How To Handle Client Pushback On Pricing

❌ "That’s too expensive." ❌ "Can you do it for less?" ❌ "We don’t have the budget." Most creatives hear these objections and immediately think they have to justify their price or drop their rate to close the deal. 🚫 Wrong. Let’s break this down. Here’s what’s actually happening: Clients don’t just object to price. They object to what they think they’re getting for the price. When someone says “That’s too expensive,” what they often mean is: ❌ “I don’t see why this is worth that much.” ❌ “I’ve seen cheaper options and don’t understand the difference.” ❌ “I’m unsure if this will actually work for me.” If you jump into defense mode or lower your price, you’re reinforcing their doubt instead of addressing it. Here’s how to handle it step by step: 🔹 Step 1: Slow Down & Get Curious Instead of immediately responding, dig deeper. Don’t assume price is the real issue. Try this: ➡️ Client: “That’s more than we expected.” ➡️ You: “I totally get that! Can I ask—what are you comparing it to?” This opens up the conversation instead of shutting it down. Maybe they’re comparing you to a freelancer who charges half your price—but delivers half the quality. Now, you can educate them on the difference. 🔹 Step 2: Bring the Focus Back to Outcomes People don’t buy hours—they buy results. Instead of saying: 🚫 “It’s $5,000 because it includes X, Y, and Z.” Say: ✅ “This will position you as the go-to choice in your market, helping you attract higher-paying clients effortlessly.” 🔹 Step 3: Hold Your Ground Without Sounding Defensive When they ask for a discount, don’t immediately say no. Instead, make them choose. ➡️ Client: “Can you do it for less?” ➡️ You: “I can adjust the scope to fit your budget. Which deliverables would you like to remove?” This shifts the conversation from “cheaper” to “what matters most to them.” The Bottom Line: 💡 Price objections aren’t about money—they’re about belief. Dig deeper, reframe the conversation, and lead with value. 🎥 Watch the video where I break this down even further. 👇 Drop a comment—what’s the toughest pricing objection you’ve ever faced? How did you handle it? Yaacov 🎙️🎧 --- Hi, I’m Yaacov Steinberg 👋🏻, and I help creative agency owners and solopreneurs sell with confidence and clarity—without feeling “salesy.” My clients have achieved 200% growth in 60 days (creative solopreneurs) and over 50% growth (agencies). Let’s connect if you want to take your sales to the next level. 🙌🏻

“I can get it cheaper” Prospect to fractional CFO: "I talked with other people who do this, and they are cheaper." Business owner to Accountant: "I talked to other accountants, and they are cheaper." Prospect to business coach: "I talked to other coaches, and they are cheaper." Prospect to Web designer: "I talked to other designers, and they are cheaper." Prospect to YOU: "I talked to others who do this, and they are cheaper." Hundreds of professional and B2B services firms hear this every single day. “The other guy charges less.” Of course, the people who say this are expecting you to drop your fee or price. They want you to defend your charges. They hope to fluster you into an agreement that’s good for them and bad for you. They want the upper hand. Guess what? You do NOT have to play this nasty game. You are the Owner/CEO of your firm. Whether you have 100 employees or 2, whether your revenue is $10 million+ or $500,000 you have the right to determine your fees and prices and stick to them. The only response is: “It seems that price is the most important thing to you.” Then stop talking and see what they say. If they agree then you have to thank them, tell them your fees are what they are, and suggest they go back to the “other guy.” Give up the opportunity because you’ll regret it otherwise. If they reply that price is <not> the most important thing, you should reply “I’m curious then, why did you say that?” There will be different reasons. Keep in mind that you have changed the topic from the challenge to your prices/fees to their reasons. This is good. Remind them, kindly, that your fees are proportional to the life changing differences they will experience as a result of your firm’s knowledge and expertise. If they aren’t motivated by those, that’s fine, let them go. Those who are will become some of your favorite clients. I think back to some of the people who challenged me and yet chose me to help them. We have great records of accomplishments. And sometimes we even laugh about the rocky start. Go find those people!

"Just send the DocuSign to the CFO. We're good to go." Famous last words. 5 days later: "We can't reach this commitment level." Translation: We want half the price. And your champion? On vacation for two weeks. Sigh. You're losing deals because you're SELLING to champions instead of TEACHING them how to sell. After coaching hundreds of reps who get blindsided by last-minute pricing pressure, I've identified the #1 mistake in complex deals with multiple stakeholders: → Assuming your champion knows how to sell internally. When your champion walks into the CFO's office, here's what they actually say: "Hey, we want to spend $250K on this new thing. It's really good. Can we do it?" CFO's response: "What? Why? That's way too expensive." Game over. Think about it: Your champion has NEVER been trained in sales. They don't know how to build urgency, handle objections, or create business cases. Yet we hand them our pricing and expect them to close the CFO. It's like giving a scalpel to someone who's never been to medical school and expecting perfect surgery. This is why I teach reps to ask these questions BEFORE sending any negotiated pricing especially if they are not able to negotiate directly with the Economic Buyer: "If I go to bat for you and get this approved, will you move forward?" "Do you see any reason the CFO would push back on this?" "How can we make sure your CFO is 100% on board before I go beg for this pricing?" If they hesitate on ANY of these questions, you MUST find a way to involve the economic buyer directly or you’ll lose the deal. The hardest territory to manage is the one between your ears. When you change your mindset from "My champion will handle the CFO" to "I need to make my champion bulletproof," you'll stop getting blindsided by pricing objections. Remember: CFOs don't kill deals because of price. They kill deals because of lack of context. Your job isn't to sell to your champion. Your job is to turn your champion into a sales weapon. Sales leaders: Start role-playing these conversations with your team. Have them practice getting economic buyer involvement BEFORE pricing discussions. The reps who master this skill will stop losing deals to last minute CFO objections. — Become the top 1% performer your competition fears. Book your call now to get the EXACT blueprint elite reps use to crush their quotas. https://lnkd.in/gr9u5Vgd (Sales Leaders…. DM me if you want to install this in your teams)

Why '𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲' Offers Aren’t the Real Deal-Breaker. Revealing the untold secret about client objections to pricing. It’s not the price; clients just don’t see why they need you. Let me guess, you’ve been on a sales call where they said: “I can’t afford it.” Ouch, right? That stings. But let me ask you something: Was it really about the money? Or did they just not see the value? Here’s the truth bomb most people avoid: Pricing doesn’t live in a vacuum. It’s a mirror of how well your offer is positioned. So let’s get real: 🔸 Are you solving a pressing, urgent problem? 🔸Are you making it impossible for them to say, “This isn’t worth it”? 🔸Are you creating the “Take my money now!” effect? 𝗜𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼, 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀. 👉 I’ve worked with a SaaS company that couldn’t sell a $2000 offer. We fixed the messaging and they started selling out. 👉 A tax consultant went from charging $5K to $15K, simply by repositioning the outcome they delivered. 👉 An IT service provider doubled their monthly retainer by reframing their work as “mission-critical.” This isn’t magic. It’s alignment: ✔️ Your message. ✔️ Your offer. ✔️ Your audience’s deepest needs. When you get this right, your price becomes an afterthought. Because let me tell you something: When your positioning is rock-solid, the right clients will move mountains to work with you. They won’t ask, “Why does it cost so much?” They’ll ask, “How soon can we start?” Do you think positioning matters more than pricing? Yes or no? Comment below. P.S. Want to charge more? Start by becoming the most valuable solution they can find.

Stop trying to "crush" objections. That aggressive mindset is why so many deals stall in your pipeline. Here's what changed everything for me - I stopped seeing objections as battles to win and started seeing them as opportunities to understand. The 3C Mindset Approach transformed how I handle pushback: - Curiosity first. When a prospect says "it's too expensive," my first move isn't to defend pricing. It's to ask: "Help me understand what you mean by that." - Continue the conversation. Success isn't overcoming the objection. It's asking one more question that keeps the dialogue going. - Reach a conclusion together. Sometimes that's a next step, sometimes it's learning this isn't the right fit. Both are wins. I've heard every objection in the book across 250,000+ cold calls. The ones that led to closed deals weren't the ones I "crushed." They were the ones where I got genuinely curious about what the prospect was really saying. When you shift from defending to understanding, everything changes. Prospects feel heard instead of sold to. Conversations deepen instead of ending. Trust builds instead of erodes. Your prospects aren't obstacles to overcome. They're people trying to solve real problems. 📌 What's one objection you hear constantly that you could approach with more curiosity? ✨ Enjoyed this post? Make sure to hit FOLLOW for daily posts about B2B sales, leadership, entrepreneurship and mindset.

How do you respond to someone who says your service is “too expensive”? Are you offended? Get defensive? Immediately offer a discount? In my book, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘦𝘵, I suggest a course of action that’s often hard to do, particularly if you’re early on in your business. Mentally thank them for doing you this favor. Why have they done you a favor? They haven't said no, and they've given you an opening to receive additional insight into their thinking. They’ve told you that you haven’t had an effective value conversation, one that adequately defines the value of the outcomes of your work, both tangible and intangible, that the client will realize. It could be that you haven’t had enough of a conversation to understand where and how the client sees value. It might be that your engagement recommendations are off. They might not contain exactly what the client expected, and therefore they don’t see enough value relative to the pricing being asked. There are any number of reasons behind this comment, and when you hear it, you have an opening to ask questions. Asking for clarification is always a good idea. “Could you unpack that for me?” is a question that gives you more information and room to breathe, too. There’s another possibility, too. The client might also be testing you to see if they can wrangle a discount. Such clients are almost always a bad-fit for you. As I wrote in my book, “if they are problem prospects, they are certain to be problem clients.” If you give in to offering a discount to the “it’s too expensive” comment from the client, then you’ve destroyed, in just a few short moments, whatever perception of value that client sees in your services. You’ve turned yourself and your service into vegetables, commodities for which price is the primary consideration. Image Credit: Rob Mitchell, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons #pricing #b2b #services #entrepreneurship #pricevaluejourney ______________________ I'm a business consultant and coach, working with service providers who sell their expertise on their most vexing problems, which usually revolve around how to land more clients at better pricing. If you like this post, you might enjoy my LinkedIn newsletter, "The Price and Value Journey," where I cover these issues in detail: https://lnkd.in/eHZPFsbk. You might also be interested in my book, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘦𝘵:  𝘈 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘉𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘚𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘙𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘝𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴. To learn more and to order, go to https://lnkd.in/e3H-adMA.

Ever had a potential client say, “That’s too expensive”? It stings. But sometimes, it’s not about the price—it’s about how you position the value. I once worked with a consultant who kept getting price objections. She was charging $2,000 for a strategy session, but prospects kept pushing back. We looked deeper and asked a simple question: "What is the financial impact of this strategy for your clients?" Her response? “Well, most of my clients see a $50K revenue increase.” That was the problem. She was pricing based on her time, not her clients’ results. Instead of charging $2,000 for a session, she repositioned it as: 💡 A roadmap to unlock $50K in new revenue 💡 A strategy that reduces wasted marketing spend by 20% 💡 A business growth accelerator, not just a consultation The result? Higher pricing. More confident sales. Fewer objections. Clients compare price to value received, not hours worked. If you're constantly defending your price, ask yourself: Am I selling effort—or impact? P.S. This week, I dropped episode 126 with Peter Giordano III on pricing strategy, and today at noon, we're going live in the chat. Save your seat in the comments.