August 12, 2017
[ICC] What if the client’s budget is absurdly low?
FYI - I’m currently off-grid at a lodge on a lake in a remote corner of Maine. I’ll be back in the saddle on Monday, August 14th. In the meantime, here’s a popular post from the Inner Circle Collection:
What if the client’s budget is absurdly low?
Have you ever been on a sales call with a prospect that seemed to be going well... until the prospect revealed what seemed to be an absurdly low budget for the project?
Even if it seems obvious to you that your assistance would be worth far more than their budget, trying to directly convince them of this doesn’t usually work very well.
Instead, invite the prospect into a conversation in which they voluntarily share what they believe the value of the project to be. (NOTE: The value, not the budget)
The way to do this is with questions like:
- “Can you help me understand why your website is such a low priority?”
- “Am I wrong in thinking that this website could become your most profitable sales channel?”
- “What is your most effective sales channel currently?”
Once they start answering, keep asking questions until every assumption is removed. At that point you will either:
- Discover that the project isn’t as valuable to the prospect as you had assumed.
- The prospect will discover that it would be silly not to invest more than they had budgeted for the project.
Either way, you’re better off.
Yours,
—J