We just ran this story the other day about top-down selling, where you pitch your “best” product before your “better” product before your “best.” Top Down Selling Pushes Your Best Brands.

I thought there were some good comments about it—have you ever tried this approach?

I think top-down selling should be the approach on the initial proposal when one doesn’t know the budget a client has in mind.  Most often, clients have no idea how much custom integration costs.  There is definitely a bit of sticker shock with this approach, but once they get past it only then will you know the real budget that they are working with.  Then once you have that hard number, you can help guide them in designing the system based on their needs and their budget with a good, better, best approach.

@ Jason: Initially I’d thought you should be saying
“... top-down selling, where you pitch your “best” before your “better” before your *good* ”
instead of “best” -> “better” -> “best” as you’ve said.
However, after I’ve read the linked Guenther article, someone who pushes only its “best”, without even having demo for its middle and bottom product line, that way you’d stated is just evidencing the possession of inside information captured from the Guenther approach, with the side effect of being inviting us to take a broad view of negotiations at the same time. Thanks that way you worded it and at least I’d browsed the cited article ;-D.
I’ve found that the Guenther “top-down best -> better -> best” approach is a very practical one, and indeed it’s a way to push our “best” product. Not that I’d being able to read between the lines completely capturing why this method had worked for him, but at least I’d gained some insight on how to try to connect our “best” with what our customer wants to buy, even without pre-knowing its own budget (the hard number), which happens very often. Summing up it is very instructive article and I’m glad of having stopped by your words.

woststr - 20 May 2008 01:16 PM

@ Jason: Initially I’d thought you should be saying
“... top-down selling, where you pitch your “best” before your “better” before your *good* ”
instead of “best” -> “better” -> “best” as you’ve said.

Yeah, I totally fat-fingered that. Should be best—better—good.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of custom installers that have a showroom.  This article seems geared towards selling in a showroom.  I’m sure if we survey the industry we would find a correlation between annual gross revenue and having a showroom, but I also think the data would show that most custom installation companies operate without one.

These methods can still be utilized, but how can they be adapted for the salesman in the field who can’t whip out a sample of flat screen displays to demo in-home.  Are there any sales people out there who use a laptop or sales booklet?

-Morgan