Not giving your price

Common (and sort of intuitively ) advice:

“Go, talk to your prospect/customer, talk shop, ask and discuss their budget. But don’t give them a price. That should only be shown in your proposal.“

Take the other road: talk price. Early.

Why?

Because a price has very little to do with their budget.

A budget is a prevision of what (god knows where/how) they “should” have for X thing.

It might be that the client means well, but without the right expertise, it’s a self-diagnose with high odds of being wrong.

What they’re not wrong about: knowing exactly what they want, as the big picture —with things they can track on to know of progress and success.

Until then, a budget is a nice number. An approximate. A broad guess.

• What if they designed the budget from a very cheap approach that has nothing to do with the reality of their outcome to achieve?
• What if they designed the budget with how many hours they think that should take?
• What if they designed the budget with what cousin Timmy thought he might charge?

How to talk about price?

Hear what they have to say. Clarify. Find out what they care about (aka the value). Find out the urgency of it. Price accordingly (roughly).

Price is about knowing if they can afford you on what you offer.

Price is also about figuring out what you could (if you decide so) accommodate for their budget.

But the price has to be linked to what they care for.

It has to be focused on them. Not on you (or your solutions).