It is one thing to have a proper and preplanned strategy for your business meeting. However, it is a completely different thing to stick to it as if you have rehearsed it as a speech. If a potential client tells you that he has just received an unbreakable deal from your competitor, you cannot continue with the same old approach of criticizing your competitors. It is obvious that your potential customer has also walked in with a business strategy and your strategy must accommodate the same.
You must have understood by now that the client is not an inanimate object who is just waiting for your marketing pitch. Rather, your client is equally selfish as you are. He or she is more interested in getting maximum value for money just as you are interested in getting maximum money for less work. To convince your client that you are catering to his or her interests but to confirm and enjoy benefits-that is the difficult thing.
One thing that is invaluable when you are conducting business meetings is experience. Experience will teach you when to focus on specific comments of your client and make a point. Experience will also teach when to ignore certain provocative statements if it does not require any answering. As far as the above issue is concerned, you can simply point out that the potential client has just given you a price and has not explained what he or she is going to get from the competitor in exchange of the money paid.
This will put the potential customer on the back foot because he or she will have to disclose all the negotiations that have taken place till date. If such negotiations have indeed taken place, the customer will not be keen on disclosing the same. If no negotiations have taken place, the customer will obviously have nothing to say.
