The salesperson, in an attempt to salvage an order, will either ask how low he or she needs to go in order to secure an order, or will continue to push the fact that their product’s features are better than their competition. In order to convince most purchasing managers that there is true value in your offering, it is important that you develop a strategy with which to quantify the value that your company will bring. It is typically not enough to simply state that your quality is better, your service is better, or even that your company is easier to deal with because of shorter lead times or increased systems flexibility. Even taking the next step and establishing a comparison between yourself and your competition (i.e. your delivery performance is 86% on time versus the 32% that your competitor can offer) is often not enough. Instead, you need to be able to assign a dollar value to the advantages that your company can offer. For instance, sticking with the delivery performance example, if you are greater than 50% more accurate on your deliveries, what is the ultimate impact on your customer’s bottom line? An inconsistent delivery performance can affect your customer’s inventory turns, impact your customer’s delivery performance to their customer, result in downtime of your customer’s machines if there are any downstream operations, etc. The financial impact of a simple late order can be catastrophic for your customer. As mentioned before, uncomfortable customers are buying customers, providing that the product or service that your company has to offer will solve that customer’s immediate concerns. If your delivery performance is better than your competition, you should start by simply mentioning that fact. Then let them know how much better your delivery performance is. Finally, assign values to each scenario that result from the late delivery. The best way to develop this is to ask direct questions about each scenario. For example, when talking about the impact of poor delivery performance on inventory turns, you can ask how many turns they currently get and identify what it costs them to hold safety stocks in anticipation of poor supplier performance (typically a $1.00 decrease in inventory results in an approximate $0.30 improvement to a company’s profitability). When assigning values to each scenario, it is best to work with your target customer to get them as involved in the process as possible. When you make estimates on cost implications, be sure to ask them if they agree with your numbers. If not, have them help to develop the financial impacts, as it will force them to think about the pain that they are enduring from a first hand perspective. The better you know and understand your customer’s business, the more accurately you will be able to depict the impact of the value that your company can bring to them.