This is a Guest post by Alen Majer, CEO of The Science and Art of Selling.

In my previous article, I was talking how If you live by price – you will die by price.

Let’s talk further about how to close the deal without discounting.

If you base your offer on your price only, there is a good chance that someone will have a lower price than you, or you can end up in the bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal in achieving more goals for your prospects, not just to save money, because every other salesperson will say exactly the same.

A customer wants to see the value not in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to their business problem. They must perceive unique value from you. If they cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.

Probably you can’t differentiate much with your product, I am sure you have some unique features, but your competition has them, too. Customers today can easily substitute your product with the one from your competition and still be satisfied.

So how can you differentiate?

That’s where trigger events are coming to the game.

Trigger events can help you with recognizing needs and opening the door to have a meaningful conversation with customers who have events happening. Just to be different from the competition is not really important to your customers. What they would like to see is added value.

What creates customer value?

-    Skilled sales force

-    Sales process itself

-    Understanding their business situation today and adapting to their particular wants and needs

If you recognize your customers’ needs and create the value for them, customers will move from initial meeting to a decision much easier. Communicating the value is a traditional view of selling, but in today’s world you can’t survive if you are not creating the value for the customer. And make customers realize that they are on the market.

A salesperson needs to play a leading role to create the value for his customers. In each step of the sales process, the  sale person can create the value, but the most value can be created early in the process by helping customers define their needs.

This is true especially in consultative sales where the salesperson can create the value, recognize customer needs with trigger events and help them define their needs better and deeper. A sales professional needs to create the specialized situation and put them on the market even if they didn’t feel like that before he entered the picture.

If you are just selling your product – you are missing the point and you will die by price, as you lived by price. Customers are looking beyond the product; they are looking for the solution to their needs and your understanding of their business situation. Many times that should include help and advice, too.

Individual customers must be treated differently. What works for one customer may not work at all for another. Knowing about trigger events happening to your targeted prospect (and more different events are always better) you will have a very powerful tool to adjust your sales presentation to their needs, recovered with trigger events.

Concentrate on understanding your customers’ business issues, and show them how to solve more than one goal with your product, create a value for them and you will go home with the contract in your pocket, whatever the price is.

Let me repeat it here once more – if you don’t show the value, you will definitely not win whatever your price is. Even if you have the lowest price on the market, it does not mean much to the prospect, because they don’t see the difference between your product and ones from the competition. And many buyers are buying from someone who had crafted a compelling solution to their needs, then comes understanding of their needs, and after that, the financial part of the deal.

Your goal as sales professional is to create value through how you’re selling, not just through what you’re selling. To be a real sales professional ready for 21st century customers, here is no question- you need to change your approach, but when and how?

Alen Majer consults and trains entrepreneurs and salespeople how to harness their (sex) energy and use it for the success of selling. He is the founder and CEO of The Science and Art of Selling – a sales training, coaching and consulting company in Toronto, Canada; co-founder of Sales Academy – Croatia and Sales Institute of Croatia. Visit his blog at http://www.alenmajer.com.