How much does it cost?

My wife sells golf outings for a 36-hole public golf facility. She has many satisfied customers and needs to find new customers to be successful.

It's not uncommon for her to receive a phone call from a prospect who says: "How much does an outing cost?" This is often the moment where the sales process can get derailed.

We are trained to answer questions when asked. There are times when it is better to start asking questions.

When you develop a sales process for your business you have to believe you are in control when you are speaking with a prospect. If you develop a process and are disciplined to follow it you will begin to see dramatic changes.

Let's go back to the "outing cost." Instead of giving an amount, the prospect was asked questions and this information was gathered:

• The prospect has never hosted a golf outing, thus had no perspective of value.
• The person making the call was calling on behalf of their boss (the decision maker) and knew few details of what the boss wanted.  
• The person making the call said that they were instructed to call five golf courses and get the cost.

Substitute the business you are in and you probably recognize the drill. I'm not sure what the odds are of closing this sale when it starts this way, but there's a good chance you will not hear from them again.

Step one in building a sales system: Believe that you can be in control of process. Don't give away cost information without determining if this is a legitimate prospect. Sales is never easy. Handing control to the prospect makes it much harder.