B2B News Week Part III - How to sell quality, or not

In my industry, we sell a quality product, but its fit to the application is of prime importance to the end customer. So I enjoyed reading an article yesterday from 'Sales and Marketing Management' about why high quality still beats price any day (online content requires subscription, so no link). The writer, Tate Williams, said he was a 'technology salesman' as opposed to his competitor who was a 'commodity salesman'. So I cheer for the technology salesman who gets the order.

Later that day I talked to a potential client from Honeywell, who is very interested in two of our products. But there is a very strong barrier to buying...his purchasing department. He cannot get quotes from us, formal RFQs need to be made, and months will pass before his order can get placed.

What he is most frustrated by is that once he writes the equipment specification, the decision is made on price. For this reason, our normal salesperson for this account doesn't work hard on it. The client already has equipment from low-bidders who will likely be asked to bid on this RFQ, and he has a very low opinion of the quality of their product. He says he wants to try to sole-source our equipment, but the bar for that is high.

He can try to write-out certain brands by the way he creates the purchase-spec, but how can a purchasing structure like this judge quality? Most engineers make a gut decision on quality, but such a logical process would require some kind of definition and measurable guide.

Perhaps, worse yet, we as salespeople and marketers depend on this gut feeling to create a perception of quality. So I have little resources to help define quality in a measurable (and useful) way. How does one make the intangible easily comprehended? Figure this out for your product, and you will make selling so much easier.