The Balance Of Ask And Offer On A Sales Pitch

A prospect and a salesperson walk into a bar … They both have something to ask and something to offer … I haven’t thought of a good punch line for this joke yet. But it’s true!

Both sides have something to offer.

As a salesperson, you are asking your prospect to make a purchase, but you also have something to offer in return … the value of your product or service. And from the prospect’s point of view, they are offering their money and asking for value. Here’s what it looks like in a table:

	Ask	Offer
Prospect	Value	Money
Salesperson	Money	Value

But this is really just a surface-level understanding of the sales encounter.

We’ll let you in on a little secret …

There is always a sale being made. Here’s what we most commonly think of when we think of a sale happening:

• The salesperson asks for the sale.
• The prospect says “yes.”
• The prospect hands over their credit card.
• The salesperson hands over their product.

But even before this happens, there are deals being made with more intangible resources. These resources include the time, energy, information, and commitment that are exchanged between the prospect and the salesperson. Here are some examples:

• When a prospect makes a commitment to show up to a scheduled demo.
• When a prospect spends an hour of their time sitting through the demo.
• When a salesperson divulges valuable information about the product market.
• When a salesperson spends their energy trying to close the deal.

The exchange of perceived value and buying expectation.

To avoid getting lost in translation, let’s define those two terms:

• Buying expectation = the expectation that the prospect will buy your product
• Perceived value =  the value that the prospect perceives in your product

This is one of those exchanges of intangible resources that happens throughout a sales encounter, even before the money and product change hands. As a salesperson, you are asking for buying expectation and offering perceived value. While a prospect is the opposite, asking for perceived value and offering buying expectation. Here’s what it looks like in the same “ask-offer” table from above:

	Ask	Offer
Prospect	Buying Expectation	Perceived Value
Salesperson	Perceived Value	Buying Expectation

Don’t give away your value for free.

As a salesperson, you are responsible for bringing value to the encounter. This is what entices your prospect to stay engaged. But you don’t want to give away this value for free. In the same way that you wouldn’t give away your product for free when you ask for the final sale, you also want to ask a “price” for the perceived value of your product throughout the pitch. This “price” is an increasing expectation of your prospect that they will buy at the end of the encounter.

How do you ask for buying expectation?

By mini-closing! Click here to read more about mini-closing. Here’s an example of a mini-close at the beginning of the sales encounter:

“I want to pause for a second here, Susan, just to make sure we’re on the same page, if I can offer you a service that fits all your requirements, would you be comfortable moving forward today?”

Perceived value = “service that fits all your requirements” Buying expectation = “would you be comfortably moving forward today?” And the prospect is willing to say “yes” because they fear ending the encounter and missing out on the opportunity to actualize the perceived value that they’ve seen so far. In other words, they have F.O.M.O. If the prospect says “no,” then there are two possibilities: 1. You’re doing a bad job of pitching. And your prospect isn’t seeing enough perceived value in order to be willing to move forward today. 2. You’re giving away your time, energy, and perceived value for free. Maybe you missed something in qualifying and the prospect isn’t a good fit, or there is some other reason that the prospect is not expecting to buy, despite your having made a solid pitch.

It should be a 1:1 trade-off between perceived value and buying expectation.

Throughout the pitch, if you’re doing it right, the perceived value of your product should increase in the eyes of your prospect. This allows you, in turn, to ask for an increasing amount of buying expectation from your prospect. A salesperson should ask for less buying expectation while they have still yet to show their product’s full value. But in the later stages of the sales encounter, as the salesperson is almost finished showing all the value that they have to offer in their product, then it is time to start asking for maximum buying expectation. The exchange of perceived value for buying expectation should be close to a 1:1 trade-off consistently throughout the sales encounter. Here’s a graph to illustrate: Anywhere on the red line is good. Anywhere below the red line means the salesperson is not offering enough value and asking for too much buying expectation. Anywhere above the red line means the salesperson is giving away too much value and not asking for enough buying expectation. Here’s another graph: The red line is straight for a reason. The line is straight because we want the sales encounter to be a smooth ride for our prospect. We don’t want to ask for very little buying expectation throughout the encounter, and then all of a sudden ask our prospect for the final sale, as if by surprise. This is bad for the prospect because it may be jarring and unexpected. And this is bad for the salesperson, because they won’t have a sense of whether or not their prospect will say “yes,” and have thus lost control of the sale.

How do you know if you’re above or below the red line?

By mini-closing! Click here to read more about mini-closing. If you ask for a mini-close, and your prospect says “no” … Then you know you need to show some more value. If you ask for a mini-close, and your prospect says “yes” … Then you can keep some value in our back pocket in the meantime, until later in the pitch when you might need to recover from a “no” response to a mini-close.

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