You sell value over price by training employees to talk about what a product does over its life, not what its tag says today. When retailers tell me they need to lower their prices to build sales, I tell them no. What they need is employees who can challenge a customer's perceptions.
Think of garden hoses. Walk into a home center and there they are at $9.99, next to others at $50 and $75. The customer who says "I need a garden hose" gets walked to the cheapest one by an untrained associate, and everybody thinks the job is done.
Except the cheapest hose builds up pressure when it gets hot out. It ruptures. It's heavier than lead when you drag it around the yard full of water. The customer finds all this out in July, and the store that sold it to them gets remembered for it.
The more expensive hose needs somebody to challenge the perception: "You could buy the cheaper one, but when it gets hot, the pressure builds and it can rupture, and it's heavy to lug around. Wouldn't you rather have this lightweight one that holds up season after season? In a lot of ways it's the cheapest hose we have."
That last line is the whole lesson. Price and value are not the same. Price is what the tag says today. Value is what the product does across every season the customer owns it. Cheap products bought twice cost more than good products bought once, and your customer already knows this from their own closet full of regrets. Your associate's job is to connect that knowledge to the item in front of them.
Don't equate price with value. Value is different, and value is what you're selling.
Challenging a perception is a trained skill, not a trait you hire for. SalesRX online retail sales training trains associates to build value before they ever mention price, and then an unannounced mystery shop measures whether they do it on the floor. For more selling behaviors that protect your margin, see retail sales strategies.
You sell value over price by training associates to talk about what a product does over its life, not what the tag says today. Challenge the customer's perception: name what the cheaper option costs them later, then show how the better option holds up, so price becomes one piece of the decision instead of the whole of it.
Price is what the tag says today. Value is what the product does across every season the customer owns it. Cheap products bought twice cost more than good products bought once, which is why the better item is often the lower cost over the life of the purchase.
Stop assuming the cheapest option is the one the customer wants, and give associates the words to build value first. When a customer hears what a low price costs them in July, the discount stops being the only lever, and the floor stops training shoppers to wait for a markdown.