Strategy April 02, 2025
ASI Fort Worth 2025: Avoid Selling on Price
In a Power Session on Exhibit Day 2, industry veteran Cliff Quicksell gave distributors his best tips for leaning into value, charging what they’re worth and resisting pressure to drop prices to get the sale.
Key Takeaways
• Emphasize Value: Highlighting the benefits and quality of their products and services can help distributors justify their pricing and differentiate them from competitors.
• ‘Charge What You’re Worth’: It’s important for distributors to confidently charge prices that reflect the true worth of their offerings. Undervaluing their products can lead to unsustainable business practices and diminished perceived value.
• Resist Price Pressure: Maintaining pricing integrity ensures long-term profitability and reinforces the value proposition to clients.
Promo distributors have a bad sales habit, and Cliff Quicksell wants it to stop.
“We give away the store in this industry,” the industry consultant said emphatically during a Power Session on the show floor at ASI Fort Worth. “Too often we sell on price, not on our value.”
Cliff Quicksell presented a Power Session on selling on value, not price, at ASI Fort Worth.
The downsides of selling on price are legion, he told attendees during “How Not to Sell on Price: Elevating Your Sales Strategy.” Among them are decreased profit margins, customer disloyalty, perceived lower value, increased sales effort with minimum return, a race to the price bottom and difficulty upselling.
“First, you have to appreciate your value,” he said. “What is an hour of your time worth?”
He also reminded distributors not just to sell a product based on the pricing code the supplier is suggesting. “Maybe you don’t want to sell that item on an A – what’s stopping you?” he asked. “We get wrangled into believing that’s what we have to do. Codes are a suggested price; you have to figure out how to be competitive.”
Unfortunately, too many distributors continue to give away their value for free to help them compete in a crowded marketplace. But that’s misguided.
“If you’re delivering value, you’ll charge what you need to charge,” he said. “But we’re afraid to charge for our time and expertise. We want the customer to feel good, so we give things away, like artwork. We turn the reins over to them.”
Quicksell gave advice to the attendees to be less price-focused.
- Bump up target profit margins by five points a year. “If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table,” he said.
- Change your sales mindset so your value is at the forefront of the transaction. “Don’t blame the customer for beating you up,” he said. “You have to set the tone. If you go in unsure of your value, they’ll eat you alive.”
- Calculate what your time is worth by using the following formula: total sales minus gross profits divided by total hours worked. That gives distributors a quantitative target.
- Make sure the promo item has measurable ROI. “It’s not just a giveaway,” he said. “What’s the effectiveness of that giveaway? Be sure to demonstrate that to them. People think of promo as ‘tchotchkes’ because of the way it’s been presented.”
“Position yourself as a consultant, not a salesperson,” Quicksell concluded. “When you create measurable ROI, price becomes less and less of an issue, and they won’t want to leave. Retention is more profitable than acquisition.”