Greg Meadows is upset. Since the beginning of the year, the Conrad Hotel in Bangkok has taken a beating on its average price per room night sales to corporate customers - a key benchmark that measures hotel profitability. Meadows, who has been general manager of the Conrad since 2002, and before that at the Sukhothai Hotel down the road, is no stranger to what a five-star hotel brand can deliver and how rooms should be priced.

Meadows is therefore disturbed to see room rates for his hotel sliding below those offered by his competitors, like the Hyatt Erawan and Four Seasons. The resultant value gap between what Meadows believes the Conrad brand represents and what corporate customers seem willing to pay is cause for great concern.

"We are just not selling the full benefits of our product to customers," he said. "When we do not communicate our unique features, customers naturally start negotiating on price. We need to improve our ability to articulate clearly what the Conrad brand offers."

Meadows' concern is reflected not only in hotel sales to corporate customers, but in other business-to-business sectors, where face-to-face selling is of paramount importance.

Take, for example, Honeywell International, which sells fire alarms and detectors to industrial customers such as shopping malls and office building owners. In its annual Asia-Pacific sales meeting for distributors held in Bangkok last September, foremost on the agenda was positioning Honeywell as a premium brand, not a commodity product mandated by government regulations for installation in public facilities.

"It is important for our distributors to know how to communicate the full benefits of Honeywell products and services to their customers, beyond performance specifications," says Zacky Woo, managing director of Honeywell Fire Systems Asia-Pacific. "That is key to profitable growth."

Ferocious competition and downward pressure on price have challenged branded industrial-goods manufacturers to churn out innovations to stay ahead of the game. Successful players like Honeywell invest heavily in research and development. But they are even more methodical in providing their distributors in-depth sales training.

"We can provide all the fire-safety equipment innovations in the world, but if we cannot communicate them in a meaningful way from the customer's point of view, then it is pointless," said Woo.

Both Meadows and Woo face the battle of moving up the value chain, by continually delivering more value to customers. To do so, requires going back to the basics of selling product attributes and benefits, rather than slipping into transaction selling, where cutting price is the notoriously easy way to close a sale.

"We need to improve the way we promote the Conrad to our corporate clients," admits Meadows. "If our guests see the unique features of our hotel, then they wouldn't haggle over price."

As an example, Meadows points to his freshly renovated full-service executive club floor, which offers a  breakfast buffet in a spacious lounge with private seating overlooking a spectacular view of the city.

The top priority of Meadows' sales team is to know the Conrad product and to put together a meaningful story that resonates with customers. "We simply cannot allow our prices to fall because we do not have the discipline to communicate the full value of our product to customers," he said.

Woo faces a similar challenge in selling Honeywell's products in Asia. While under severe pricing pressure, he is holding firm. "We want to be competitive in price, but we are not going to be the low-cost provider. If that were our strategy, then we'd cut all the bells and whistles from our products and sell plain vanilla systems."

But Woo and his team are committed to promoting the Honeywell brand as the best fire-safety equipment money can buy - equipment that saves lives. "We think that is a pretty noble cause worth a price premium," he said. "We just have to convince our customers to think likewise."

Larry Chao

Larry Chao is managing director of Chao Group Ltd, a strategic organisation-change consulting and training boutique based in Bangkok and New York (www.chaogroup.com).