Following a recent seminar, a dealer approached me to ask for my thoughts on why he’d been unsuccessful going after some commercial business. “I’ll bet I’ve priced over 20 projects, and I have yet to get one of them,” he said.
After he answered my queries about the specific type of commercial business he was hunting, his method of pricing, the submission of proposals and his follow-up procedures, there were a number of reasons for his lack of success: a fundamental misunderstanding of how that segment of commercial business was done; incorrect product cost pricing levels; he’d set too high a profit margin, and he lacked effective follow-up.
Let’s look a little closer at each of these areas:
priced over 20 projects, and I have yet to get one of them,” he said.