Why Do Sales Teams LOSE? – Clients Think “Price” Rather than “Value” (6-10)

As mentioned, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.


6. Let the customer think in terms of “price,” rather than “value.”

The number one reason for not selecting a supplier was price, which in and of itself is not particularly surprising. When examined in relationship to the criteria of “value offered,” however, an intriguing pattern emerges. Price, on its own, had a significant negative gap score, meaning that price was mentioned more often when discussing reasons why a supplier wasn’t selected. Value, on the other hand, had a positive gap score; in fact, value was only mentioned when respondents explained why a supplier was selected. In other words, when eliminating a supplier, respondents thought in terms of price. If the respondent thought in terms of value, they were more likely to select the supplier in question. This corroborates the ongoing movement in strategic account management to create value for customers.

As some of the previous examples in this article illustrate, customers were often willing to ignore the strict price of offerings if they were able to see the overall value of the partnership. Customers make decisions based on the value that can be created for the enterprise. A focus on price indicates that the customer is unsure of how the offering will create value—how it will solve a compelling need or produce a desired result. Customers who are unsure about how the product will do either of these are more likely to think in terms of price than in terms of value.

Of course, whether or not a customer thinks in terms of price or value was not entirely dependent upon the whims of the customers themselves. SAMs who do not construct a strategy based upon showing the overall value of the partnership (whether through ROI, added value or other means) do themselves a disservice, and seriously handicap their ability to develop successful accounts.