Price shopper
A customer working several companies on price, who will keep calling until somebody gives them a reason to stop.
Use this definition in team training or when clarifying a sales note.
Definition
A price shopper asks for a number early and often, gives little information, and is usually holding quotes from other companies. Some are genuinely buying on price alone. Many are doing what the process taught them to do, because every company they called answered with a figure and nothing else.
The productive response is to find out what the number is being compared against. A quote from another company is not a price until you know the plan, what it includes, the fees and the term, and very few shoppers are comparing identical things.
Why it matters
Teams lose these customers twice: first by refusing to talk about price at all, which ends the call, and then by quoting blind, which ends the margin. The shoppers worth your team’s time are the ones who will answer a question back, and finding that out takes about thirty seconds on the phone.