Ahhh, price objections. A topic I could talk about all day.
Listen up for one not-often-thought-of reason why you get people saying they can’t really afford your offer right now:
They’re not actually the best fit for your solution. 😮
The best-fit client, the one you can help most easily and will get best results, is usually one who does not have a ton of other problems besides the one you know how to solve.
Someone who has a ton of other more-pressing problems will understandably be doubtful that your program is the #1 solution they need right now.
And that doubt will often show up as a price objection because that’s the easiest thing to say (and it relieves them of the mental gymnastics of having to analyze more deeply why the offer does not feel right to them).
I have a mile-long list of examples of this from my own clients and community.
Like, that the ideal client for a phone-sales/closing consultant is NOT someone who’s struggling to get any leads whatsoever. That person needs to get some lead flow going before they’ll get value and ROI from having you help them to close more leads.
When I press my sales-expert clients to give me details on what types of prospects gave them price objections in the past, we almost always find that it was people who didn’t have enough leads yet. Funny, that. 😉
And, conversely, the ideal client for a lead-generation expert is not someone who doesn’t know what the heck they’re an expert in or has never gotten sales of their offer before. Will it really help their bottom line to get a bunch of “leads” if they don’t yet have an offer that they know sells? They need to solve that problem first.
I once had a memorable conversation with a lead-gen consultant who tried to strong-arm me into buying her $5K program even after I had explained that I really didn’t know yet what I’d be selling. I told her I couldn’t afford it.
To this day I sometimes wonder if she went back to her objection-handling script to figure out where she went wrong with me. If so, that would be really funny, because there was absolutely nothing she could have said to “handle” my objection when I was not a good fit in the first place.
Then, later in my biz journey and not appreciating the irony, I, too, tried to sell an offer that was basically about lead generation (though I didn’t use that term for it) to people who also didn’t know what their offer was.
I was deluged with price objections and other don’t-know-if-I-need-this-right-now type doubts. Which makes total sense in retrospect. 🤦♀️
Taking it out of the business realm, another example is that binge eating experts should not be trying to help clients whose problem is so far gone that they’ve developed diabetes or heart disease. It’s no surprise that those people say wishy-washy things about your offer, like “ehhh I might not be able to afford it” or “I have to attend to other priorities right now.”
Fact is, they’re probably RIGHT. Will your binge eating program really get their health back to normal or do they need medical attention or other much more sophisticated solutions first?
A person will rarely think they can afford something that’s not going to solve the #1 problem in their life right now.
There is SO much that can be underneath a price objection. Before you start memorizing more objection-handling scripts, go back to the foundations of your business and make sure that you know who’s the best candidate to get the results you deliver.
Then, make sure you’re actually SAYING who’s a good candidate so that you attract the right prospects.
That alone will dramatically cut down your price objections because you’ll be speaking to more people who are actually likely to benefit from your program.
(Inexplicably, I find that some people do know who’s a good candidate to benefit from their program, but then they never spell that out anywhere in their marketing. Like, someone will tell me that they know their best candidate is someone making six figures, but then I don’t see that fact spelled out anywhere on their website or in their posts/content, etc. That’s a topic for another post.)
Many have blind spots about all of this and fixing them is what I love to do. 🙂 Just shoot me a DM on FB if you would like help to better define who your best-fit client is, and then write content that actually contains the right wording to attract them.
In my 30-day 1:1 intensive we do an intense clarity exercise about your best-fit client, and then I walk you through my two proven frameworks for writing about your offer and your work on social media in a way that draws those clients in.
The best candidates for this offer are those who are experienced in a particular niche of coaching or consulting, and have had multiple clients get great (similar) results that are worthy of a high-ticket fee.
Also send me a DM on FB if you’re interested in teaching my methods to your own clients. I have a certification program!