Most B2B websites in the nutrition industry make a mistake that kills fair dealing on their home page. It’s dragging. And it’s deadly.

Crush the tracks. And it can rob your standout business of its distinction, throwing you and your sales team back into the quagmire of websites and businesses vying for your prospect’s attention.

What is?

It’s that little button at the top right of most websites that says “Request a Quote.” Sometimes it comes in the slightly less destructive form of “Talk to a sales rep.”

Seemingly innocuous, these little options are stealing your business.

How is it possible? Isn’t this what most potential customers want when they visit your website? Isn’t this the best way to get them in contact with your sales team?

Yes and no.

Yes, it’s true that many of your prospects are interested in getting a bunch of quotes and comparing them to decide who to go with.

However, you don’t want to let this become the game.

And ultimately neither are their prospects.

See, by putting this button on your website, you are allowing your quote to define who your business is in the mind of your potential customer. You are letting your business shrink to one more number. And you are allowing the value of your business, all of your products and/or services, to be defined by the cost of your goods and services.

When you let this happen, you have already lost the online game. Because ultimately someone else online will likely offer goods and services at a better price.

And by making this the only incentive to contact your sales team, you’re allowing price to become the center of the entire lead development and negotiation process.

Plus, you’re only inviting people who are close enough in your purchase research stages to request a price to get in touch with you. B2B sales cycles are tremendously long and getting longer. If you only target people who are ready to get a quote, you’re missing out on most of your potential customers.

For your prospects, this button doesn’t do them any favors because, in reality, they want a lot more than just a price. They want help making a decision.

It’s a rare major buying decision that depends only on the numbers. Your prospects are interested in topics like quality, service, availability, and supporting research. They worry about missing out on important considerations that influence their decision. They are nervous about proposing a solution to the decision makers at their company without covering all the bases.

However, you can change all the settings and become a superhero in the process.

You can change your business from being defined by price. And instead, have your prospect rate your business based on a much more comprehensive set of criteria.

It may even make price a bit of a tangential factor in your prospect deciding to continue working with you.

And you can position your business as a valued problem-solving partner before price becomes part of the conversation.

Instead of inviting your prospect to contact your sales team for a quote, offer to help solve your prospects’ problem and help them make decisions.

How do you do this?

Replace that pesky Request a Quote button with a compelling white paper offer.

Something like:

“6 Questions to Always Ask When Deciding on a Contract Manufacturer”

Gold “Four ways to make your superfruit product a success”

(Actual white paper titles I’ve used for clients.)

Right at the top right of your home page (where the request for quote button is usually located), advertise your white paper and ask your prospect to subscribe so you can send them this valuable information.

Essentially, offer to help your prospect solve their problems instead of focusing on the sale and price.

This is nothing new. It is an old and reliable way of selling. In 1947, Lyman Wood used this process to take the shock out of mail-order cultivator sales. Instead of inviting people to contact him for the sale, he offered a free brochure in his small space ads that helped them understand the value of the machine he was selling.

Without this first offer, you would have lost most of your customer base. Instead, in five years he was able to grow his business from $600,000 in sales to over $2.5 million in sales. (Remember these are 1940 dollars.)

Now Wood was certainly selling directly to consumers. (And in the world of B2B marketing this makes this reference taboo.) But the situation was the same. Instead of focusing on selling the price, he focused on selling a solution. He positioned his company not as a source of rotary tillers for X amount of dollars, but as a company that helped people garden more easily and successfully.

People contacted him to solve a problem. Not to get a number.

Sixty-odd years later, I have done the same for my clients with tremendous results. One of my clients just reported a 20% increase in leads.

You can do the same.

Avoid price war and price discussion. Get rid of the request for quote button.

Use a white paper offer to get into the nitty-gritty of the conversation: how you can help solve a prospect’s business problems.

When you make that the center of your interaction, you help your customers solve their business problems. And as a consequence you help your business grow.