Jeb Blount - Selling the Price Increase

In all cases, it is critical to the financial health of B2B organizations that sales professionals hone the skills to successfully approach price increase conversations with customers.

Over the past 10 years, my team at Sales Gravy has helped hundreds of organizations teach their sales professionals how to successfully sell price increases without losing customers. We've developed a repeatable system that reduces anxiety, builds confidence, and is easy to learn, coach, and deploy in the field.

Still, since more than 80 percent of training dollars are invested in developing sales skills for the purpose of acquiring new customers, I recognize that most sellers and leaders are not going to receive professional training for selling price increases. For this reason, I wrote Selling the Price Increase as a tactical field guide for frontline sales professionals, account managers, and sales leaders who wish to improve their price increase sales skills and acumen.

In these pages, I give you a complete system for selling price increases. You'll learn strategies, tactics, and techniques for approaching customers confidently and gaining price increase acceptance without damaging long-term relationships.

Part Oneis a discussion about how to manage the fears, worries, and disruptive emotions you feel when approaching price increase conversations with customers.

Part Twodives into the keys to protecting relationships and retaining customers. You'll learn how to get price increases without causing customers to resent you for it.

Part Threeteaches you a repeatable framework for targeting, planning, and setting the stage for crucial price increase conversations.

Part Fourfocuses on how to build messaging that reduces resistance and facilitates acceptance.

Part Fivegives frameworks and tactics for handling price increase objections and negotiating better price increase outcomes.

Part Sixteaches front-line sales leaders how to lead price increase initiatives and coach price increase sales skills. (Note that I also include “Coaching Tips” for leaders throughout the book.)

Along the way, I've included exercises designed to help you master the Selling the Price Increase system. Parts Onethrough Fiveare for front-line sales professionals, account managers, and customer service professionals. In Part Six, the focus shifts to managers, who need additional skills to lead their teams through price increases.

For legions of sales professionals and account managers, the conversation that follows is an all too familiar and maddening reality:

This common scenario is why so many companies fail to maximize price increases, sales professionals and their leaders feel frustrated, and unhappy customers are lost along the way.

Sales professionals are ill prepared to talk with customers about price increases because they don't get trained and there are almost no resources to help them develop the skills to do so. If you scour the internet for information on how to sell price increases, you'll be hard pressed to find any system, process, or framework for these crucial conversations.

That is why this new book from my friend Jeb Blount is so important. As far as I can tell, no one in history has ever written an entire book on how to approach B2B customers with price increases. But that's Jeb – grab a piece of the sales puzzle, blow it out, and show you exactly how to do it. This is why I wasn't surprised when I learned that he was writing Selling the Price Increase because, quite frankly, it is a book that only Jeb could write.

If you've ever had to deliver price increase news to a customer, then you know it isn't easy. Yet when sold effectively, customers accept price increases, remain loyal, and often buy even more. In Selling the Price Increase , Jeb gives you exactly what you need to successfully sell and defend price increases without losing your customers.

Jeb knows sales. He is one of the most gifted sales strategists of our generation. Pick a subject, sales discipline, or situation and Jeb has studied it, done it, and understands it. This is why when Jeb talks, salespeople pay attention, and you should too.

—Victor Antonio,

Author of Mastering the Upsell

Writing a book is incredibly disruptive. It turns life upside down. “The book” takes precedence over everything. People, family, business, life, and fun are put on hold. Everything is sacrificed for the book.

I owe deep gratitude to my wife, Carrie, who endured this process with grace (for the 14th time) while I spent hours hunkered down “in the zone” writing.

Mary Lester, you deserve a special place in heaven for dealing with my rotten mood swings when business got in the way of writing. Thank you very much for the herculean job you did managing my crazy schedule to give me time to focus on this book.

Shannon Vargo, once again you answered my call. When I told you that the trends were in our favor and we needed to get this book to market fast, you didn't hesitate. Thank you very much for trusting me.

Christina Verigan, thank you for being with me every step of the way on this book. You have been my rock throughout this challenging writing process. You are an awesome partner!

Deborah Schindlar and Sally Baker, thank you as always for your tremendous support.

Abby Lester and Sarah Kitchen, thank you so much for proofreading and editing. We are so blessed to have you on our team.

Finally, thank you to the entire Sales Gravy team for all that you do to bring my books to life in the classroom and the positive and lasting impact you make on the sales profession.

I clearly remember the very first time in my career that I was asked to go out and get price increases from my customers. My boss called a meeting with all of the account managers in our region. At the meeting, he handed each of us a list of our accounts and the monthly revenue volume of each account.