If your sales process involves giving a presentation (virtual or otherwise), and at the end of it you provide pricing options and then close, then this article is for you.

There are certain steps you must follow to ensure that when you do get to the pricing/budget part of your close, you’ll be able to focus on the pricing options—instead of wondering if someone is sold first.

To review some best practices on giving a sales presentation—virtual or otherwise—here is a quick checklist for you:

• Start by requalifying to confirm buying motives—including timeframe.
• During the presentation, use tie-downs (open ended!) go get feedback.
• Three quarter way through, switch to trial closes.
• At the end of your presentation, ask a series of quick questions before you go over pricing options…
• Go over pricing and close.

The most important step to get right is to:

Get buy in from your prospect before you go into pricing!

The reason this is important is that it’s easy for prospects to hide behind the, “Oh, that’s too much money for us.”

And when they do, you’re likely to do the absolute wrong thing: Drop your price or make a deal for less time, etc.

And guess what? They still won’t buy or they will just put you off!

You know why?

Because they’re not sold on your product or service to begin with, and you didn’t find that out.

Because you didn’t get buy-in before you went into pricing.

So, here is how to make sure someone is sold (bought-in) when you’ve finished your presentation but before pricing:

“So _______, I know I’ve given you a lot of information, but based on what you’ve seen so far, does this sound like a program/service/product that would get you the results you’re looking for?”

Now, the above is a generic statement which I encourage you to customize to fit your industry—and to even fit your prospect’s unique buying motives.

But the bottom line is that if you haven’t verified buy-in, in other words made sure your prospect is sold on your product or service, then going to the pricing and hoping for the best won’t get you very far.

Use the above question first—and then either discuss why they aren’t sold (and get them sold), or confidently go into pricing and close.

Further resources are available in the Mr. Inside Sales blog by clicking here.