I’m sure you’ve heard it before. “I would love to hire your company to get this done for us, but you cost too much.”

Cost is an illusion. Everything costs too much if it has too little value, and everything is a bargain if it is highly valuable.

The fact is, as well, that spending is a choice. Every dollar spent on one thing today is not spent on something else tomorrow. And every dollar not spent on one thing today, will be spent on something else tomorrow.

If you want to make the sale, you need to convince the client to make your product or service the choice – make it more valuable to them than whatever else they would spend the money on.

Here are twelve strategies to overcome client cost objections:

  1. Sell the client on a quick turnaround. Sometimes there is added value in immediate service. If what you are offering will bring the client immediate benefits, it might be worth paying for access to those benefits sooner rather than later.       Immediacy is value added that costs you nothing but some get-up-and-go.
  2. Itemize costs they save with you. Don’t make it about how much they will have to pay if they hire you. Make it about how much less they will have to pay if they hire you. That is always an easier sell.
  3. Remind the client of the dangers of going cheap. Sure, they could save some money with a cheaper competitor, but is it worth it if cheap means having to hire you later to fix the cheap competitor’s mess? Or if they miss out on some revenue opportunities because the cheap competitor is not attuned to all the possibilities?
  4. Stress how effective you are. They are not hiring just any old solution. They are hiring excellence – and it’s worth paying for top quality. See item 3 above.
  5. Compare your fees to the competition’s pricing. This won’t work if you are charging high-end prices, but if you are competitive in your pricing, make sure the client knows this.
  6. Offer something extra. Often there is a small upsell that you can offer – small to you, but with high perceived value. If $10.00 seems too much to pay for a tray of brownies, you can add $1.00 of frosting and call them “deluxe brownies”. For a full book manuscript, we are happy to throw in a free synopsis and query letter. This has a stand-along value of $500, but once the writer is already immersed in the manuscript, it’s a fairly easy add-on.
  7. Identify how the client can reduce your workload, and therefore the amount you need to charge. If the client can do part of the job himself, get him to deliver that portion completed. You will have a smaller sale, but at least you will have a sale. And the client will be happy to have gotten the job done for less. In some cases, as soon as the client starts to do some of the work, he will realize what an onerous task it is, and he’ll happily pay your full price for the complete service.
  8. Offer a cash-back incentive for speedy feedback. I have often seen how much extra work is involved in back-and-forths with clients, perhaps because they are indecisive or perhaps because they have other priorities. Give them an incentive to reduce the most irritating part of your workload, and they can save themselves some money in the process.
  9. Outsource part of the project to students. If you can do this, then you might be able to offer the client a 10 percent discount without costing you a penny.
  10. Offer a payment plan. No price is as insurmountable in parts as it is in whole. Break down the payments, perhaps on a monthly basis, and the cost does not seem as large. This can be especially effective where cash flow is the basis for the cost concerns.
  11. Suggest downscaling. If the client clearly is asking for more work than he can afford to pay for, why not offer a less-expensive proposal that downscales aspects of the project? This could mean removing certain parts of the project, or reducing the quantity of what you are providing.
  12. Divide the project into phases. This is an innovative convergence of payment plans and downscaling. By dividing a project into phases, they can pay for part of it right away and part of it whenever cash flow next allows. Each phases is like a downscaled project that becomes the whole when the client is ready to pay for the whole.

At the end of the day, you want a happy client. You want smiles and sunshine. That’s your goal. But to get there, you might have to convince the client to make the choice. If you can show them value or help them manage their cash flow, you just might be able to get them to make the right choice – the choice that will give you the chance to make them a happy client.