Taking Money out of the Solution

The money that your prospective client takes out of your pricing is money they are taking out of the outcomes and results they are trying to produce.

Your prospective client doesn’t realize this is what they are doing. They don’t understand that without allowing you to invest that money on their behalf through your solution, that money is not being spent in at all. They don’t recognize that while they may still have the cash, that cash would be put to better use generating the outcomes they need, and resolving the challenges that have caused them to consider changing in the first place.

They believe, and they may not be wrong here, that you have padded your price, expecting to be asked for a discount. They believe, and they’re not wrong here either, that it is their responsibility to obtain the best deal they can for their company. So, they have to ask you for the discount.

For your part, you have to explain that the money being taken out of the solution is literally being taken out of the solution. The discount that they are asking for results in less money being spent on the results they told you they need throughout the discovery process, and throughout the work you did collaborating to design the solution.

Your prospective client can hold onto their cash and accept a lesser result, or invest the cash and produce a greater result. Look, if it makes better sense to invest less and change the solution to something that fits that investment, then recommend that and help them make that investment. But if they insist that the outcomes they need are important enough that they should change and do something different, then help them invest the right amount of money to do so, even if it’s more than they anticipated.

What you don’t want to do is take money out of the solution only to deliver less than you promised, or less than the client actually needs.

Photo credit: ashokboghani Water drain via photopin (license).