In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by frequent guest and CEO of Sales Gravy, Jeb Blount, to discuss an important (and often avoided) topic: selling a price increase to clients. 

The price increase conversation is awkward, especially if you’ve never done it before.

• A seller’s main priority is to get the increase without losing the customer or order.
• Increases are good for the health of an organization. They’re essential to ensure you get the resources to sell more deals, help prevent layoffs, and service quality initiatives. 

Understand what kind of price increase is occurring:

• Defensive increases are smaller and leveraged across the entire company.
• In addition, having a relationship with the customer makes discussing a price increase easier.
• The status quo means it takes a lot of work for a buyer to leave - many customers are likely to stay with you despite the price increase. 

Popular narratives sellers can use to discuss:

• In an inflationary period with supply chain issues, price increases constitute an economic fairness narrative. Costs have risen, impacting your ability to serve customers.
• Future value narratives occur when you add features, services, and additional expertise that justify the price increase.
• Project-based narrative - To successfully meet a particular benchmark, timeline, or quota, you need additional funding. 
• Weave narratives together to weave a custom reason for your client - it should be whatever best helps them explain the increase. 

Connect with Jeb on LinkedIn for more content and information. You can find his new book, Selling the Price Increase, on Amazon, and a free downloadable companion guide at salesgravy.com/resources. Finally, tune in to his podcast, the Sales Gravy Podcast, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

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This episode is brought to you in part by the Outbound 2022 Sales Conference.

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As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

hubpspot.com/marketers

bluemangostudios.com