The Pricing Conversation You Keep Avoiding w/ Chris Do | Ep 441

**Chris Do** (0:00)
There's this idea, how you do one thing is how you do everything. So, in your world, if everywhere you go, the pricing is transparent, it's upfront, and it brings you ease and peace of mind. Why are you then trying to upset the natural order of things by hiding and delaying the pricing conversation? You're only creating anxiety for the buyer and for yourself.
There's a theory, and it's maybe a spiritual concept. It's not rooted necessary in the sciences that we understand.
But we all, say, have a finite amount of energy. And so, when you hold things in, they tend to build up in your body. So, when you hold negative ideas, it amplifies in the echo chamber of your mind and your heart. And when you speak them out loud, you release that pressure. So, this happens for both good and bad things. So, the idea here is if it's bad, you need to speak it. If it's good, you need to hold it, because you want good things to multiply and bad things to dissipate. So, a lot of us have an unhealthy relationship with money. We're afraid of our value and our worth, so we don't want to say it out loud because of that emotional context, that frame. So, when we hold it inside, it's going to eat us up. It's going to make us doubt ourselves. It's going to affect how we behave in front of other people. It's just going to eat you up inside. So, the best way I know how to purge yourself of this negative feeling is to speak it out loud. To speak it out loud, release it into the world, and that's why it's so difficult for people. We hold on to these things. The classic example is when something bothers you, somebody is crossing the line with you, and they're not respecting your boundaries. We want to say something, but we don't, and we hold on to it. And that anger turns into bitterness and then ultimately resentment. You wind up presenting the other person. This could be a child, it could be a parent, it could be a partner, it could be a co-worker or even a client. So, my best advice for you is, if it's negative, get it out there. If it's positive, like you're building your future, don't be so quick to go on social media, building my future isn't life great, because that energy is needed for you to actually do that hard work.
The question is, when should you talk about money and price? And most of us are so uncomfortable that we wait to the very end, and then it's been building up inside of us. Just recall the last time you wanted to talk about money in front of a client, and you kept bearing it, thinking, eventually I'll bring this thing up. While you're having a conversation with a client, you can be talking about some really important, deep things that you should be paying attention to. And that's you're probably only paying half attention to it, because you're wondering to yourself, once I bring up the topic of money, can this client afford me? Will they scream or yell because the price is too high or too low? And so this is a distraction for you, and you need to be sharp, you need to be fully present. And you can think of this in many different ways. When you're on vacation with your friend, your partner, and they're like, hey, are you here right now? And they snap their fingers. Are you here? It's because your mind is literally somewhere else. And so you're physically here, but you're not really present, and you need to be grounded in that moment. So the way we handle this is if we tell people upfront the things that we're concerned about, then now we can fully focus in on the conversation. I'll tell you the most awkward way to do this, and then we'll ramp it up to a more sophisticated way. You can say something like, I know often times I'm distracted because I'm worried about budget, deadlines, and scope. And it benefits me greatly if we can just speak about this upfront, as uncomfortable as it might be for both of us. I find that once we had this discussion, I can really focus in on what you need. Do you mind if we proceed this way? I'm not going to say what? No. I'm going to say yes. Because what you don't realize is in the prospect's mind is they need to know the price, they need to know the deadline, and they need to know if you can handle the scope or not. So both of you are dancing around an issue, and they're sitting there thinking to themselves, I wonder if this person is going to be professional enough to bring this up, or they're going to make me say it myself, which I'm not going to do.