You Get What You Pay For
Posted by
Paul Alves on Wed, Nov 30, 2023 @ 05:37 PM
Some of those old saying have been around for a long time for a reason. One I like to use a lot in sales is “You get what you pay for”. In my experience most often this holds true. When I’m buying a product or a service I want to get the best possible price, of course. But wha
t I have learned the hard way more than once is that if it seems to good to be true it probably is. That might be another old saying. Well, we’ll save that one for next time. My point is that most often it is not the fact that the price is to high, it’s that the buyer does not see adequate value.
Back in 1995 I was car shopping with my Father. I did not have a lot of money to spend, so I intended on buying a used Honda in the $10,000 range. Next thing I knew I was on the Mercedes Benz lot. I thought to myself, looks like the old man is going to step up with one heck of a surprise. Not exactly. He walked me over to the used car section and pointed out an eleven year old car. That was almost twice my budget. I thought he was nuts! Still do, but that’s another story. Before the sales guy had a chance to make it out of the showroom. My Father told me you get what you pay for, there is a reason Mercedes is able to charge what they charge. “They are worth it,” he told me. “This car will run forever, it’s a diesel, solid cast iron block, built like a tank.” I told him there was no way I was going to pay 2x my budget for an 11 year old car. He said, “Listen, a doctor owned this thing, just traded it in on a new one, it only has 31,000 miles and was kept in a heated garage.” All true but the price, what about the price. He told me that if I bought it, and did not see the value, he would buy it from me for what I paid.
An hour latter I was driving my first Mercedes Benz. 17 years, and 200,000 miles later I’m still driving it. This car ended up costing me half of what I would have spent on a car, or cars of inferior quality. What a great lesson in value.