In sales we always talk about value and price. But there’s another dynamic in play … fairness! Are value and fairness the same thing?
There is a wonderfully informative and funny TED talk by Frans de Waal, about how fairness is deeply hardwired in primates and humans in the same way.
People are pretty fixed about what they see as being fair and equal, versus not fair and equal.
The image shows how sellers and buyers perceive the fairness of price differently.
The seller wants to provide a product at a reasonable profit and have the buyer pay a fair price.
The buyer wants to pay a price that covers the seller’s costs and a LITTLE bit of profit.
Sellers and buyers have very different perceptions of fairness when it comes to profit. What goes into one person’s pocket comes out of the other.
Perceptions of fairness change, based on the direction of money flow.
I call this the Fairness Gap and it is easily affected.
As soon as a competitor lowers their price, that Fairness Gap is stretched.
Transparency is the key to fairness in selling.
Our clients use visual models to clearly and transparently expose everything to their customer, including the unequivocal promise they are willing to make to them.
I’d love to know, how do you close the Fairness Gap in your price?
