Sometimes there’s a common element between selling software and feeding the birds in the park. When birds gather around for your food, you have to make very calm, deliberate movements, so they know they can trust you.

When a buyer first comes around and shows an interest in what you have to sell, and there’s a question about the ballpark price, you toss out some crumbs, and proceed to give an overview demo, attract more stakeholders, gather business requirements, and give more extensive demonstrations to prove the return on investment of your solution.

At some point while you are gaining the confidence of the buyer, it may turn out that business requirements demand a more sophisticated solution than you first presented. Perhaps there is another module or two required, or complex professional customization services.

Keep in Step with Buyer Expectations

Leading your buyer along—without mentioning how these incremental feature additions can add to the cost—can be like dropping a 15-pound bag of seed in the middle of the flock of attentive birds you have painstakingly gathered around you.

The 15 pounds of seed may be exactly what they need, with all the right nutrients for them to grow strong and prosper, but if you startle them with an unexpected move, you can blow the whole deal. This is what we discovered with a client recently.

The outcome we delivered was that the sales team needs to be educated on the importance of understanding the pricing of every feature being sold, and adjusting buyer expectations on price as they go along. Nice and easy does it!