You just met with your customer for the first time and they are asking you for a ballpark price. As soon as you are asked this, you know deep-down that you may need some more time to understand a little bit more about the customer’s needs. Or, your product or service has a lot of options that can have a big impact on price and you haven’t even scratched the surface on discussing these options with your customer. You feel like you are not ready to provide a price yet. But your customer urges you on and tells you, “I just need a ballpark, I won’t hold you to it.” So you cave in and throw out a number. This can get your opportunity sideways pretty quickly! This is also one of the main reasons for customers never calling you back after you provide them with a number.
Now if you have a simple, straightforward offering with a standard price, then fine, you can provide that figure. But if your product has lots of options, or various pricing models, and you need more discovery time, you want to hold off on providing pricing until you are ready to do so. It is a pretty bad situation when you quote a number (which is immediately embedded in the client’s mind) and then hit them with a quote for almost double what you initially ballparked because you later found out more information that you could have used before providing price!
Another scenario that often happens is the salesperson that will throw out a ballpark figure but it seems way too high in the customer’s mind because they haven’t been provided with an opportunity to really understand all of the value that you can provide. This results in weeks of follow-up calls and emails that go unreturned.
Quoting prematurely typically backfires like in the above scenario. The client may not see the perceived value in your products if you just give them a number without uncovering all their needs, or without understanding the pain that they are in with their business problems. If you just met with them once and it was only for a limited time, you probably need more time before you can dial in an accurate quote that will serve the client’s needs best.
Here is a great way of handling this when you know you need to do some more homework with the customer in order to quote accurately when your customer is asking you for a ballpark price (maybe even pressuring you for a number). When your customer asks, “I just need a ballpark. I won’t hold you to it.” You can respond with, “I can understand that. I wanted to ask you if it would be helpful for me to provide a preliminary quote. I could use just a little more time in order to do this accurately. My solutions have a handful of different options and services that you may or may not need, or maybe you phase in later. All of this can cause a big swing in price. Can I get some additional time with you (or your team) to review these options? I am not trying to side-step addressing the pricing request, I just want to do it right and accurately. and I promise I can get you an accurate ballpark.”
Your customer will most likely understand your request and now you can create next steps for further discussions. If they say no to your ask, well then we might have some red flags here. You can then dig in as to why they need a number right now which will reveal some details around the request. (They might be using you to compare with other quotes or someone that they are about to buy from so they don’t want to wait).
So don’t fall for the trap of quoting prematurely! It nearly always backfires. Watch this video and I will walk you through navigating this conversation!
-Happy Selling