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The Conventional Wisdom: “It always comes down to price.”The Reality: “Customers will pay for value.”When salespeople are asked why they just lost a big deal, almost 60 percent will blame a competitor’s lower prices. In their minds, they seem to truly believe that the cheapest product or service will win any deal. But that’s just total hogwash! In any complex business-to-business sale, pricing is virtually never the primary reason for a customer’s decision. I’m expecting that many people will strongly disagree with me on that, but I firmly stand my ground. Let me explain.

The conventional wisdom: “Sales managers can’t forecast accurately because there are too many uncertainties involved.”The reality: “Sales forecasting can indeed be turned into an accurate, reliable process.”Judging by the continual news of company after company missing its quarterly numbers, you would easily be forgiven if you thought that businesses had no clue how to forecast their sales. Every week seems to bring yet another headline of a firm that missed its quarterly numbers because of some unexpected shortfall in demand for its products. Wall Street is generally unforgiving of such lapses, typically punishing the company with a drop in stock price.

The convention wisdom: “The customer is always right.”The reality: “Customers are always right -- except when they’re not.”Of course, nobody truly believes that customers are infallible, but many companies have adopted that attitude, apparently in hopes of improving their customer service, particularly in the retail industry.Interestingly, the slogan “The customer is always right,” which many people have attributed to John Wanamaker of the famous Wanamaker department stores, was instead first coined by another U.S. retailing entrepreneur: H. Gordon Selfridge, who founded the Selfridges department store in London.Selfridge’s well-worn slogan has a number of variations, including “The customer is king,” as well as one of my favorites, “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: When you think the customer is wrong, go back to Rule 1.”