Price
“It’s too expensive”
“It’s out of our budget”
One of the most common objections you’ll hear. This could be a legitimate unsolvable issue if you are targeting the wrong prospects that lack the budget for your offerings. If it’s not the case, it usually arises because the value of your offering isn’t adequately justified.
Another reason it’s common is because pricing is understandably often deferred to the end of the interaction. This is done so that you have the opportunity to justify the value of your offering before putting a tag on it. Rarely will you lead your recommendation by discussing pricing, as it might cause prospects to become defensive and unconsciously find ways to invalidate your justification of value if it induces sticker shock.
How to address:
1. Avoid projecting your biases and assumptions on your prospects – what you can’t afford isn’t the same as what others are willing to pay. If it’s worth it, they will pay for it.
2. Do not avoid the pricing question if the prospect does bring it up earlier in the conversation. Beating around the bush will only make you look more suspicious as if you’re trying to hide something. Instead, embrace it as an opportunity to better explain your offerings.
If it is more expensive than the competition, explain why; it will help remove that objection.
If it’s less expensive, do the same and discuss how you maintain quality yet can afford to charge lower prices. This helps alleviate their concerns about it being too good to be true.
3. It’s also common to find yourself in situations where a prospect wants to lead the conversation with pricing without first understanding your offerings. In those situations, it’s important to align their expectations and understanding of pricing vs. scope or quality of work. Here’s what it might look like in a potential conversation between an SDR for a video production company and a difficult prospect who, in a simple-minded manner, wants to know how much it costs without first having a clear idea of what sort of video they want to make.
SDR: “Could you tell me about what your video needs or your budget?”
Prospect: “Just tell me how much it’ll cost!”
Empathize with why they might be defensive right out the gate and unwilling to share a budget or what they have in mind.
SDR: “Happy to. We often encounter many prospects who are hesitant to disclose their project or budget because they’re concerned that agencies will try to bill them at the highest rate possible if they’re aware of their budget. Our rates are fixed, so that doesn’t apply to us.”
Explain why you need that information and help them understand what inputs are necessary to achieve their desired outputs, such as the scope of work, duration of the video, or amount of editing, which will influence the final pricing of the project.
SDR: “I’m only asking because I need some context to evaluate the best option for you. If you have a limited budget, there are limitations to what we can create. If you have specific needs, it might require us to get creative with how we approach filming or production to achieve the desired outcome within the allocated budget”
It may be especially helpful to use an appropriate analogy to better explain to a prospect who is unfamiliar with your type of services.
SDR: “It’s just like walking into a car dealership asking for the best car. ‘Best’ is subjective, I would be remiss to showcase an expensive luxury car if what you’re looking for is a reliable and spacious SUV for your family needs. A car dealer would be doing a poor job if they showed you the most expensive option available, I would be doing the same if I merely designed a quote based on your maximum possible budget.”
4. Either way, don’t be apologetic. It’s not priced “badly”. There is no such thing as the “right” pricing that will satisfy everyone.
5. Demonstrate and quantify the value or ROI of your offerings if you haven’t already.
6. Avoid discounting for the sake of lowering prices. Doing so does not justify the value and instead reduces the perceived value, giving the impression that you were overcharging to begin with and are now desperate to close a sale.
“I hear you; it IS expensive, and we’ve intentionally decided not to discount our services because we want to pay our employees a living wage and ensure that we deliver a top-quality product. That said, if you don’t need all the features, I’m happy to recommend some alternatives, even if it isn’t one of our offerings.”
Remember, the goal is to help them, not to sell at all costs. It’s ok to refer them to a competitor, especially if they are not an ideal customer.
7. Highlight the cost of maintaining the status quo. In terms of lost opportunities (additional revenue they might have been able to capture), time wasted, or extra money spent in other ways that they might have overlooked. Downgrading to a lower offering is only recommended if they have a hard budget, and you potentially overestimated their needs. Ideally, your solution should be worth the price.
If you quantified value during ASSESSMENT, using the previous example: “How much would you estimate you spent on processing refunds alone last year?”
Response: “Based on what you spent on processing refunds last year, that works out to be about $5,000 a month. Our solution is only $300 per month. Even if it only cuts the number of refunds you process in half, that’s still a savings of $2,500-$300 = $2,200 per month!”
Time
“We don’t have the capacity for this right now”
“Follow up with me in the new year”
“I don’t have time right now”
This communicates a lack of urgency on their part. Pressuring them with scarcity tactics, like limited-time offers, won’t do you any good and will instead come across as pushy. We’ll delve into urgency in more detail when we discuss Closing.
How to address:
1. If it is indeed a legitimate objection, they will be able to readily provide a reasonable explanation if you ask them to elaborate. For example:
“We’re processing a high volume of orders before Christmas and our team is taking some time off in the last week of December. We’re interested but won’t have time to look into it until the new year.”
2. If they’re using it as an excuse to deflect you, or if you have a good reason to prove to them that their issue is more urgent than they realize, this is where reframing comes in. For example,
“Entrepreneurs looking to fundraise often underestimate how long it takes to find investors and secure capital. Don’t wait until you only have 3 months of runway left in your bank; it’s too late by then. It actually takes an average of 6-12 months to close a round. Why? Assuming you haven’t raised money before: 1-3 months to get your paperwork, the right terms, valuation, and due diligence assets in order. Another 2-3 months to find and start building relationships with investors (you don’t simply reach out and directly ask for money! It’s like asking someone you just met to get married on your first date!). Finally, another 3 months from officially opening your round to negotiating all the cheques across the line. If you need to have more capital before April next year, you can’t afford to wait until January/February to only start learning about the process.”
3. Reduce the scope of the project if it is too broad or intensive to begin with.
4. Ask for a smaller time commitment.
5. Or demonstrate the ease of implementation.
Fit
“I don’t think that’s a problem for us”
“I was hoping it could do X”
“This doesn’t apply to us”
If you’ve properly qualified them, it indicates they are unaware of the problem or aren’t making the connection between your offering and its ability to solve their problem.
How to Address:
1. It doesn’t mean they aren’t interested; it means they need to be educated. Demonstrate the success their competitors or similar companies have had with you, and discuss the unintended consequences of not addressing the issue that they might not be aware of.
If it’s brought up because you do have the feature they’re looking for but did not discuss it during RECOMMENDATION:
“Thanks for asking! I forgot to demonstrate that…”
2. If it’s something you don’t have, either because it hasn’t been built yet, or if your company consciously decides they don’t want to solve for it for whatever reason, you can still justify why you believe it isn’t a deal-breaker:
“Great point; it’s been brought up multiple times by some of our users as well. It’s on our product roadmap and we should be releasing an update soon to include it / We’re considering adding this feature if we get more requests for it…In the meantime, here’s a workaround/integration to achieve the same functionality.”
“Here’s how other customers accomplish that…”
“We don’t offer that, but many of our customers use this (different external) solution and find it greatly compliments our solution.”
“No, it doesn’t do X. It’s interesting that you bring it up; I’ve had many other customers raise the same issue but find that they don’t actually need it because our solution does Y for them, rendering the need for X unnecessary.”
“We don’t provide the ability to adjust lighting and colors in our photo editing tool; instead, we offer popular preset filters. While this does limit control over finer details, our customers appreciate it because it significantly speeds up the editing process while still offering the option to modify images to their preferred style.”
Priority
“It’s not a priority for us at this moment”
They have the problem, but perhaps it isn’t important: a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.
How to Address: Identify their top priorities and show how your solution helps them accomplish those goals.
Credibility
“I’ve never heard of you/your company”
“I’m not quite sure I believe what you’re saying”
“I doubt it can really do that”
“I’m not confident it’ll give me the results I’m looking for”
How to Address: Leverage social proof from existing clients: stats, case studies, and reviews.
Untargeted
“This is not relevant to my job title/me”
“I can’t make this decision”
“I need to discuss this with my team first”
How to Address:
1. Learn about their decision-making process and ask for an intro to the right decision-maker.
“Sorry about that. Who is normally responsible for these types of decisions in your organization? If you see value in this, would you mind facilitating an introduction?”
2. Improve your targeting.
3. If you’ve properly qualified them as the decision-maker, they may still raise this objection to deflect or procrastinate. In this case, offer to assist them with that conversation by facilitating the discussion with all the necessary decision-makers.
4. If the decision-maker has already bought into it and simply needs to convince the rest of their team. Ask them about what is relevant, the common concerns, and what the other parties care about. This will allow you to provide them with the right information to have those conversations or personalize your outreach if you’re going to be the one speaking to them.
“I need to speak to my spouse about this first”
Response: “If you’d like, feel free to give her/him a call. I can assist with answering any technical questions you might not be too familiar with.”
Satisfied (with their current solution)
“If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
“We’re already using/with (competitor)”
This is not as bad as it sounds because it indicates they recognize a need or the problem and are already addressing it through other means.
How to Address:
1. Ask about their experience with their existing solution to identify what’s important to them and to discover any differences or improvements they might be interested in.
2. Because they know you have a personal motivation to address this, it can come across as preachy if you’re self-justifying. Avoid this by sharing the opinion of a potentially less biased third party. For instance, highlighting, if available, a customer who used their solution and transitioned to yours. Discuss the advantages they’ve observed since switching or other problems your solution has been able to help them address.
3. Encourage them to compare the experience with a trial or demo.
“That’s to be expected 🙂 It is, after all, a problem many others face, so it’s unsurprising that there are many alternative providers in the market. We’re still confident our offering is much better. No pressure to switch, but if you’d like to compare it with what you’re already using, I can set you up with a trial account or show you a quick demo. That will help you decide if it’s a better fit or not.”
4. If they are bound by a contract and if it is feasible, consider offering credits to compensate for the costs associated with breaking the contract.