Do you feel like you’re losing potential clients because your services are priced too high?  This is a common fear among service professionals.  And when you really need clients you may be tempted to cut your prices just to bring them in the business.

Don’t do that.  Doing so conveys two things about you and your service that are bad for business.  First, it indicates that you think your services are over priced.  Second, it attracts the price shoppers and you don’t want to build a business around price shoppers.

Why do you want to avoid price shoppers?  Because price shoppers keep your from receiving adequate compensation for your services.  More importantly price shoppers tend to be the highest maintenance least loyal clients you can ever have.

Even though the prospect wants you to think they’re saying no because of price the truth is, it’s never about price.  But in order for you to overcome this objection you have to convince yourself your service is worth the price.  You may have competitors who offer the exact same products as part of their service as you do, but the value comes from how you deliver your service.  If you don’t believe your service is worth the investment your asking it isn’t.  If that’s the case you have a choice to either lower your price, or you can determine what you can do to make the way you provide your service more valuable than it is now.  I’d vote for the later.

Most often the reason your given a price objection isn’t related to price at all, it’s related to why.  Every buyer has a reason why they want to buy a solution like your service provides, and why they want that solution now.  Until you’ve uncovered or discovered their reason why you can’t get to the next critical question which is, “why you”.

Most sales people try to jump to the “why you” question without discovering the “why” and “why now” questions.  That doesn’t work because it makes the prospect feel like they’re being sold, and drives them away from you.  Find out “why” and “why now”, and you’ll drive your prospects to you so they’ll want to hear “why you”.

Most salespeople, especially women, don’t know how to handle objections.  And that means you’re letting lots of business that should be yours slip away.  Instead of fearing objections rejoice in them because objections are actually a buying indicator.

Top producers prepare for all phases of the sales conversation.  You know you’re likely to get objections, so get prepared.  Make a list of all the objections you get or you know you can get.

Prioritize your list of objections.  Identify the top three objections that you know you have to deal with in order to earn a clients business.  Instead of hoping they won’t come up take them on proactively versus reactively.

Prepare short and powerful stories that overcome those objections.  In other words, as you have your sales conversation be ready to openly address highly potential objections before they come up.  As you relate your story make sure you do it in a way that removes the objection and demonstrates the behavior you want them to have.

People have objections because they don’t know or they don’t understand important pieces of information that they need to make a buying decision.  That means you haven’t done your job.  But you can’t correct your mistake until or unless you know what your potential clients real objection is.

Never get into argument with a client about objections.  This happens when a client states an objection and you immediately respond to counter the objection.  Allow the client to air all of their objections before you respond in any way.

Realize that if you haven’t helped the client to discover a highly motivating reason for buying you wouldn’t have objections.  So objections just mean the buyer wants to buy, but they can’t because they don’t know or don’t understand something they have to know to say “yes”.  Once they’ve shared all their objections it’s time to work through them.

As they share their objections actually list them on a sheet of paper.  Divide the paper in half with half of the page representing what they have to risk and the other half representing what they have to gain (pros/cons).  Now work with the client helping them to think through  what they have to gain, what they have to lose, and what they need to know more about.

Instead of being your clients foe now you’re acting as their advocate helping them discover the best solution for them.  No big surprise, in almost every case your potential client will decide to act now because they fully understand the advantage to them.  When they don’t it’s because you both discovered your solution isn’t the best for them.  And in either case you’re earning their respect and trust as a trusted advisor, and that means more business and more referrals for you.