A back to basics sales hack for you today that everyone needs to remember and use …

If you sell a complex product or service you’ve almost certainly had the experience of a customer asking you for your price, without them wanting to give you the opportunity to express your compelling and self-evident value first.

You should refuse!

When a customer says something like “… I know it’s not that straight-forward, but what I really need right now is your best price and then we can see if it is worth talking further.”

You’re being forced into expressing your value in the context of price, or worse still, you’re being forced into giving a customer a price with no context at all.

Don’t do it!

Anytime someone says “just give me your price” they’re really trying to either reduce what you do to a simple commoditised comparison OR they’re limited by budget and they want to see if they can make your services fit their budget.

So how can you handle that?

Well one way is to openly and respectfully address the elephant in the room.  

Please don’t say anything like “it’s company policy to only share price once we discuss how we do what we do” … and yes, I’ve heard people saying things like that!

Instead go straight to the point …

“We will almost certainly NOT be the lowest price you’ll be given and how we price this won’t make any sense at all until we’re both clear about EXACTLY what you want, the results we promise to deliver and how we go about it.  What I’d like to do is ask YOU a few questions about SPECIFICALLY what you’re looking for?”

Notice how the statement above leans into specificity.  Simply asking about price is a generalisation – putting you into the same bucket as everyone else.  It is a technique people use to normalise something and reduce it’s perceived value (and therefore the price).

When you shift the conversation to specificity you’re bringing the value right into their unique circumstance and that increases the perceived value.  It’s also really difficult to logically argue against talking through needs first.

This is just one quick hack on the price question and there are many more.

What’s your favourite hack to handle the “… just give me your best price” request?