Prospects Pushing You on Price?

How to negotiate the right way

My mom was a champion bargain hunter. Growing up, I watched her celebrate a good deal the way some people celebrate a promotion. When she scored a “steal” (an unbelievable discount that seemed otherwise impossible to attain), it was a genuine accomplishment. Her eyes would light up. She’d tell the story to anyone who’d listen. “You won’t believe what I paid for this.”

And honestly? I get it. There’s something deeply satisfying about feeling like you haven’t been taken for a ride. We live in a world where it sometimes feels like the system is set up to run your wallet dry. So when a provider legitimately marks something down, for reasons they’re comfortable with, and you walk away with a genuine bargain, it’s a wonderful thing. Willing buyer, willing seller. That’s the juncture that underpins the markets of the world, and there’s real joy in finding yourself on the receiving end of it.

This instinct is universal. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are. People love getting things for free, and they love the feeling of scoring value beyond what they paid. Retail has known this for decades, and they’ve built entire empires on the back of it.

But here’s the thing: this very instinct, this love affair with getting more for less, is one of the biggest reasons your prospects push back on price. And if you don’t understand it, you’ll spend your career chasing discounts instead of closing deals.

Today, I want to give you a different way to handle it. I call it the trade-off mindset. It changes the entire game.

The Dubai Clothing Store

Let me tell you a story.

Years ago, when I was living in Dubai, I stumbled across a massive sale at a clothing store in the Mall of the Emirates. I didn’t recognise the brand, but the garments looked upmarket. And the discounts were staggering. Most items were 70% off.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I needed new office clothes. So I loaded up. Shirts, trousers, a jacket. I bought heaps of things, buzzing with that unmistakable thrill of a great deal. I felt like I was saving a small fortune.

That was until I walked past the same store over the next few months (many times) only to discover that their “amazing sale” never ended. It was always 70% off. Always “ending soon.” Their staff had been trained to tell shoppers the sale was expiring imminently. Turns out, their primary target market was tourists passing through Dubai. No one was around long enough to find them out.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t cite this out of any admiration for their dishonest conduct. I find it appalling. I never walked back into that store, and I warned every friend I had about them too. I would have likely become a loyal customer had they chosen a more honest way of treating their customers.

But I share the story for one reason only: to confirm the ache we all feel to score a good deal. It runs deep. Deep enough that a store can build an entire business model on exploiting it.

We live in a world where people want as much as possible for as little as possible. That’s economics. And depending on the person, it can be taken to extremes. As rainmakers, we need to understand this intimately, especially if we’re in the business of framing value from the viewpoint of the prospect.

Why Buyers Stall

Before we get into the solution, let’s talk about another force at play: one that works hand-in-hand with the price instinct.

Buyers love stalling.

I don’t mean they’re lazy or disrespectful. I mean that stalling is almost a natural reflex, especially when the purchase isn’t an urgent necessity. I’ve seen people stall on high-value enterprise software deals, yes, but I’ve also seen people stall when buying toothpaste. “Let’s just see what else is out there before we commit to the usual Colgate.” Sound familiar?

Stalling becomes more pronounced and deliberate when two conditions are present: the purchase is higher-value and it’s not urgent. The bigger the price tag and the less the hair is on fire, the more likely your prospect is to pump the brakes.

Why? Because there’s an inertia factor at work. People like doing things the way they’ve always done them. Change requires energy. If your product calls for a new way of doing something entirely (say, you’re selling a training subscription the prospect has never had before), you’re up against more inertia. More stall. Even something as simple as a new soap brand rides up against some resistance. There’ll be a bit of stall.

The relationship is roughly proportional. The more inertia your prospect faces, the more unfamiliar, disruptive, or expensive the purchase feels, the harder they’ll stall. Understanding this helps you calibrate your approach.

The Nudge

The answer to the stall is a nudge.

If you’re up against inertia, you need something to get the sale in motion. A force that tips the scales just enough to move the prospect from “I’ll think about it” to “let’s do this.”

When you’re selling one-to-one, you can nudge the person along by framing value in their terms. By helping them see what they stand to gain or lose in language that resonates with their specific situation. This is what I broke down in The Simplest Sales Framework: finding what the prospect is actually solving for and framing your solution around their reality.

When you’re selling en masse (over the distance, like in retail and e-commerce), you need different techniques that nudge people out of the stall at scale. Things like urgency (”sale ends tomorrow”) and scarcity (”only 3 left in stock”) are highly effective. They work because they introduce a cost to not acting, and that cost disrupts the inertia.

Objections Are Stalling Tactics

Here’s a truth that many sellers resist: objections are ultimately stalling tactics. No matter how valid the objection sounds, the prospect is stalling.

“The price is too high.” Stall. “We need to check with procurement.” Stall. “Can you send me more information?” Stall. “We’re looking at other vendors.” Stall.

I’m not saying the concerns aren’t real. They might be. But the function of the objection, its role in the sales process, is to slow things down. To create distance between the prospect and the moment of commitment.

And if you consider the price-mindset we unpacked earlier, our deep-seated love of getting more for less, it’s no surprise that price is the most common objection most sellers will encounter in their careers. It’s the easiest card to play, and it taps into the most primal commercial instinct we have: I want to pay less.

So how do you handle it?

The Trade-Off Mindset

I’ve found a very effective way to handle price objections in one-to-one sales. You can extend it far beyond price.

Here’s the core idea.

Retail has spent generations training us to believe we can get the same product for a lower price. That’s the entire premise of a discount. Same shirt, cheaper. Same TV, less money. Same thing, better deal.

As sellers and rainmakers, we need to do the opposite.

Instead of playing into the traditional discount mentality, we need to get our prospect out of that mindset entirely. The premise of trade-off logic is simple and powerful:

Less money = less value. More money = more value.

That’s it. The prospect gets less for less. They get more for more. No tricks. No gimmicks. Just an honest, transparent relationship between what they pay and what they receive.

Why This Works

This kind of logic (which is awfully logical, when you think about it) accomplishes something remarkable. It gets the prospect to respect your pricing strategy, your company, and you.

Think about it from their side. When a prospect hears that more costs more, and if they want to pay less, they’ll get less, they know your pricing approach is solid. It’s been carefully calculated. It’s based on underlying truths, not arbitrary markups waiting to be negotiated down.

Contrast this with the retail approach. Every time a store slaps a heavy discount on something, what does it really communicate? That the original price was inflated. That the “real” price is lower. That next time, you should wait for the sale. The store’s pricing strategy becomes less trusted with every promotion.

When you adopt trade-off logic in your sales conversations, you build the opposite: trust through consistency. Your pricing tells a story, one where every rand, dollar, or euro corresponds to actual value delivered.

How to Use It

Let me walk you through how this plays out in practice.

Your prospect says your pricing is too high. They want a better deal.

Step one: Sure, you can offer a small discount to give them a win. Yes, feed the madness that generations of retail gimmicks have bred into us, a little. A courtesy discount shows goodwill. It tells the prospect you value the relationship and you’re willing to meet them partway.

Step two: But don’t discount much. Instead, rework the deal such that less money equals less product, less service, or less scope. It has to amount to less value.

Put the prospect in the driver’s seat. Let them decide. The conversation sounds something like this:

“I understand, and I respect that budget matters. Here’s what we can do. At the reduced price, we’d deliver Phase 1 and Phase 2, but Phase 3 (the implementation support) would fall outside that scope. Alternatively, at our original quote, you get the full programme including the hands-on support. Which would you prefer?”

This is fundamentally different from traditional discounting. You’re not giving away the same thing for less. You’re establishing a principle: you get what you pay for.

Step three: Never be the one to take on the decision. Never say, “I’ll have a think about it and get back to you with a better deal.” If they want better pricing, make them do the work. Make them weigh the trade-off.

“Are you still happy to move ahead at the original scope, or would you like to consider the reduced option? And seeing as we’ve had a good relationship, I’ll include a 3% courtesy discount as a show of commitment to you. Take some time to think about it. If we still have capacity when you’re ready, we’ll be glad to do this project with you.”

Then, and this is crucial, remind them why this project matters. Remind them what problem it solves. Remind them what’s at stake if it doesn’t get done. Go back to the pain. (If you need a refresher on how to do this, take a look at The Simplest Sales Framework for a reminder on how to frame value.)

The Clincher

And then there are the moments when the gap is just too wide.

I used this exact approach on a prospect just days ago. He came to the table with a budget that was four times less than what we were asking. Four times. We went back and forth, exploring what could be trimmed, what could be phased, what could be restructured.

But eventually, I had to drop the big one on him.

“Look, if you want something at that price point, we simply won’t be able to help. And I say that with respect. Not everyone is the right fit, and that’s okay. But you’ve got to choose. Do you want cheap? Or do you want your problem gone?”

And then I went on to remind him, in vivid detail, what his problem actually was. What it was costing him. How it showed up in his business every single week. What would happen if it persisted for another six months.

That’s the clincher. Cheap or solved. You can’t have both. And when the prospect hears it framed that way, honestly, directly, without malice, they almost always choose solved.

Because at the end of the day, nobody lies awake at night thinking about how much they saved. They lie awake thinking about the problem that’s still there.

Beyond Price

The beauty of trade-off logic is that it extends well beyond price. You can apply it to almost any objection:

“Can you deliver faster?” Sure, but faster means we’ll need to deprioritise the customisation you asked for. Which matters more to you?

“Can we reduce the scope now and add later?” Absolutely, but a phased approach means a longer time to full resolution. Are you comfortable with that timeline?

“Can we get a lower-tier option?” Of course, but the lower tier doesn’t include the dedicated account management that we discussed. Would you be okay managing that internally?

In every case, the structure is the same. You’re not saying no. You’re saying: here’s what changes. And then you let the prospect decide. You respect their intelligence. You trust them to weigh the trade-off. And more often than not, they choose the option that actually solves their problem because you’ve helped them see what’s really at stake.

What Power Listening Has to Do with All of This

Now, you might be wondering: what does Power Listening have to do with handling objections?

Everything.

You can only employ the trade-off method effectively if you’ve done the hard work before the objection arrives. You need to have unearthed the prospect’s actual problem. You need to understand how it shows up for them, in their language, in their world, in their daily operations. You need to know what it’s costing them, emotionally and financially.

That understanding becomes your leverage. When you’re framing value and overcoming objections using the power of a trade-off, you’re drawing on everything you’ve listened for. Every discovery question. Every moment of silence where you let them talk. Every detail you filed away about their pain, their priorities, their fears.

When you say, “Do you want cheap, or do you want your problem gone?” you’d better be sure they’re not going to choose the cheaper route over getting their problem solved. And the only way you can be sure of that is if you’ve got the problem right.

Get the problem wrong, and the trade-off falls flat. Get it right because you listened, deeply and carefully, and it’s one of the most powerful closing tools you’ll ever wield.

As I wrote in Stop Begging Your Prospects: diagnosis before prescription. The trade-off method is the prescription. But it only works when the diagnosis is spot on.

So you’d best be listening.

Next time a prospect tells you your price is too high, don’t panic. Don’t cave. And don’t start slashing your quote in half.

Instead, take a breath. Remember the trade-off. And ask them the question that cuts through all the noise:

Do you want cheap? Or do you want your problem gone?

Make it rAIn, KG