Theory & Practice of Selling

Way back in 1932, a young salesman named David Ogilvy was selling stoves in rural England. He would go on to revolutionize the advertising industry and his company, Ogilvy & Mather, remains one of the ad industry's top firms.

But in 1935, he was a ‘rising star’ though also still guy out selling stoves to English wives. He wrote a guide on selling the stoves, one that even 50 years, “Fortune magazine still considered it the best sales manual ever written.”

The guide is great and full of universal truths, and as part of my efforts to train our Chinese sales team in selling our cloud management services in 2013, I modified his guide to fit our industry and services.

Surprisingly (but maybe not, given how great he was), I was able to keep at least 50% of the text essentially unchanged — selling is selling, and both stoves & cloud services seemingly have much in common.

Below is our guide — I strongly urge you to adapt the original and/or ours for your industry and products or services, as it really makes you think about what is important, your messaging, and how to sell, along with handling objections, pricing, and closing the deal.

Theory & Practice of Selling Cloud Services

FOREWORD

In the world, there are millions of websites, games, and mobile apps. At least one million of these own servers or run on clouds. Only 100 of them use our services. No website, game, or app can afford a server can afford to be without ChinaNetCloud’s management and OaaS, Operations-as-a-Service.

There are certain universal rules to selling. Dress quietly and be prepared. Bring your laptop, tablet, and printed materials. Organize the room, put the agenda on whiteboard, get ChinaNetCloud pens distributed.

Kick off the meeting by telling them why you are there, how you know them, and the history to this point. Then review the agenda, and make sure you know who everyone in the room is, and their role. Do all this first.

Have a customer profile done, know their history and what they do, and study the most likely priorities for our five values. Have your sets of questions reviewed and ready to guide you through detailed solutioning.

If you’re not alone, make sure you’ve briefed your team in a pre-meeting, and everyone has read and discussed the profile. Ensure your team knows their role in the meeting, and who will sit where.

Make sure you know what roles are in the room, and the person driving the sale, from CEO to CTO to IT Manager to IT Guy to others, and adjust your tactics to understand the inter-personal dynamics. Internal relationships are very important and often key to your success.

Find out all you can about your prospects before you call on them; their industry, company and personal history, local vs. internalized, and so on. Every hour spent in this kind of research will help you and impress your prospect …..

The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be unprepared, and the second worst is being a bore or robot. Pretend to be very interested in any subject the prospect shows an interest in, as a personal relationship is very helpful, including about his background, schools, and companies.

Remember you are there to consult to them and offer solutions. Be the person who helps, not sells, finds and solves problems, not sells. The more they talk the better, and if you can make them laugh you are making good progress ……. get them up to the whiteboard, telling stories, and describing architecture so you can find problems, and offer solutions. And get them involved, as much and actively as possible.

Perhaps the most important thing of all is to adjust your pitch to the situation, which you will know from good Q&A and profiles. Avoid doing the exact same thing each time. If you find yourself one fine day saying the same things to a very local small game and big international e-commerce, it’s hopeless.

When the prospect tries to bring the meeting to a close, go gracefully. It can only hurt you to be kicked out….

The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get. But never mistake a quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship.

Quality of salesmanship involves energy, time, and knowledge of the service. We may analyze it under two main headings, ATTACK and DEFENSE……

ATTACK

1. General Statement

Most people have never heard of OaaS nor thought about outsourcing their server operations. Further, many people will see our name and assume we are one of many cloud companies like Aliyun, AWS, UUCloud, etc. So it’s critical very early on to explain clearly what we do, and then why we do it. Be very clear about this.

The main approach is that we do one of two things for each customer, either build new systems or take over existing systems. You should know from the profile and at the start which a particular customer needs and focus on that from the beginning of your conversation, call, and meetings.

Stories are your friend, in the form of cases, and you should ideally be of two types, one with the exact same challenges as the prospect (even in other industries or larger/smaller), and one of a larger customer in their industry whom they want to be like. Have these two preliminary stories ready to use, along with a mix of smaller anecdotes and larger cases as you find out more information. Do not forget this or fail to prepare.

People outsource operations for many reasons and to get many values, and your job is to quickly determine the most likely reasons and values as early as you can, though also keeping backup and secondary sales hooks always available (and for different people at the same customer).

Different items in this paper will be effective with different people. Local companies often focus on cost, while more international people want reliability, but not always. Growing companies want to scale, and most people want performance, but not always. Find out what they want and deliver it to them.

We sell value, period. Cost or price is secondary, so always be thinking about how to find, describe, promise, and sell value, at the very highest levels and all the time. An occasional great set of words is often needed to allow your enthusiasm in describing the value and true awesomeness of our services. Think some up and produce them easily, as often as needed for they are powerful.

Note that rarely will you have the time to get through all arguments in this paper. Focus, sell, and close.

2. Solutioning

You are selling a solution to problems they have, nothing more or less than that. So you need to know how your solution solves a variety of problems, and how to find those problems with questions. Know your questions at least two and ideally three levels deep, via training and practice. Ask others if you don’t know.

Get the customer to the whiteboard early and often, and get them engaged in showing how things work and where the problems or future opportunities are. Remember only 50% of customers will already have problems, as the rest will have problems in the future, mostly with growth, but also other future or potential issues. Find them, find them, find them.

3. Reliability

A website is not effective or making money if it’s not reliable. Problems can happen for many reasons, from code issues to operations to growth and overloading, plus IDC, CDN, and unknown reasons. In fact, many problems can look like reliability issues, as they all make the site unusable by the real end user.

Some of the problems will only come later as they grow, or they may have already seen them if they have any load or scale already. Find out if they are worried about this.

ChinaNetCloud is very focused on Reliability Engineering, with advanced deep monitoring, automated troubleshooting, careful design, and proactive problem avoidance. Our SLAs guarantee minimum downtime, and 7x24 operation. In the end, it’s the number one thing we offer; everyone wants it.

4. Performance

Many websites or apps are slow because the backend systems are overloaded, poorly tuned or badly architected. ChinaNetCloud has years of experience working with this and often improves systems 2X, 5X, 10X or more. With special audit tools, deep monitoring, standard best practices, and extensive experience, high-performance systems are our life.

Fast systems are always available, at peak times, with great performance, both for the system and the resulting business such as an e-commerce site or game. Fast systems make successful customers.

While Reliability is the main thing we offer, performance and system optimization are things the customer can see and feel, and thus is often more valuable. Plus we have better case studies.

5. Scalability

Every company wants to grow its traffic and business, but most don’t know how to do it without spending a lot more money, buying lots of new servers, and having other problems. Most systems just do not scale, due to architecture, tuning, configuration, SQL, and other problems. We fix this.

ChinaNetCloud has scaled hundreds of systems, often by 10–100X or more, using advanced tools, deep monitoring, architecture advice, and frequent customer system reviews. Never hit the wall when working with ChinaNetCloud.

Sometimes a IT manager will admit he doesn’t know to scale his system 5X+, and CEOs often worry about the cost of scaling, since buying 10X servers to grow 10X scares them and is a key selling point for us.

Scaling issues are more interesting to CEOs and executives than to IT teams.

6. Security

Every customer worries about security, on a few levels. One is simple anti-hackers, though this is usually less important than fearing DDoS or other reliability attacks.

Some games will worry about their code or data, i.e. ChinaNetCloud stealing these things, and for this, we have good arguments and white papers on how secure and controlled we are, especially in tracking what everyone does on all the servers.

ChinaNetCloud improves security in all areas, from best-practice coding and configurations to deep monitoring to incident response, secure off-site backups, and more.

We also have ways to demonstrate our security levels, with strict password controls, encrypted backups, data cleaning for dev/test, and much more.

Customers are always more secure with us, and we’ve never had even a single security incident.

7. Cost Savings

ChinaNetCloud cost savings should be featured if needed, particularly to CFOs and local CEOs, who are almost always interested in this, and often nothing else. Costs are often the only operations issue they ever see and understand …..

But cost and savings should always be secondary to other values, since real measurable hard cost savings can only be done in some cases, and assuming specific issues on the customer side, such as too many servers and racks; even then it’s difficult. So you should always be prepared and thinking about how to sell even though ChinaNetCloud doubles its cost. They’ll buy because of the value you demonstrate, not the price.

For older existing systems, cost savings are usually via Private or Public Clouds, which are often good ways to save money because they can combine older servers and services into upgraded hardware and save money.

For larger existing systems, audit & optimization are often good ways to save money by using fewer servers, fewer racks, less bandwidth, etc. The best way to save money is not to buy new servers or racks as they grow, and we have many examples of this — the savings are clear, and long-term. For this, we have many case studies on this, such as Glamour Sales, Lamiu, and more.

Remember, though that Cost Saving is our LEAST FAVORITE selling method. Always try to build perceived value in other ways first, assume we cannot save them money until we need to prove it.

8. Internet Ops

It is hopeless to try and sell Internet Operations unless you know something about the Internet and Operations, and appear to know more than you actually do. It is not simply a question of knowing a few key terms, and what a Server and Database are.

You must be able to talk to IT guys and executives on their own ground ….. but this can come over time or you’ll be overwhelmed. Know the basics, know the words, know how things basically work.

Also rely on your Sales Engineer, directly if they are there, and by phone if they are not. Try to answer every question as efficiently as you can, following up in email if there are open questions at the end of the meeting.

9. Appeal to IT Staff (then CTO, then CEO)

If there is an IT staff at the customer, he is bound to have a strong voice in giving ChinaNetCloud business. Compliment him on the system, and be careful of him losing face in front of his bosses. Try not to go above his head, though do make sure the CEO and CTO/IT Manager know there are problems (see Audit).

It’s difficult for IT teams to know what working with ChinaNetCloud is like, and how much easier it makes their lives, especially 7x24. They get best practices, deep monitoring, clear procedures, easy explanations, and the ability to rest and relax while ChinaNetCloud’s core teams help manage their systems.

Learn to recognize IT staff and managers on sight or with a quick question. It is painful indeed to push how much we take over and fix to a sad face who has been responsible for all this and just thinking of losing his job and perhaps vendor benefits. Be careful and inclusive, and think about how to make him successful.

When selling to IT managers and staff, make a discreet appeal to their human instincts. Working with ChinaNetCloud takes the slavery out of IT work, especially 24x7, but also in setup, configurations, backups, documentation, and troubleshooting. We do not manage their IT team, but make their lives easier, making things civilized and sane among all the chaos that most Internet startups live with every day.

Before the sale and afterward, the IT team can be your strongest enemy or your best friend, and they poison a whole industry or set of companies or act as your secret representative. ChinaNetCloud’s work will mean more sleep, a better resume, and a better life …. we must be very clear on this, in the meetings, brochures, follow-up email, and/or other meetings outside for coffee or drinks. Make the IT team succeed if you can.

Remember that existing IT staff and the IT Manager can kill your project, especially if they’ve been there a long time and have the trust of the CEO/CTO. You must always treat IT nicely and show how working with ChinaNetCloud is good for them and their career.

But also remember that some CEO/CTOs feel that IT is not doing a good job, and you should try to discover this early in the process, especially if our Technical Sales Audit results are poor. You have some leverage here, but understand the relationships before you push too hard on poor IT.

At the same time, don’t avoid serious discussion of poor system audits and how this has been a big problem for other customers, plus how we fixed it all to achieve happiness. The audits and proving bad IT management are key elements of your sales strategy, especially in difficult accounts.

And compare the value! If you can work on this appeal to the CEO's cost and reliability worries, and combine it with an appeal to the CTO and IT team, you cannot fail to get the deal.

10. Technical Sales Audits

Technical Sales Audits are a secret weapon to show customers their current problems. They are designed to both show how much ChinaNetCloud knows about all things operations, and to show they are not doing a good job.

Audits should be used often, but especially when the prospect says they don’t need ChinaNetCloud or that the IT team is doing a good job. Offer a free check, as how can they refuse an expert 3rd party opinion? And assure them if we find them doing a great job, we will tell them; maybe they are so good we can learn something from them!

Presenting audits can be tricky, as a bad audit can lose IT a lot of face, especially if they are in the meeting with the boss. You might hit the main points, find a way to flatter IT, and mention that IT is very likely overloaded and thus it’s just hard to find/fix all this, and that we see this very often, even in the U.S.

Also don’t forget our external audits that Sales Engineers can run even without the customers’ cooperation, such as GTMetrix, SSL and DNS checks, security scans, and more.

11. Appeal to Special Situations/Customers

Many special situations and systems can also use ChinaNetCloud’s services, though we generally aren’t seeking them out as they are outside our key verticals, or have unusual systems that don’t fit our standards. However, they must make sense strategically.

SaaS, API, Big Data, search, and many other types of systems can use our help, with the key strategic requirement that they will grow and need lots of servers or services.

Also, a variety of non-vertical areas such as Travel, development, HR, and much more can use our help, again as long as they will scale and need servers or services.

There is no end to the special appeal ChinaNetCloud has for every conceivable type of site and situation. Think it out, but make sure it makes sense for us.

11. Summary of Miscellaneous Benefits & Economies

ChinaNetCloud’s customers save time, effort, money, and stress in many ways that aren’t as clear as the number of servers or hours spent fixing problems on weekends. These include a much better life for IT while also guaranteeing reliability, performance, scalability, and security.

Many background and often overlooked things also get done with ChinaNetCloud’s services, including system documentation, tested backups, HA failover testing, replication verification, load testing, and more.

Also don’t forget that both architecture and technology consulting are included, which by themselves would often cost tens or hundreds of thousands of RMB. We always give free feedback and advice.

Reducing TI staff is also a possibility, but normally IT staffs get a life, plus newly-found time to improve internal processes, work better with development teams, and many other valuable projects that can only be done internally — letting ChinaNetCloud handle all the basics, plus 7x24 frees up these valuable resources.

A big benefit related to staffing is that ChinaNetCloud customers are much better protected when they have IT staff turnover or problems, as the systems are continuously secure, documented, and well-managed.

12. Stories, Jokes & Chatting

The longer you talk to a prospect, the better, and you will not do this if you are a bore. Pepper your talk with stories and jokes. Accumulate a group of pictures, try to draw on whiteboards, and get them to do the same. Above all, laugh till you cry every time the prospect makes the joke. A boring and deadly serious demo is bound to fail. If you can’t make a customer interact, ask questions, laugh & see ChinaNetCloud’s value, you cannot make them buy.

DEFENSE

1. General Advice

The ideal to aim at is to make your attack so thorough that the enemy is incapable of counterattack …. In practice, however, you must always be faced sooner or later with questions and objections, which may indeed be taken as a sign that the prospect’s brain is in working order, and that he is conscientiously considering ChinaNetCloud as a reasonable solution. Questions and push-backs are a good sign.

Some salesmen talk so much or in such a boring way that clients are never engaged or care to buy ChinaNetCloud’s services. A talkative customer is a good thing. Engage them to help you find solutions to sell to them. Get them talking.

Many of the customers' worries are reasonable, and best handled with something like “Yes, you would think so, but our experience is that … and tell him the opposite” or “Yes, you’d think so, but actually here are two cases of the reverse”.

Remember, the customer can disagree with your ideas and answers, but stories and cases about others cannot be easily challenged. If you say “Disney had this or did this and it was great”, they can’t really argue.

2. Detailed Objections

“I don’t need your service”

Always wrong. Everyone needs our service and can use us, even single-server Windows sites and 10,000-server Baidu / Tudou systems. Now, we may not want them, but they need us. We add value everywhere.

The defense here depends on why they feel they don’t need us, which are outlined below, though usually falling into the “Cannot Afford”, “Too Expensive”, “I Have a Team”, or “Too Early”.

“Cannot Afford”

The customer has no money and simply cannot buy at these prices, at this scale. This should rarely be an issue for small systems, as companies that cannot afford 5,000 RMB/month are not real customers in most cases. But at larger prices, such as 25–50–100K/month, this is serious money for any startup company and may well be out of their ability to afford.

For strategic customers, this is an opportunity for creative pricing, perhaps until they get funding, or until they get customers, etc. First ask the customer what they could afford, then ask the ChinaNetCloud Sales Manager for ‘ChinaNetCloud CloudStart Program’ pricing.

We always want to try to close the deal. Many deals were saved by giving a small discount, a free server (others at regular price), adjusting payment timing, adding a technical favor (we’ll help migrate your data, etc.) to setup.

But make sure they really can’t afford it, as it may just be an issue of “Too Expensive”, see below.

“Too Expensive”

This is not at all the same as “Cannot Afford”, as in this case they can afford it, but think (or say) it’s too expensive. Is it really too expensive for them? Probably in only 1/3 of the cases, while another 1/3 is that they just don’t fully understand the value, and a final 1/3 are just negotiating. Your job is to separate these into most to least likely and test them.

? 1/3 is too expensive — understand their budget/funding. Try to get a smaller “starter” deal.

? 1/3 don’t understand ChinaNetCloud value — Understand what is most important/lacking for them (scalability, performance, security, pricing, launch speed, etc.), tell customer stories that show how we solved this and customers love us!

? 1/3 are negotiating — Negotiate back. “If you didn’t ask for a discount, I wouldn’t sell it to you.” Begin standard negotiating practices (BATNA, etc.)

Never forget your key objective is to project value, not talk about cost or price as a problem. If you have an overwhelming value, the cost is never, ever an issue — they will sell their mother-in-law to afford it. Other than simple negotiating to get better pricing, all price difficulties are under-valuing cases. Sometimes this can’t be fixed, but always try. Value, value, value. All the time.

If core and key value cannot be established for whatever reason, then the ‘expense’ issue needs to be dealt with head on. The details are important here, as ‘expensive’ means many things and has many components. This is your opportunity to ask about his real IT costs and compare those against our savings.

Also, remember the majority of these ‘expense’ issues fall into two areas — having an existing team, and not seeing enough direct savings in servers, racks, etc., now or as they grow.

“I Have a Team”

“We love working with teams.” That is actually the best situation, as all our best customers have existing IT teams. Our customers love this because we help improve their team’s results, especially on key items, and the IT guys love it because it makes their lives so much easier. But sometimes you have to convince them.

We even have a new booklet on how we make life easier for IT teams, and another on how we actually work together day-to-day. These really show how it all works, and are full of quotes from happy customers and IT teams.

The key issue here is not cost (see above) but that the customer feels their team can do this work, and thus ChinaNetCloud’s services are not needed. Of course, ChinaNetCloud can add value and unless the existing team is very, very good, make big improvements in all areas, adding value across the board.

The Technical Sales Audit is very helpful here, as is finding ways to start working together, with a small project, test system, doing anything they don’t want to do, including a three-month optimization project.

Also, look at the SOR for the HR and Quality worksheets. Update the Quality worksheet to graph their current status and future state if they use ChinaNetCloud. It’ll help you show how much we can help.

Also, sometimes ChinaNetCloud guarantees we can help and improve things, and if not, you can cancel after three months (Can add to SOR Notes if required).

“We are okay, and don’t need your services”

We hear that a lot from customers when we first talk to them, and you’d be amazed at the number who a couple of months later tell us they are so glad we are working with them.

Usually, this is because they have problems or potential problems they don’t know about, or have not hit yet until they have more load — these are the worst times to be having trouble.

This is the perfect opportunity to offer our Free Audit service, to really check how things are going on their production servers. If they are fine, we are very honest and will tell them they are doing a great job and that they don’t need our services.

However, in most cases, we find very serious security, performance, scaling, reliability, and other problems where we can help a lot.

“Too Early”

Great, this is the best time to work together. Tell stories of how we get many companies just before launch or right after when they hit the wall and have problems, which makes us feel bad. We hate seeing customers waste money or have trouble when we could have helped.

There are two types of ‘too early’ arguments. The first is some customers are not launched yet and may be months or even quarters away, though in China it’s often just 3–6 months. They’ll feel it’s too early to need or pay for these services.

Fortunately, they are very wrong. Everyone needs us, right from the beginning, in fact, before the beginning, so we often set up dev/test systems on a cloud using best practices and standards so they are sure their systems will launch and scale without any problems. And the best time to start on a production system is at least two months before launch, leaving a month to build, and a month to test. For dev/test, even earlier (up to six months before launch).

The second type of “too early” situations are companies that have launched, but not grown or scaled yet, either due to slow business, slow introduction, improving the system before promotion, etc. They feel they’ll get ChinaNetCloud when they grow and need us. And often they say they have little money in revenue or investment until they prove the site or game or app works and is popular.

We always want to get involved early and will find a way to make it work for them, as we have many customers (like LaMiu) who grew first, then called us. And this makes us sad, as so many problems could have been avoided if we’d prepared them for scale and performance before they needed it, as it’s very hard to fix systems that are often overloaded (though we’ve done this too, and dislike it).

If they don’t need a dev/test system and are more than three months from launch and are not unusually complex or difficult, it may be best to wait until the 3–4 month point to try again.

“Security Issues”

Some customers worry about security, either of the system against hackers or of the data and code against ChinaNetCloud stealing it.

These are easily handled using our brochures and discussion of how tight and strong our security is, usually much stronger than the customers, from users and passwords, to access controls and especially deep logging, plus best practices, world-class configurations, and more.

Hackers are easily repelled using best-practice architectures, tools, and technologies, plus world-class configs, deep monitoring, strong networks, firewalls, and hardened services.

ChinaNetCloud stealing things has never happened and never will. In addition to strong training and processes, our employees are carefully controlled and monitored, plus global experience has shown that the real risks are a customers’ internal staff, not outside service providers, especially professional world-class ones like ChinaNetCloud. We also talk about “3rd Party Difference,” which means the ChinaNetCloud team is a 3rd party who doesn’t know the value of the customer’s data. And our whole job is to protect it.

“Can ChinaNetCloud do or support … ?”

Of course, and extremely well ….

We can do anything, though our actual support and service levels depend on the actual situation and how familiar we are with various technologies, tools, and topologies.

We have a long list of premier systems we support such as Dell, Linux, PHP, MySQL, Java, Cisco, etc., and a longer list of things we support for setup, install, configuration, backup, and monitoring.

But we pride ourselves in finding solutions to any customer problem, including custom software, special situations, new or unusual software and services, and many strange things. Our service of course includes dealing with all this, often writing scripts, creating documentation, building packages, testing on our clouds, and supporting anything and everything in some way. Customer satisfaction and making it all work are our strongly-held beliefs.

“I heard ChinaNetCloud is slow, makes mistakes, and has unhappy customers”

We are not perfect, though that is our goal, as is 100% satisfaction. Admit that we’ve been growing fast and are not always perfect, but we continually improve (see our blogs) and are always getting better. We even have surveys, follows ups, and monthly calls to ensure good service. We get better every day.

We have so much confidence that we run surveys on our work, monthly review calls, and are totally transparent in everything we do. We give customers access to our core ticket system, all our work logs, and project plans, and in the rare case we make a mistake, we have a formal investigation and report, see below.

Also express grave concern about anyone who is unhappy with our service, and try to find out their name so that you can rush over there to take care of it. In this way, you will give the prospect an example of how much we care about service.

If we make mistakes we create an AAR, an After Action Report, a 5–10 page report that hides nothing, and thoroughly investigates everything that happened, the sequence and timelines, who did what, the notifications and communications, monitoring data, and more. And then we follow up to make sure the improvements get done.

Our goal is always to tell the customer what happened, how, and why, plus more importantly, how we’ll correct it now and in the future. We get better together.

Overall, we are always honest and candid with the customer, as we believe this produces better services, more trust, and better results for our customers.

“Does my team know what you are doing on the servers?”

Of course. One of the first things we do is install security and logging so everyone knows what everyone does. Our ticket system and worklogs are open to you, and we thoroughly investigate and report on any mistakes we make.

And we’re always happy to explain why and how we do things, so your teams always feel part of the process. Some customers want to pre-approve all changes, while others trust us 7x24 to handle everything for us; it’s up to you. Overall, security, tracking, coordination, and documentation are always improved.

“Do you do development?”

Explain that, as experts in Internet Server Operations, we focus on the systems, and never touch the “Code, Content, or Data.” We can help improve the performance of those things, especially the database and by using outside tools, the Code, but we don’t do development ourselves.

You can also mention that in our experience, mixing development and operations results in compromises so neither is done well, and operations usually suffers in security, reliability, documentation, etc.

Tell them we are in Operations, and that is what we do. Then you review again our operational advantages.

3. Competitors

Try and avoid being pulled into discussing competitive situations, as it introduces a negative and defensive atmosphere, and is rarely necessary as we have no direct competition.

Never say bad things about competitors — they won’t really believe it, coming from you, and it will make the prospect distrust your integrity and dislike you.

But remember that a key ‘competitor’ is the inside IT team, as mentioned above, and it’s very important to handle any comparison or conflict very carefully, especially if the IT manager or team are in the room. The best route is to talk about how we are good for IT and how customers’ IT teams love us.

4. Price Defense

It’s best to discuss the price proactively when you are ready, but sooner or later a prospect will ask you the price before you are ready. The way you reply is the supreme test of your salesmanship. Your voice, your manner, your expression, even your smell, must be controlled and directed to soften the impact …..

The way you continue the conversation after announcing the price is of great importance. It is no use fatuously remarking that it is “not really expensive.” You must be specific, definite, and factual. The prospect is not interested in your personal opinion on what is or is not expensive for him.

The following suggestions will give you an indication of the kind of way to cope with the reactions of different prospects to the price announcement:

“It’s too expensive”

I apologize I have not demonstrated our value, both in direct hard savings and in softer, less direct but even more important ways. Let me explain why this is great value for you.

Remember that costs and money have two parts, direct and indirect. Direct is easily measurable such as people, servers, racks, etc. while indirect is harder to measure, such as downtime, security, backups, documentation, and scalability. Even performance, which should be obviously important to a game or e-commerce business’ success, can be very hard to measure and talk about.

And then see the above prior section on being too expensive.

5. Final Thoughts

Everyone needs ChinaNetCloud’s services, from the smallest startup to the world’s largest Internet companies.

We provide huge value, everywhere, though not every customer sees that immediately. Your job is to show them the values we provide, in the structure of a solution to their current or likely future problems. The entire sales process is structured to help you do that.

Never forget the customer wants solutions, too, and wants their life to be easier. If they like, respect, and trust you, they will help you find their problems, build their solutions, and achieve mutual success all along the way. Their success is our success.

— Now go out and sell —