Handling: "I can get it cheaper" with ease

Today, I'm going to explain how to handle it when a prospect says, "I can get it cheaper."

Author

Dan Cons
July 15, 2024

Today, I'm going to explain how to handle it when a prospect says, "I can get it cheaper."

If you've worked in sales, you know the situation. The prospect wants to go ahead but says they can get what you offer cheaper elsewhere. This can be incredibly frustrating.

 If you can't turn this around, you'll lose deals to cheap alternatives that can't necessarily get the results the prospect wants.

Unfortunately, many people either flatly refuse to negotiate or cave and offer a lower price to win the business. 

While being flexible isn't always bad, you don’t want to give away money for the sake of it. 

This harms your commission, makes you look unprofessional, and makes it hard for the fulfilment team to dedicate the resources required to get results.

Don’t worry! I'll show you how to handle this like a pro so more prospects realise why you are the right choice for them without trying to hammer you down on price.

Let's dive in:

Step 1: Acknowledge their request

When the prospect hits you with a price objection stay calm and avoid reacting. 

Give yourself a moment to regain your composure by acknowledging their request as reacting emotionally might put them off.

I say something like this:

“I can see why you might feel that way. You’re right, we are a bit more than some other agencies out there but less than the ones we compete with.”

Step 2: Isolate their objection

Once you’ve gained your composure, make sure that price is their only objection. 

If you don’t, you might spend ages handling this only to be hit with another wave of objections.

Here’s what I say:

“Aside from the price, is there anything stopping you from wanting to work together on this?”

Step 3: Clarify the situation

Next, find out what you are dealing with. Is this other quote miles cheaper or just a little bit less? There might not even be another quote at all. 

“Just so I’m clear, what did they quote you exactly?”

“Ok, cool, I appreciate you sharing this with me.”

Now that I know what the competition is, I want to find out which offering the prospect thinks is better. 

If they tell you, and more importantly, themselves, that your service is better, the chances of you turning this around are high. You will have got them thinking about their desired outcome, not the initial price.

“Out of interest, if the quotes were the same, who would you go with?”

Now I want to find out why they think we are better. When you do this, the prospect is selling themselves on your service, and why you are more likely to get the result they want.

“Oh yeah, why’s that (why would you pick us over them)?”

A few weeks ago, someone told me how the other agencies didn’t give them any insights into their current marketing efforts or suggest any strategy. 

We, on the other hand, audited their Google ads and gave them a decent bit of information on exactly how we were going to improve what they were doing. Paying an extra few hundred quid a month is a no-brainer in this instance.

Step 4: Respond with your rebuttal

Now that I am confident the client wants to work with us and believes we are better than their other options, I can respond in a way that hits home. 

I like to say something like this:

“Exactly. It depends on what results clients want. 

If the priority is getting the cheapest option, then we aren't going to be the best fit, unfortunately. 

Clients we work with don’t mind paying a bit more because they are confident in our ability to get results.

There are only a few ways people can charge less.

These are time spent on the account each month, experience levels of the people working on the account or outsourcing the work to a country with cheap labour.

That’s about it.

I have several calls every day where potential clients have gone for cheap options, ploughed lots of money into advertising and made no progress over 3, 6, 12  months (often several times) until they finally realise that you get what you pay for.

With that in mind, is the price of the initial retainer the most important thing to you, or is (insert goal) the most important?”

The answer should be the result. Sometimes they say both are important and in this instance, I normally offer a small discount, e.g., 5%, to knock this over the line.

Step 5: Ask for the business

If they say the result, I won’t waste any time and just go for the close by asking:

“Perfect. So what do you say, shall we go ahead with this? 

Great, what's your name on Companies House?”

If they say result and price, I’ll say something like this first:

“While I can’t do much here, for the reasons I just went through, there is a bit of wiggle room. If I could offer you a small discount, is this something you’d like to go ahead with now?”

If they say yes, you can say:

“Sweet, on the condition that we go ahead now, I can offer you a 5% discount on the first three months. Happy to go ahead with this?”

A lot of people say not to give discounts. In real-life situations, a small discount often gets the deal over the line without harming your commission much and helps the prospect feel like they’ve got something out of the negotiation.

To wrap up…

By following this framework, you can effectively turn around the "I can get it cheaper" objection and increase your chances of closing the deal. 

The key is to get the prospect to see the value in your service and how it better meets their needs. You want to shift their focus from cost to the desired outcome.

If they believe you can deliver the results they want, while the cheaper option may not, they'll understand that a slightly higher fee is well worth it.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email or DM me on Insta.