“You’re Too Expensive” - 3 Ways to Handle This Sales Objection

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1,410 growth-minded accountants.

Here’s one growth tip for you and your firm.

Today’s issue takes less than 7 minutes to read.

Today, I’m going to tell you how I handle price objections during our sales process.

A few months ago I had a sales call with a guy named Tony.

Tony is a real estate investor with a number of rentals and great income. He was interested in working with a more proactive CPA firm and on our consultation we mutually agreed we were good fits for each other.

It was all going fine until the very end when I heard those dreaded words:

“It’s too expensive.”

My immediate reaction was to get defensive. I thought sure my services aren’t cheap but they provide so much value… how can Tony not see this?!

But I didn’t let that show.

Instead, I asked Tony a series of questions that challenged him. By making Tony think through his situation, he came out of that call with a new perspective.

And today, Tony is a happy client.

Facing a price objection is tough but it’s not the end of the sales process.

Instead, it’s just the beginning.

3 Ways to Handle Price Objections

When faced with a price objection, DON’T:

• Immediately try to justify with projected tax savings

• Try to talk up your technical skills

• Belittle the prospective client

• Feature vomit

You cannot convince the prospect to buy - only the prospect can convince themselves to buy.

When facing any objection, your job is to ask questions and find out why this objection exists. Because more often than not, price is not the real objection - you have to move them past the price objection to uncover what they are actually concerned about.

Here are three ways to handle a price objection:

1. If This Were Perfect, Would You Do It?

The prospect has to say “yes” here, otherwise you aren’t talking to a serious buyer.

When they confirm they’d buy if it were perfect, ask them what perfect is.

This challenges them to define the ideal scope of the service arrangement. And once they do, you can ask what they see as the difference between their perfect service and your service.

If the gap they describe is small, you can offer do something to close the gap and that is often enough to win them over.

2. We Could Have Been Cheap, But We Chose to Be The Best

“Hey I agree this is expensive, but we have a choice to make with our business: be the cheapest or be the best. We choose to be the best and it looks like you’ve already tried the cheap option which is what ultimately brought you in today…

So if this does what I say it does, would you even believe me if I told you it was cheap? Of course not.

Do you want to keep running in circles trying to solve this with the cheap route, or do you want to solve this for good?”

The reason a prospect is on the phone with you is because they don’t have what they need.

If they did, they wouldn’t have scheduled the meeting.

All you are doing here is aggravating the problem they have and moving them closer to purchasing.

3. It’s Expensive, But People Still Buy… Why Do You Think That Is?

This is one of my favorite ways to handle price objections.

You say “hey I totally agree this is expensive. It’s a big decision and our pricing is certainly higher than other firms. Interestingly, X people buy per month despite the price being… why do you think that is?

Now you get them talking about the key features that are important to them:

Well probably because you guys have niche expertise and I heard you were really proactive with your advice.

And now you ask: “and that’s not important to you?”

They will start to backtrack and sell themselves on your services.

That's all for this Saturday. See you next week.

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See you again next week.

Cheers,

Brandon

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