Hey, creative, let’s talk sales tactics. You like talking about sales. I know sales is scary. And too often creative types, like you get screwed on your prices by folks. When they ask the dreaded question, is that your best price? Or they’ll say, love your stuff, wanna work with you? Um, can you come down on your price at all? So the question is, what do you do when someone asks you to reduce your price? What should you do? I know what most of you already do is you lower your price <laugh> because you want the work so bad, you’ll just do whatever they want you to do. You don’t have to do that. There is a better way I want. In this episode of the Business of Creative Business podcast, I want to give you a little bit of, uh, mental jiu-jitsu that you can do when someone asks you to lower your price on a quote, because you should never lower your price.
If someone approaches you and they want you to do the work for them, you shouldn’t lower your price. Let me, let me tell you what you should do instead. But let, but first let’s talk about what happens when you lower your price, what you’re, what you’re really doing there and what you’re telling the client about you as a person. It’s un it’s an unhealthy way to start a business relationship. They ask you to lower your price and you, or they say, can, is that your best offer? Is that your best deal, best you can do? And you’ll say, well, you know what? Okay, okay, okay, okay, let me lower my price down. What you’ve just told that customer is that you artificially inflated your price the first time, because if you don’t give your best price the first time and you lower it immediately, that admits to this buyer that you just told them a little lie that you were trying to pad your price in the first place.
That’s a bad way to start a business relationship that’s not healthy for anybody. The other thing is, is that they will respect you, lest it will make them, it hurts your credibility when you do that. So you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t lower your price. But also you shouldn’t just walk away. Um, don’t just walk away. Don’t say, oh, well, you know, you, if you don’t pay what I want, then you, we can’t work together. Get outta my life. That’s a bad idea too. Here’s what you do instead, the the potential customer comes to you and you give a quote and they go, Hey, you know, we love to do this, but can you lower your price? Here’s what you say. And watch what happens. You say, well, I, you know, I gave my best price the first time. I really can’t go lower than that. That’s what, that’s what I can do this work for the work you’ve asked me to do.
That’s, that’s what I can do it for. And here’s the, the important part, but I tell you what I’ll do is I know lots of artists or other creatives or people in my genre, and I can introduce you to one of them who may be able to, uh, give you a lower cost on, on a job like this. Now, we all know who the other players are in our field, right? Or painters, you know the other painters. I know the other videography companies in town, and we know that there are people on different price ranges. So offer to send your potential customer to one of those other people. See, listen, I’ll make the introduction. I know them all. They’re good people. They can probably come in a little cheaper than I can, and I, I’d be happy to introduce you and just let it linger.
Just stop right there and watch what they say. When you take a stand like that, but you are not a jerk, you are helpful and you offer to give them another option. I’ve done this for 20 plus years, and I can count on one hand how many times they’ve actually taken me up on that offer. You know what they normally say? They go, no, no, no. You know what? You know what? Uh, no big deal. Let, let, let’s just, let’s just go with it. That’s fine. That’s what happens. More often than not, they go ahead and they, they pay the price you quoted in the first place. Because here’s the little secret is that if they’ve asked you for a quote, they already want you to do the work, they’ve made up their mind. You’re the one they want to do that. Now we’re just talking about price.
So you actually have the power. You think you don’t, but you do. When they ask you to give a quote, you have just taken the position of lead in this sales negotiation. So when they ask you to lower your price, you say, we know what, I can’t do that, but I can offer to, to help you out. Now you’re being a good human being and I will, I’ll introduce you to this other person who maybe can help you out better. They almost never, ever, ever take you up on it. So give it a try. Don’t lower your prices. Try this and take a stand on your value. You might be surprised you’ll pick up more jobs at the price you actually want to work for. Wouldn’t that be nice? Give it a go. Let me know how it goes. You can do it, y’all. I love you.