How to Shrink a Price Objection to Almost Nothing

I was on a coaching call yesterday with a bunch of people selling IT services and a question came up about price objections and how to handle them. You know, when somebody says, "You know that's expensive, more than I wanted to pay, more than we're paying now, more than other bids." How do you handle that? And I've got a really simple framework that works across, you know, any really any competitive selling or any industry, professional services, anything like that to kind of address this.

And the first thing I will do if somebody says "that's expensive" is I will ask, "What makes you say that?" What I want to do here is I want to understand the context. I want to understand the rationale and the mindset behind this being expensive. Is this expensive relative to some other bids? Is this a negotiation tactic? Is this a smokescreen? Is this a stall tactic? Is this a difference of five dollars? Is it a difference of fifty thousand dollars? Like I want to have context for what I'm going to be trying to address here, right? Like if it's a negotiation tactic or a stall tactic or a price gap, they'll usually start to tell you that. And the context that they offer is very helpful no matter what it is.

Then what I'll do is try to clarify what's it relative to. In other words, when they say that, it's relative to some number. Right? That's expensive or that's more than I wanted to pay. So what was the amount? Right? Like what was the amount that they're paying? What are those other competitive bids? What are we talking about?

And so I'll ask something like: "Okay, well hey... typically when you when you start looking for IT services, things like that, you kind of have a number in mind or a budget or a range or maybe even some other bids. If I may ask, like what is that number for you?" And I want them to tell me what the gap is. Right? Like what are we actually talking about? So if I've presented a quote for 60,000 bucks a year for services and they can tell me, "Oh well we're at 42,000," right? All right, now I know what we're talking about. I also know: are we like wildly off the mark? Are we marginally off the mark? And what's what's behind that. So if I can quantify it to a degree that's really important.

But it's also essential for the next step which is: my goal is to minimize the amount of money that we're talking about. Just psychologically. So in the case where you've presented something that's $60,000 a year and they're currently paying $42,000 a year, I don't want to have a conversation about $60,000. I want to have a conversation about the delta or the gap between 42,000 and 60,000. And I don't like to do math in public. I think I got this one though. So I want to talk about $18,000. Right? Like so I would say something like, "Okay, so we're talking about about $18,000? It sounds like we're about 18,000 apart. Is that about right?" And that's the difference between the faster response times that you're looking for and the better security tools and the whatever those things that you've been selling are. That's what you want to reinforce.

So again: so we are talking about or we are X dollars apart and that's the difference between getting what you want and not getting what you want. Now we can focus the conversation around the $18,000. And where possible, even slice that thing up. Right? Like make it sound even less than that. Like you know $18,000... like we've gone from negotiating 60,000 to now talking about 18. But if you can take it one step further, what you can do is then say something like: "Okay so, you know, it sounds like we're about $18,000 a year apart. Or that's about 1,500 bucks a month. Or 50 bucks a day. Okay. And that's the difference between getting what you want and not getting what you want."

Now you've like really honed in, you've got the dollar amount, and the core question that you need to ask now is: "So if we can bridge that gap, are you ready to go ahead?" Right? Like "If we can actually bridge that gap, are we ready to go ahead?" Like "Can we negotiate? Is it worth trying to address this? Is it worth trying to get closer?" I mean if you have it within you to actually match it, I mean you could just straight up ask. Like "So if we can match that number today, are you ready to move forward?"

And what we want to do is continue to isolate the fact that we are talking about the right thing. That we are addressing the right thing. Because remember, no matter what, the ultimate goal here is to move them forward. It's to get a decision. It's to close this deal. And so everything up to this point is, you know... when we ask "You know what makes you say that?" All right, what exactly is going on here? Give me some context. When we say "You know, when you have a number..." Now we're trying to hone in on what's that specific number. Then we slice it down into something that is more manageable, easier to talk about, and makes it relative to the benefits that we're presenting—which in IT's case, you know, may be the better response times, it may be the stronger security, it may be the compliance issue. It's like, "We're talking about 50 bucks a day for compliance? Doesn't sound nearly as bad as when we're talking about a $60,000 contract," right?

And then at the end of the day, we want to isolate this so that we can move forward. Meaning: if we can bridge the difference, or if we can meet you halfway, or if we can match that number, are you ready to go ahead? Like do we have a decision? And that is generally how I'm gonna approach "that's expensive," a price objection, "we're paying less than that." Works across other industries and there's ways to adapt this to your model, but you can get the psychology of what we're doing here and then use it to address your next sale. Hope you close it. Adios.