I feel like this song is stuck in my head. I recently gave a presentation to the Passaic County Economic Development Marketing Day for Small Business Owners, and one of the points I made was that when a prospect pushes back on your prices, they’re not telling you the real story.
It’s never about the money.
I told the story about a woman who told me she couldn’t work with me because my prices were high (they’re not). I felt bad, as if I were trying to “take” her money (I wasn’t). So I let her go because of her lack of funds. Who should I see the very next week, on Facebook, waving from the Eiffel Tower? Yep. Her. I saw her again months later when she told me about her trip to Italy, California, etc etc. So – what she had been telling me was that she did not choose to spend her money on ME – on my services. It’s cool – it happens.
Recently 2 of my business strategy clients experienced the same pushback from their clients. “It’s too much money”. A former client just told me that her latest prospect called her from her ski vacation in the Rockies to tell her that the prices were too high. “You’re calling me. From. Vacation…”
Our first temptation is to figure out a way to slash our prices – should we hold a sale, just lower the prices, come up with a lower priced version of our offer?
Short answer – it’s never about the money.
It’s about a fear. Some examples.
A fitness studio owner had clients coming in twice a week who wanted to drop down to once a week “because it’s too much money”. But – the reality is that if they had been putting in the work to improve their health and were seeing rock star results, they would have been excited and pumped to keep coming in twice a week and even pay more because they were reaching their vision – their transformation. Instead, they were experiencing a fear: of getting healthy and losing weight and not being able to maintain it; or a fear of having to give up a complacent lifestyle with an overabundance of “treats” in order to get to the healthy milestone.
An organizer had a prospect all lined up to take on the project but at the last moment a family member bailed out saying it was too much money. The reality is that there is a fear that after the service has been rendered, the organization won’t “stick” and there’ll be a mess again and then do we have to pay again to get that fixed and be stuck this way? Or a fear that the organizer will make her part with her “treasures” because her inability to part with things is causing the mess in the first place. The organizer would then attain control of what goes in the home and no one wants to give up control (that’s not how organizers actually work, but again – the fear take over).
What can we do?
So as service providers, what can we do?
Don’t bother lowering prices because then you’ll go down a path you can’t return from. And you’re undervaluing yourself and letting the world know that you’re not really worth that much.
Instead, have better consultation sessions, mid-way assessment sessions. Find out what’s really going on with their emotions. What’s the dream? What’s the fear?
Re-evaluate their original goal and what work has been done and where you are now in relation to that goal. Is the client doing her part or expecting you to wield a magic wand? And if they’re not willing to do the work to go on the journey, you can’t drag them.
Have conversations in a non-confrontational manner. This is not a “make the sale no matter what” conversation. It’s a loving, well-intentioned “what can I do to help you” conversation.
If you’ll dig deep enough, you’ll discover the real reason behind the NO. Is it something you can help them solve, or is it time to let them go? That’s up to you, because it’s never about the money.