Every sale is a dance with two partners – the seller and the buyer. Both must enjoy the music to make the dance worthwhile.

The seller must make enough profit to feel good about herself and to be available for informed and professional service before and after the sale. (That's why you get great service at Nordstrom but not at K-Mart.)

The buyer must also feel good about the transaction since it is totally a subjective feeling. It rarely has anything to do with the price. People will spend ten cents and still feel miserable about it if they think they did not get "a value." They will, on the other hand, spend all their life savings and still feel great about it if they think they got a "great bargain."

One time-honored technique to make both the buyer and the seller happy is to "sell by contrast."

Imagine you are a sales person trying to sell a $350 pair of shoes at Nordstrom.

The natural instinct would be to start talking about the "features and the benefits" of the product right away. But no matter what you do, the chances are the buyer would still feel that the price is "a little bit more than I was ready to pay." There would be resistance and push-back unless your customer is used to wearing $500 or $1,000 pair of shoes.

Instead, try this: ask your customer how much he would be ready to pay for a pair covered with RARE DIAMONDS?

Of course this is a total fantasy but the idea is to stretch your customer's imagination. Once he starts to mull over this entertaining exercise he might say "I don't know, $10,000 or $100,000? Or more?" You can introduce new steps to your "sales tango" by reminding that "such expensive shoes would of course need insurance – does your price include the insurance?" etc.

After you settle on the outrageous price of a hypothetical pair of "diamond shoes," move on to explain why such a pair would actually be a TERRIBLE CHOICE – diamonds would break off and fall; you could be mugged and killed for it; hard diamonds would start to hurt your feet; they could not be cleaned when mud gets on them; diamonds steadily lose value starting at the minute they are sold; you might disappoint your friends and offend your associates by such crass display of wealth; etc.

And then proceed to explain why your $350 pair is a much BETTER CHOICE (because it does not suffer from all the drawbacks of the diamond pair); it has much better benefits (count them one by one); and it also costs ONLY $350.

At that point most customers would be a lot more open to make the purchase than before because they have already CONTRASTED the $350 pair to the non-existent "diamond pair" and decided it was a much better "bargain."

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Ugur Akinci is a senior writer with 20 years of experience.

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