Old school sales coaching says you must defer talking about price until you’ve built enough value in the prospects mind to justify it. New sales experts encourage you to vigorously disqualify in the first call using trial closes that include pricing discussions to make sure you’re not wasting your time on prospects that aren’t qualified. Which strategy is correct when selling cloud?

First, no conversation is a waste of time. There is an opportunity in every interaction — whether that’s for a sale, a referral, or the chance to improve your skills. If you stop looking at your calls as win or lose, your day becomes far more satisfying.

There are three things you can do when a prospect asks you about pricing on the first call:

The first option will allow you to do some more discovery before the big price reveal. Most people understand that an accurate quote isn’t possible without a thorough review of what is required. I think it is very important to avoid discussing pricing before you’ve had the opportunity to figure out what the prospect needs and how important your solution might be in solving their problems. Zero pain means zero value, even if you are offering the most exciting and economical solution on the market. If your prospect sees an Excel spreadsheet as the be all and end all, and they spend zero dollars on using that solution, no BI platform or ERP system is going to be worth the price you quote until you can identify a real challenge that they are actually experiencing that their spreadsheet can’t solve. I think it is extremely difficult to build value without a demo.

You could use the trial close, but with cloud that can mean nothing. Often you’re bringing a prospect into uncharted territory, and you’re trying to sell them something they don’t yet understand. They are asking about price, but it’s so theoretical at this point that a trial close would be useless to you. “Our solutions costs $50.00 per person per month — is that about what you had planned on spending on a solution like this?” Well, sure it is. I think. What? They didn’t even know they wanted it until ten minutes ago, so how is it possible that they have budget earmarked for it? They haven’t seen it in action, so how could they judge whether or not that price seems reasonable?

When price is tabled for discussion, immediately ask for the meeting. If you’ve got them interested enough to ask about price, you’ve got them interested enough to take that demo.  Don’t talk price before you’ve had the opportunity to demonstrate your solution. Get your prospect on the demo before you begin talking about how they are going to use the solution, so they can really visualize using it. It will save you several conversations and accelerate your sales process.

Carrie Simpson is founder and CEO of Managed Sales Pros.