Should I ask potential clients what their budget is?
Asking potential clients, “what’s your budget” in order to shortlist your service offerings is a no-no, yet, it’s common practice amongst many small businesses.
Here’s what I’ve observed…
When you have an established business and have been in operation for many years, if not decades, it’s fair to say you know what you’re doing when it comes to solving your ideal clients problems.
You’ve likely found the best ways to help your ideal clients and you’ve got packages and offerings that have been crafted based on what people actually need in order to achieve the results you help them with.
Service offerings designed correctly are not driven by budget but rather value and solution so here’s how I suggest you navigate this.
How do I pitch my service irrespective of someone’s budget?
Instead of asking; what’s your budget”?
Ask; “what result are you wanting”?
And based on the result they’re after, show them how the right service offering is going to help them to achieve that.
Letting people see that you have a solution to help them achieve the result they’re after is what you should be focusing on.
And usually when you have conversations with prospects around what they want and how you can help rather than what they can afford, they feel like you’re actually trying to understand them and what they need instead of pulling a product off a shelf and saying; “here you go!”.
It’s a different approach to doing business.
What if they really do have a set budget?
Firstly, let’s not sell to people who really can’t afford your services and would be under harsh stress by attempting to - integrous-business-owner-101.
Secondly, assuming they are the right fit for buying your services, consider offering a payment plan or an extended payment plan.
The right amount of flexibility helps both you and your new client to get started on solving their problem sooner (check out this podcast episode I did all about payment plans). https://goodmarketinggoodbusiness.buzzsprout.com/2223352/13476527-009-presenting-payment-plans-the-right-way
What if my services exceed their budget?
It happens, here are four ways to approach it:
Offer a payment plan option.
If someone still can’t go ahead to work with you because of restricted budgets, here’s what I want you to know. By asking “what result they’re wanting to create” and then demonstrating to them how your particular service offering is the perfect match for that (even if they can’t go ahead to work with you) - just know you’ve done them a HUGE favour by not just taking what money they have. You’re a business owner with integrity and your prospect will remember this.
You can of course down-sell into another service but do so in an honest way where they understand what results they’re likely to expect from buying a smaller service.
If the prospect has to walk away all together, that is also ok - they’re not the last lead you’ll ever speak to but again, just know you’ve led your sales process with integrity. If you’re repeatedly finding your services are coming up against financial objections, there’s multiple reasons this could be happening (including the segment you target and how you do/don’t qualify your leads).
Takeaways:
Instead of asking what’s your budget, ask what result are you wanting to create
Demonstrating how your service offering will help them achieve their result should be the focus
Don’t budge on what service offering they should buy from you and if required, consider offering a payment plan so they can still get what they need in a way that suits their financial requirements
Transformation over transaction - help people rather than just selling to people
So, coming back to the original question; should you ask potential clients what their budget it?
My contrarian answer is no, because the budget (almost) doesn’t matter. When you’re solving real problems for your prospect, your service offering should be designed to solve that problem the right way (do it once and do it right, type of approach).
Budget is a consideration however solving the problem right should be the deciding factor. When you can show your prospects how and why your solution is the answer and why any skewed or downplayed version of this solution isn’t going to work for them, they’re going to appreciate you much more than the person who’s willing to sell them anything based on how much they have available to spend.
I hope you found this really useful, as a business and marketing consultant I always see it’s such a transactional way to work to someone’s budget without giving both prospect and business an opportunity to understand what they really need and showcasing the service that would really help - and thus, making a well-informed decision.
If you’d like to expand on this topic further, I have a podcast episode on whether you should work off someone’s budget - you can listen to it here.
Shannon
