Pricing Psychology: Nurturing Relationships and Avoiding Price Shoppers

Hello and welcome to the show. Today's question for the day is what strategies can one use to handle price objections? OK, well I've already done a tonne about how to handle price objections. So today I'm going to try and refocus the question and try and see how we can prevent price objections from coming up in the 1st place or how we can chase price shoppers away. So that's going to be my focus. I'm not going to be telling you how to handle price objections because I've done that loads of times in the past.

So when you're done listening to this episode, scroll back a bit or maybe check YouTube. Hit type in my name into the search bar and then hit type in price and then send or type in objections, Tavishima objections, Tavishima price, then send. And then any of the former episodes that I've done where I tried to explore perspectives on how to handle price objections, you know that will come up. So OK, so before we begin, I

have to define what an objection is in the 1st place for those people who may be discovering the show for the very first time. Now an objection is just any reason that a stakeholder, a potential customer, a partner, a whoever gives for not wanting to go ahead with the agenda, with the conversation, with the relationship, with the whatever it is that you have on the ground. So if you are trying to sell wedding planning services and someone says you're too expensive, that is a price objection.

Let's see what else. Or if you're trying to sell cars, Toyota cars, and someone says OK, this Toyota 2024 model, I can get it cheaper if I go to Chukudi instead, that is a price objection. So reasons around money that people give for not wanting to go ahead. So in the latter example, I don't want to buy your Toyota because if I call up Chukudi, I can get it AT2M less. And same thing with the wedding planner, like, OK, if I go someplace else, I should be able to get it at the cheaper amount per plate.

So I'm not wedding planner Katra, I should be able to get it cheaper at, you know, per plate. So why should I go ahead with you? So like I said, there are different ways of handling the price objections. So check for my episodes and you get caught up to speed about how to do that. So today we're going to refocus the conversation how we can either prevent all these money things from coming up in the first place or how we can get all these money people to leave us alone and to go someplace else.

So the first thing that I recommend and I tell the people time and time again is let's bring up all these money and budget conversations early in the process when we're doing qualification. Now, I remember that there are two kinds of conversations we should be having, discovery conversations and qualification. Discovery. I'm sorry, qualification, discovery conversations. Now, the difference between qualification and discovery is this.

When you're in the qualification stage, you're just trying to figure out, am I talking to the right person? What do I know about this person? Then when you're at the discovery stage, you're trying to figure out what problem does this person have and can my product or service solve these problems? So a less fancier way of saying it is when we're having conversations with potential clients, we should always be having conversations around the person.

Who is this person? What do they want? Where are they coming from? What's their background? And then conversations around the problem, how bad is this problem? When did it start? Can my product or my service solve it? You know, all those sorts of things. So when we're having at the State Room, we're having these conversations, we should be bringing up the money thing early. So back to the wedding Catra example or the wedding planner example.

You know, at that stage where you're saying, oh, congratulations, when's your wedding? How did you guys meet, blah, blah, blah. What is it that you have planned? Eventually you have to cut straight to the chase and have the money and the budget conversation. Or else you can spend a lot of time building relationships with this person. You know, getting to know them, getting to know their background, getting to know the taste, getting to get a sense of the aesthetics, the kind of wedding that they're trying to plan and blah, blah, blah,

things like that. You can waste a long time doing that, 3 or 4 weeks only to discover that they never could have afforded you in the 1st place. So that is why I recommend bringing up the money and budget conversations early. And believe me, it applies to everybody, not just people in the wedding and the event space. It's the same thing for those of you who are fashion designers. You can tell later, Oh yes, I do peplum, no problem.

You draw up a sketch. OK, you send me an Instagram handle. Let me see what kind of design you're looking for. Or is it the kind that Rihanna wore last year, two seasons ago, blah, blah, blah. You know, you get involved in all those things. You send WhatsApp messages back and forth and Pinterest images and then you give them your bill that to show peplum is 80,000 naira 80,000 there without the fabric. If you supply the fabric, it's going to be 150 K.

And then the person, now you know, that's when you guys start quarrelling and you know, the person insults you and cuts the phone. So let's have these conversations early so that for people who think this budget is unrealistic, they'll leave you alone. Now, one way that I've been recommending over and over again, not just on the podcast but during my training sessions, is where you give a range. So you say something like, oh,

from what we've discussed so far, options AB and C are going to work, but either of these options can cost anything between 123 and 456. These options that you're willing to explore and then you keep quiet. So for the peplum thing, the person sends you a bunch of stuff. Person sends you a picture of Rihanna wearing peplum, Person sends you a picture of Beyoncé wearing peplum. And then the person also sends a picture of let's see, who can I

think of in the Nigerian space, OK, I don't know any Nigerian celebrities, OK, talking back, wearing peplum. And then you look at them, that is when you have this conversation. So you say, OK Madam, sure, no problem, we can do this peplum. So from what we've seen here, options 1-2 and three, either of these options can cost anything between 80K and 150K, depending on whether I'm supplying the fabric or not. Is this an option that you're willing to explore?

And then you keep quiet and hear what it is that they have to say rather than you when they send options 1-2 and three, trying to ask more creative questions, trying to narrow down. And then you figure out that they like the Beyoncé option and they now start trying to give a quote on that Beyoncé peplum. And then quarrel now arises. So, yeah. So that's it. So you give a range early on in the conversation before you narrow it down to a specific proposal.

And then that is a good way of getting people off your hair if they do not think that the price options that we're talking about are realistic or not. So you give a range of options. So it's the same thing with the wedding planner or the wedding caterer. So you say, oh mommy, daddy, thank you very much, nice to meet you people, congratulations, the wedding will go well, blah, blah, blah, or that small talk and then eventually get down to business.

So from what we have discussed so far, whether the option, the menu is going to be a bare bones menu or fried rice and Jalof rice or that will do an all out African menu where we can put Ogiriano back just like mommy said, or we can explore a three course continental menu for this wedding. So either of these options, anything here could cost between 2500 naira per plate and 7500 naira per plate, depending on what we're going with.

Which of these options would you like to explore? And then you keep quiet and then you hear what they have to say. And if the Mumsy shouts and she said, yeah, 2500 naira per plate for Josh Ogry and Uber and this and this and that and that, you know, we now know that there is a mismatch. It's possible that your prices are reasonable and they are fair. But maybe because of how things have turned out with the Nigerian economy and hyperinflation, it's possible that the last time Mumsy and Popsy planned a wedding was five years ago for their younger daughter, or rather for their older daughter.

So now it's the younger one's turn to get married. And so they don't have a realistic expectation of what prices are currently. This is how you get them off the table and this is how you get them off the table early so that there is no quarrel and you now know that this is not the kind of person that you have to be following up with or chasing up in perpetuity. Then another way of doing this, it's not something I talk about a lot, but actually doing one of my training sessions is something that one of the attendees discovered, which is the reason why I say you should not limit yourself when it comes to personal development and professional development.

They shouldn't just limit yourself to material that you come across on my channel. That's for those of you who are fans of the stuff that I see. Pay attention to other sources because other perspectives help. And in fact, if you come across other perspectives, I can use my expertise to show you how they apply to your own situation and how you can apply it the best. So I can't remember what strategy the lady called it.

Did you say bulletproofing or something? I can't remember what it was anyway, but you just stay straight up from the beginning of the conversation. You want to let them know that you are not cheap. So that is the idea behind the whole thing, that you start off the conversation letting this person know that you're not cheap, so that if they're looking for the cheapest, they can start putting the car in reverse right now so that both of you don't deceive yourselves.

And the different ways, the different options that we came up for handling that. But there was one person in the training session who was not comfortable with the approach because the person didn't want to sound. He didn't want to sound as if we we're starting off this conversation feeling proud and we're chasing people away. So I said, yeah, sure, no problem. That is a genuine concern. It's a legitimate concern. So you can downplay that by first of all, being polite and you don't have to come out and say we're the most expensive in the market.

You can say something like, well, not the cheapest in the market because we offer medium and premium brands in the range of XYZ and ABC. They typically cost anything between here and here. Which of these options would you like to explore? And then you keep quiet so you achieve the same thing without sounding as if you're a Jackass and you're trying to chase people away like, oh, I'm high and mighty, I'm expensive, I only deal with the wealthy.

You don't have money. Get out of my sight, you see? So this is a polite way of doing it. So, oh, thank you very much, Sir. Thank you very much, Mommy, Daddy, blah, blah, blah. It's been nice. The wedding will go well. This, this, this, not that, that. But before we get down to business, I just want to let you know, Mommy, we are not the cheapest in the market. There are other wedding planners, the other caterers that are cheaper than me because what we do is we offer medium and premium blah, blah, blah in the range of something,

something, something. So typically what our clients are spending for these kind of options cost anything between 123 and four, 5-6. Is this something you're willing to invest in and then you keep quiet and hear what it is that they have to say. So these are very direct approaches that we can bring up early so that if we are not in line when it comes to money expectations, we can dissolve this relationship here. We can get divorced here rather than both of us trying to make something work that was never going to work in the 1st place.

Because, and this is something I heard in my wedding photography days, if you're a wedding photographer and your package is 500 K, there's nothing you can do. There's no magic you can do to take a 150K customer up into 500 K. It is not going to happen if the person only has 150K or the person is convinced that 150 K is a realistic amount to spend. There is no magic. There's no talk track. Now we get a 150K person to pay 500K.

If you're talking to somebody who is a 450K person, there's hope. You can talk them up into 475 or you might, you might be able to come down from 500 to maybe 463 or something. You catch my drift? We just want to make sure that we have realistic money expectations to begin with. So back to the car. OK, Let me just leave it like that since I've already done enough examples, but you get the idea. And remember that spiritually,

what we're trying to do here now is we're trying to either prevent the price objections. We're trying to stop people from saying you're too expensive, or we're trying to get them to show their hand that they think our prices are too expensive so that they'll go away. The whole point of them going away, it's not so that we feel good, the whole point of them going away so that we now have time to spend chasing other people.

Because always you have people, you know, your WhatsApp messages, your phone book, Instagram DMS, you know, people you're supposed to have gotten back to yesterday, you didn't get back to them. You know, all those sorts of things. The more time you spend with these people thinking there might be a deal, meanwhile there was never going to be a deal once you X them off, like, OK, their price expectations are unrealistic.

Now you have time to go back into your Instagram DMS, your WhatsApp messages and everything and start hunting down people that could have been much more promising prospects. So that's the whole point. That's what it is that we're trying to do. Now another way of trying to prevent price objections or getting price shoppers away is when we pre qualify people in with our advertising messaging, our marketing messaging and things like that by just simply putting the price there by putting the expectation upfront.

So if OK, since I didn't say anything about selling cars, let me use that now. So let's say you're a car salesperson and you have Toyota 2024 models in your car park your your car lot and they look really nice as incorrect. You have them in different colours, red 1 is there, silver is there, black is there, everyone is there, but you only have 2024 models. You're tired of selling the cheaper models, you're tired of selling, you know, maybe like 2017 models and things like that.

Only want people to have money to come your way. So you put it there in your Instagram messages, in your Facebook advertise advertisements or Google advertisements or whatever. You put it there. Toyota 2024 models available from 10 million and upwards. The whole point of putting that kind of thing in your marketing messages and your advertising is so that people who only have 7 M will not call you. People who only have 5 M will not call you because you have already put in the messaging that 2024 models are available from 10 M and upwards.

Of course, there might be somebody who saw the advert and who only has nine M who will call you to try his luck. That one is normal. But The thing is, by putting that 10 M there in your advertising, in your marketing messaging, on your pamphlets, on your whatever, you cut down on the number of people who only have three M who will come to you and then start shouting like 10 M for common Toyota. You know, you get rid of all those people and all those frustrating conversations.

And remember what I said, If truly, truly, those are your cheapest offerings, 10 M, and the person who is coming to you thinks that three M is a realistic price. There's no amount of talk that you would do or magic or jazz now get a three M person to pay 10 M So that's the whole point. Well, that's the yeah. So that's the all I put it, and you get what it is that I'm trying to say. So handling price objections, that is one way to go about it.

Trying to prevent the objections is another way. And trying to get people who have unrealistic expectations to leave you alone is also another way. So which one is best? I don't know my opinion, you should be doing a combination. So when that you're listening to podcasts like mine, do so with a pen and a paper so you can write down the best way to handle the money objection. Also be writing down strategies for using your advertising, your marketing messaging to be qualified people so that people who don't have the kind of money you're looking for when approach you in the 1st place.

And then also come up with strategies so that when you're having conversations with people, you also bring up, excuse me, you also bring up the money and budget expectations early so that you only invest time in building relationships with people who could end up becoming potential customers for the product or the service that you offer. So connect with me on WhatsApp for questions, tips and insights. The phone number is 08064662140.

The country code is +234. Also, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. It's the premier social network for business, business development, personal development, career development, all that jazz. So really you should be there. But like I say, it's contextual because I've noticed that people who sell scrap metal spend a lot of time on Facebook. You have lots of Facebook communities around selling scrap metal, recycling plastics.

OK real estate communities. You have plenty of real estate communities on Facebook. So if your business is one of those things, then yes, you should be on Facebook. But I think everybody else you guys should be on LinkedIn. So connect with me there. The name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling from the name. Sorry from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. So if you're listening to this on YouTube, just look bottom left above the title of the this particular episode you're listening to.

You see my name there. So just highlight copy paste it in LinkedIn. My hands on face pops up and then connect with me. You'll you'll be connected to the right person one then sorry about the interruption earlier. That was just my son poking his head in to see if I was done. So let me go and see what it is that they require of me this time. 1 then happy public holidays for those of you who are Nigerian. That's why the kids are home because of the public holidays.

So nobody's working and the kids are at home. So everybody enjoy the public holiday. And my prayer for Nigeria is that we make lots of progress financially and we have peace in the land so that we can conduct our businesses, raise our families and continue living the best life that we want. So enjoy the rest of your day and I will catch you guys at the next episode.