May 3, 2019

That sounds like a lot

Sent by Jonathan Stark on May 3rd, 2019

Let’s say you are a UX designer. You talk to a prospective client about a project. You give them a price of $10,000, and they say:

“Hm... $10k sounds like a lot for this.”

There are a bunch of things you could say back to a comment like this.

For example:

“Yep, I’m probably the most expensive UX person out there right now. Are you looking for someone cheap? I could introduce you to some less experienced folks who could probably use the work.”

or:

“Getting the UX wrong on this will waste an enormous amount of time and money in development. How much do you think you should invest to hedge against that?”

or:

“Yes, I do UX but the $10k is not for my time. It’s for guaranteed results like X, Y, and Z. Are those the sorts of results you’re looking for?”

or, my personal favorite:

“Compared to what?”

Prices are all relative. You want your prospective clients to compare the prices you present relative to the value of their desired business outcome, NOT relative to “the competition” or “the going rate for this sort of thing” or against their assumptions about how long it might take you multiplied by a “reasonable hourly rate”.

When someone balks at a price, immediately turn the conversation back around to value.

Yours,

—J