5 Money Excuses Potential Clients Make

Potential clients make all kinds of excuses but if I have to sum it up, they all fall into: excuses about money, excuses about time and excusing themselves with other people. The strongest deal breaker in a sales conversation is money. Here are the most common money excuses and what that really means:

1.Your price is too high.
If a client tells you anything remotely close to this sentence, then you did not explain well enough what you offer in terms of guaranteed results. Potential clients shop for price and they shop for quality. Of course there are clients who buy solely on price: free, very cheap, very expensive. More often than not, though, prospects look for quality. And if they are reluctant to pay your price, they are really questioning the quality of what you offer.

2. Others are cheaper
This client concern is different than the “You are too expensive” concern. What your client is really asking you here is: “What makes you different from your competition?” The tricky part is that potential clients do not ask this question. They just try to find the answer intuitively and if you hear a polite no to your offer, it may be that you did not show upfront how your approach, your method, your product, your service is different from the competition.

3. I don’t have the money
In this case -the all is not in your garden – it’s in theirs. So, convincing them to find the money or asking questions to assess how much money they have will not do the trick. The real question that the client is asking themselves is: Do I want this? Do I need this? Can I go by without buying this? If you, in your sales conversation cover those 3 questions, then your potential client will be very well equipped to take an informed decision.

4. Can we lower the price?
Usually, entrepreneurs that have just started offer a discount themselves. Or even offer a “results first, payment later” options. Unfortunately this is not good for your business. If you don’t know how much money is worth what you offer, your potential client wouldn’t either. Moreover, the message that you send out to them is: “I’m confused. I don’t know how much I should charge.” The subconscious mind of the potential client pick up this vibe from you and replies: I’m confused. Maybe this is not going to benefit me that much (I should pay less) or at all (I’ll look for someone else).

5. Can I start paying you once I achieve results?
It sounds logical, right? But not so much. With money you can buy a book but you can’t learn to cook without first reading the book or at least a page from it. And this is the the same about anything you buy – a car, a house, an education, a spa treatment. If you make a reservation for a restaurant, pre-order the menu and pay for it but never actually set your foot into the restaurant, will you be happy with the food or the service? You may say you are or you are not, but in reality, you have not experienced it, you have not completed your part of the deal which in this case is: go to the restaurant and eat. So clients who are not sure they will get results or don’t want to put in the effort to achieve results usually make this offer?