Lead Generator
by Natalie Sloot
(Salt Lake City, Utah USA)
How to handle "What's it cost" before I have even had the opportunity to make eye contact with them.....
I am a lead generator that stands at a display in Costco for a local water company that contracts with Costco to supply water softeners, water filtration and water heaters to Costco customers. Like most products that Costco carries, my product in not the cheapest out there, but can handle the hard water where we live and has a superior warranty and service history. Therefore, almost guaranteeing Costco no hassles from their customers regarding their purchase.
My job is to schedule appointments for an interested customer to have a salesman come to their home, test their water and recommend a product as well as provide pricing for the product including install. My product is the "appointment".
The lead generators are intentionally not given pricing and given very generic information on our products. The difficulty I run into almost daily, is a person coming up to my display and asking "How much are they....what do they cost?"
I am told to say, "That is a good question. Are you in the market for a water softener? And proceed to tell them that I am there to schedule an appointment for a salesman to come to their home, provide a free water test (reg $125), answer any questions they may have and recommend an appropriate product as well as give them exact pricing, including install. Once again, they say, "Yeah, but what do they cost? Give me a ballpark?" Then I say, Unfortunately, I am not given any pricing because there are a lot of factors involved......I then suggest the appointment again.
Unfortunately, more often than not, customer's get angry that we can't provide them with any pricing and w tell me that that tells them that we can't be trusted and they don't want to schedule an appointment to have a "pushy" salesman come out to their house if they know they can't afford the product to begin with.
Sometimes, I am able to use "value" of being a Costco member and Costco's commitment to providing a quality product and commitment to customer satisfaction... to get them to schedule an appointment but not always and a lot of customer's walk away shaking their heads. Bottom line, I lost my "sale" and have disappointed managers when I don't meet my appointment goal.
Can you suggest a better way for me to handle that question? I am one of 20 lead generators and we all struggle with this questions.
