Selling performance level upgrades can be challenging. But sometimes all it takes is the right experience: read Erik Lodewijk’s story. He is a Dutch hearing care professional who has been successfully selling sona:vogue hearing instruments since March 2011.

After a careful evaluation and measurements, Erik Lodewijk from the Netherlands fitted one of his clients a pair of sona:vogue ric 700. He fine-tuned the instruments, gave his client some instructions, and sent him out on a trial. After the two weeks period had passed, the client returned to Erik’s store and asked him to downgrade the performance level to 500 since he found the 700 was too expensive. “I was disappointed”, says Erik Lodewijk, “that my client didn’t seem to appreciate the benefits the hearing solution provided. But then again, when you have price sensitive clients, a performance level change is a good opportunity to still make the sale, and maybe have a client returning for an upgrade later.” So he downgraded the performance level to 500 and handed the instruments back to his client who put them on, took his bike (the Dutch really like to ride their bicycles), and left Erik’s practice happy and thinking that he had successfully saved some money.

However, Erik was taken by surprise when the same client returned to his store only an hour later … “He opened the door and came straight to my desk asking me to instantly upgrade his hearing instruments back to 700!” says Erik, smiling. What had happened?

On his ride home, the client was seriously bothered by the wind noise. His downgraded hearing instruments didn’t feature any wind noise canceler! So shortly before he arrived home, he turned around and drove back to the fitter. Erik gladly upgraded his instruments back to performance level 700, checked the fine-tuning, and sure made one happy client who can now hear better and enjoy riding his bike – less affected by any wind noise!