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This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

josephwalla.com

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#22
post #20

I do this all the time, and it always works. Just today someone asked for a discount, and I wrote a similar email to this one, explaining why we don't give discounts, our products are great value, etc. I did offer them an extra 1 month trial for free, as they were just starting a new business, and they were very happy with that and will probably become a long-term customer. I think people are just programmed to ask f…

I would like to swap "people" in your sentence for "americans". It's a cultural thing, not a human thing.

It's actually the opposite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bargaining#Regional_differences

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#23
post #20

I do this all the time, and it always works. Just today someone asked for a discount, and I wrote a similar email to this one, explaining why we don't give discounts, our products are great value, etc. I did offer them an extra 1 month trial for free, as they were just starting a new business, and they were very happy with that and will probably become a long-term customer. I think people are just programmed to ask f…

I would like to swap "people" in your sentence for "americans". It's a cultural thing, not a human thing.

Seriously? Bargaining, or discounts, in this example is very, very common all over the world. I have found Americans do less of it than in most parts of the world, such as China, Turkey, Thailand, Morocco, etc.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#25
post #20

I do this all the time, and it always works. Just today someone asked for a discount, and I wrote a similar email to this one, explaining why we don't give discounts, our products are great value, etc. I did offer them an extra 1 month trial for free, as they were just starting a new business, and they were very happy with that and will probably become a long-term customer. I think people are just programmed to ask f…

I would like to swap "people" in your sentence for "americans". It's a cultural thing, not a human thing.

[deleted]

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#26
Sales 101 is being able to take the conversation away from "price" and change it to "value". 20 years ago, my friend was selling IBM desktops and servers to educational institutes and I learned this from him. There was no way IBM could compete against the prices of those small computer stores, so he had to actively show how buying IBM would save money over the long run, etc. He was a very good salesman so it worked pretty well.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#27
You should also write to the cheaper company. Or was the lesson supposed to be that writing meaningless platitudes like 'race to the bottom' is good marketing? Perhaps it is, but personally, I would feel insulted.

There's no worse assumption that cheaper product is worse, especially when it comes to SaaS. What if FooCorp has automated much more than Acme, and even with lower prices actually has both better profits per sale and better functionality?

Sure, FooCorp should work on their marketing, but that's in their interest, not yours. A perfect company from the customer's PoV is one that is almost unknown, provides the best value per money unit, and has just enough customers to be alive. Then you have a competitive advantage over competition using popular and expensive solutions.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#28
post #3

This blog post may have been worth millions of dollars in sales for Acme if we knew the actual context. Acme has chosen to provide a better value prop. They use this to justify their additional cost 100 times a day. The CEO noted that the value prop was subjective (does your company value XYZ?), and simply justified the gap. It's not magic, its logic.

Would have loved to give the name, but the founder asked not to be named. Sorry about that. It was his email, so I deferred to his judgement.

[deleted]

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#29
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have loved to give the name, but the founder asked not to be named. Sorry about that. It was his email, so I deferred to his judgement.

[deleted]

HelloSign is the author's company. He left off the names of the two competing companies who wanted HelloSign's business.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#30
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have loved to give the name, but the founder asked not to be named. Sorry about that. It was his email, so I deferred to his judgement.

[deleted]

That's the prospective client, not the company which created the product.
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