← The Futur with Chris Do
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There's this idea how you do one thing is how you do everything. So in your world, if everywhere you go, the pricing is transparent, it's upfront, and it brings you ease and peace of mind, why are you then trying to upset the natural order of things? By hiding and delaying the pricing conversation, you're only creating anxiety for the buyer and for yourself. There's a theory, and it's maybe a spiritual concept. It's not rooted necessarily in the sciences that we understand, but we all say, have a finite amount of energy. And so when you hold things in, they tend to build up in your body. So when you hold negative ideas, it amplifies in the echo chamber of your mind and your heart. And when you speak them out loud, you release that pressure. So this happens for both good and bad things. So the idea here is if it's bad, you need to speak it. If it's good, you need to hold it because you want good things to multiply and bad things to dissipate. So a lot of us have an unhealthy relationship with money. We're afraid of our value and our worth. So we don't want to say it out loud because of that emotional context, that frame. So when we hold it inside, it's going to eat us up, it's going to make us doubt ourselves, it's going to affect how we behave in front of other people. It's just going to eat you up inside. So the best way I know how to purge yourself of this negative feeling is to speak it out loud. Speak it out loud, release it into the world. And that's why it's so difficult for people. We hold on to these things. The classic example is when something bothers you, somebody's crossing the line with you, and they're not respecting your boundaries. We want to say something, but we don't. And we hold onto it. And that anger turns into bitterness and then ultimately resentment. You wind up resenting the other person. This could be a child, it could be a parent, it could be a partner, it could be a coworker or even a client. So my best advice for you is if it's negative, get it out there. If it's positive, like you're building your future, don't be so quick to go on social media. I'm building my future. Isn't life great? Because that energy is needed for you to actually do that hard work. The question is, when should you talk about money and price? And most of us are so uncomfortable that we wait to the very end and then it's been building up inside of us. Just recall the last time you wanted to talk about money in front of a client, and you kept burying it, thinking, eventually, I'll bring this thing up. While you're having a conversation with a client, they could be talking about some really important, deep things that you should be paying attention to. And thus you're probably only paying half attention to it because you're wondering to yourself, when should I bring up the topic of money? Can this client afford me? Will they scream or yell because the price is too high or too low? And so this is a distraction for you, and you need to be sharp. You need to be fully present. And you can think of this in many different ways when you're on vacation with your friend, your partner, and they're like, hey, are you here right now? And they snap their fingers, are you here? It's because your mind is literally somewhere else. And so you're physically here, but you're not really present. And you need to be grounded in that moment. So the way we handle this is if we tell people upfront the things that we're concerned about, then now we can fully focus in on the conversation. I'll tell you the most awkward way to do this, and then we'll ramp it up to a more sophisticated way. You can say something like, I know oftentimes I'm distracted because I'm worried about budget deadlines and scope, and it benefits me greatly if we can just speak about this upfront. As uncomfortable as it might be for both of us, I find that once we have this discussion, I can really focus in on what you need. Do you mind if we proceed this way? And they're going to say what? No, they're going to say yes. Because what you don't realize is in the prospect's mind and is they need to know the price, they need to know the deadline, and they need to know if you can handle the scope or not. So both of you are dancing around an issue, and they're sitting there thinking to themselves, I wonder if this person's going to be professional enough to bring this up, or are they going to make me say it myself, which I'm not going to do. So it's often a sign of poor business acumen in your discomfort in talking about price. And if you look at everything in your life, everywhere you go, every marketplace, every retail store, every. Every car lot, the price is there for a reason, to make sure you feel like you can afford it. Otherwise, it brings up a lot of anxiety. The number one mistake that you can make in pricing or talking about value is to assume we all have some universal definition of price and value. So whenever you float out a price and you describe it, you're going to be met with a variety of reactions. And that's supernatural. What's unnatural is your negative emotional response to it. So keep yourself in check here. So if you say, okay, before we go too far, I just need to discuss price with you in order to work with me. It's going to be $10,000. Pause, chill. Let that moment do its thing. The anchor has been dropped. Let them respond. They could say a number of different things, but we're going to address maybe the not so nice reaction to that, which is, wow, Chris, that's a lot of money. I can't afford this. Are you crazy? Okay, what should your reaction be? It should be one of deep empathy. This is how I respect you. It's like, I understand it's a lot of money. I understand you think this is too much for what it is. And that's why we have the conversation up front. Because if ultimately you don't see value in proceeding, there's really no point for us to discuss anything further. A neutral, objective reaction to an emotional response to a number, oftentimes then what happens is a person chills out. They're like, whoa, whoa, okay, yeah, you know what? I'm so sorry, I shouldn't react that way. Or they can say, you're absolutely right. Thanks for saving a lot of time. I'll think of you next time. I appreciate how frank you are and how direct. I wish everyone was like that. Either way, you cannot change the outcome of this. Either they think, I know they can afford this and they think it's valuable, or they don't. A lot of people think, I have these great persuasive skills that can manipulate people. They can just use force or personality to convince them to buy. And you might be one of those rare individuals who can move it just by pressure. But what happens is a lot of resentment builds up in the other person. So this could lead to, A, them ghosting you after having a verbal agreement, B, canceling after you started, heaven forbid, C, refusing to pay you after, after you've already started. All those are not good options. So when someone doesn't feel good moving forward, we should not try to coerce them to move forward. We allow them to react in any which way and all reactions are fair and then we deal with it one step at a time. Now, should they come back and say, look, that's a lot of money for me, but why don't we continue? Let me see if it's worth it. This is an invitation for you to continue, and I don't want to keep continuing unless you feel it's good for us to continue. So there's some weird internal dialogue narrative in your mind based on something you perceive about how this stuff works. Mostly fear, based mostly through your imagination, not through reality. That you have all these kinds of expectations about what somebody can say. Now, I want you to use a little bit of empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. When you go and hire a specialist to do something and you have no idea what things cost, they say a price. Aren't you allowed the freedom to have your own natural reaction to this? Hopefully you handle with grace. But you could say, you know what? That's crazy. I'm not doing that. Thank you. And at least grateful for them not wasting your time if they tell you it's completely out of their range and you're crazy. Stop talking. Now you're going into pitch mode and you've ceded the higher ground. You seem desperate and needy. It's just to realize the best sales advice I can give to you is to adopt the with or without you energy. I'm good with you. I'm good without you. So if you say it's not right, it's not right. You can ask the question, what's not right? Or what do you think is the fair price? And you can have a conversation. But I would never go into pitch mode to try to convince him otherwise.