Listen if you receive price objections from clients

So was it really the price?

Or was it your positioning… your subconscious… or the identity you’re still operating from?

In this episode, I respond to a listener question about a client who raved about her work then objected to the price. And what we unpack is deeper than sales strategy.

Because when someone says, “It’s too expensive,” it’s rarely about money.

It’s about perception. It’s about identity. It’s about the energetic standards you’re unconsciously available for.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• The two layers behind every price objection and why most entrepreneurs only ever address one
• How your subconscious fear of the outcome (yes, even success or visibility like public speaking) can quietly sabotage your pricing
• The concept of ecology and how achieving your next level might be conflicting with your hidden value hierarchy
• Why pricing “lower to be safe” actually reinforces the very rejection you’re trying to avoid
• The psychology of perceived value and why underpricing can reduce demand instead of increase it
• The uncomfortable question: if it was “too expensive”… was it actually positioned as premium?

If you’ve ever been frustrated because a client loved your work but didn’t move forward, this episode is for you.

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Further Resources: 

• Follow me on Instagram for daily mindset tips and lots of BTS content of my life (building a 7 figure business, living by the beach, my daily routines and travels) 
• Browse the free resources - meditations, manifestation tracks and more 
• See what's currently open for enrolment ...

Transcript

Launching The Premium Mentorship Collective

Introducing The New Listener Scenario Segment

Lily’s Pitch To A Government Client

The Price Objection And Confusion

Layer One: You Create The Outcome

Safety, Fear, And The Amygdala

Hidden Fears: Public Speaking And Status

Ecology Of Goals And Value Conflicts

Freedom, Time, And Self-Sabotage

Pricing Alignment And Return On Time

Confirmation Bias Around Money

Layer Two: Brand Positioning

Perceived Value Effect And Pricing

Finding The Pricing Sweet Spot

It’s Not The Economy, It’s Programming

Closing, Next Steps, And CTA

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Abundant and Aligned Podcast, a place where you will come to realize anything you desire is possible. I'm Jess, Mindset and Business Coach, and I'm on a mission to lead women to a life far from average. In this show, you can expect conversations around manifestation, subconscious reprogramming, entrepreneurship, and the daily habits of a woman living a life that is both successful and fun. Imagine a TED talk but over wine. My wish for you is that you experience an unlimited flow of money, a business that attracts your dream clients, and the freedom to spend your time how you choose. And if you stick with me, that will soon be your reality. I'm honored to be on the journey with you, so let's get into it. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Abundant and Align podcast. It is an exciting week in my world. If you have not seen, I'm sure you have, but this week I opened the doors to a brand new mentorship space for women in business. It is exclusive, it is bougie, it is premium, it is luxurious, and most of all, it's full of the support and the resources and the guidance that you need to move into multi-five-figure, six-figure months, be the go-to brand, high-paying premium clients choose and create and sustain a business that supports the lifestyle that you are here to live. So for those who are already in the collective, I'm celebrating you. For those who will be joining me in there, I cannot wait, cannot wait to see you inside. This is the space that I know so many women in my world have been waiting for because you are here to move differently. And this is the space that's going to support you and hold you up as you do some big things in your business. So, yay to the collective being open. Very, very exciting. But today's episode is actually the first episode as part of a segment that I randomly introduced on my Instagram story last week. I got on and asked you guys for some topics that you wanted me to talk about on the podcast, some questions you may have, and a really good response came through that sparked the idea to create some kind of segment where you submit a scenario or something that's happening in your business that you want my advice on. And I thought this could be such a good conversation to have on the show because not only is it going to help you in the moment in your business, but the conversations and the scenarios are going to help so many of you in my audience. So we are going to make this a thing on the show. So if you do have a scenario that you would love me to unpack on the podcast, something that you are experiencing some struggle around in the business that you feel I could help with, then submit your scenario. There is a little link in the show notes below, or you can send me a DM on Instagram and we can add it to the list and unpack it together on the show. But this scenario is such a good one to start with because it is going to help so many of you. And I'm sure as I read out this scenario, it will resonate with a lot of women in business. So this scenario came through from Lily. Lily, thank you so much for submitting such a great question and for sparking this idea. Now, Lily is a career and workplace culture strategist, and she specializes in human design. And she pitched to a premium client, which is a government department, who was looking for her services. She pitched to them and they came back and said that she sounds great and sounds like the perfect fit. So they arranged a meeting, and as you do when you're pitching your work and letting someone know about your services, she explained her work and what she does. And the whole time the director or the owner of this company was sitting and nodding and just agreeing that she was perfect for what they were looking for. She had gone into this pitch either with the information or knowing that this particular company had a big budget and therefore a lot of money to spend on the services that she was providing. And so she went into the pitch, everything went great. She came, she came out of the meeting and really felt that she had this client in the bag. She provided them with a price during that meeting, and the price she said to me was not high for what she delivers on. It was, it actually could have been higher, but she felt that was the right price to pitch to them, to propose to them. So yeah, they had all the information, they were saying everything was great, and she gave them the price. And then they come back. Let's remember, this is a company with a big budget to spend on services like this. They came back and said that her price was actually way out of budget for them. It was not an amount they had planned for, and therefore they did not want to proceed with her. So essentially, what we have here is such a common scenario for women in business. You pitch to the dream client, they love you, they agree they need your services, they love how you deliver on your services, and then you mention your price, and then they pull back and don't want to proceed. Now, she, as you would be, has been left quite confused because the meeting went well, the price wasn't too high, they have a big budget. So today's episode is unpacking why that client didn't actually proceed with her. And there are so many different layers to this scenario that I want to address. If you experience a pattern in your business where you get so close to proceeding with that premium client and then they come back and use price as an objection, you are going to be able to move through all of these questions and exercises yourself so that you can get away from this being a pattern in your business and start landing these premium clients on the prices that you share with them. Now, the first thing I want to say is it's really great that you did attract or even get a meeting with this premium client. What that is telling us is you are on the frequency of these premium clients. Of course, you will only ever create what you are a match for in your business and in your reality. And so the fact that you have been able to land this client or experience this client in your reality tells us that you are on the frequency of these premium clients, which is a really great start because there are people in business who cannot see, for as far as they can see, premium clients. They feel like everybody in their world right now has no money or doesn't want to spend their money or has some kind of objection. So the fact that you're seeing beyond that and you can see that there are clients and companies out there who have big budgets looking for your services tells us that you've tuned into that radio station, which is really, really great. So yay to that. Now, in terms of why this client pushed back on your price, even though the price wasn't even that high and ultimately did not proceed, there's two layers we need to consider. Number one, you, and that is always the first layer we have to look at when you aren't creating an outcome you would like to create in your business. You are creating everything. I was on a client call the other day and we were unpacking um something in her business. Long story short, she's in she has an e-com brand, and quite similar to Lily, she is wanting to push forward with a project, but is experiencing a little bit of friction, and the manufacturer that she wants to go with isn't getting back to her and it's causing delays. And so we were in a conversation, and I said, It is always your fault. It is always your fault. There are so many different layers to that, but if things aren't working out for you in your business, or you're not creating the outcomes you would like to create in your business, but also your life, it comes back to you because energetically we are creating everything, and so there's something internally that we need to shift, and then we can take a look at your brand positioning. So, naturally, that is our first layer that we need to look at. What in you may have caused this friction or this undesired outcome whereby the client didn't proceed with you, and then the second layer is the positioning. You did mention that your price was kind of low, like it could have been more. So that could be a positioning issue, which we'll go into in a second. It may have also been the way that you held yourself in this meeting, which we'll go into in a second, and ultimately the perceived value presented to this client. Again, we'll go into that into a second, in a second. But layer number one is you, and I have five factors that make up you that I really want to go deep to tell us why there is ultimately a block when it comes to working with this premium client on that price point. Now, remember, whenever we do something, our subconscious makes an assessment. Will we be safe? Now, safety isn't always logical safety. The subconscious could register that you are about to do something you have never done before, and therefore a part in your brain called the amygdala goes off, and essentially that's your smoke alarm. Now, some people's smoke alarms are very sensitive. It's like when you're cooking toast and the moment you cook toast, your smoke alarms start going off. Obviously, that's not a fire, and we don't need the smoke alarms to be going off, but they're just really sensitive. Some people's part of their brain is really sensitive. So anytime you create any kind of change in your life, that smoke alarm goes off and triggers this mechanism in your brain to say, we are about to step out into a threat, let's pull her back. So change can create the smoke alarm going off, change can create this fear, this feeling into the subconscious that we are about to be unsafe. But there also might be a legitimate fear attached to what you are about to do that maybe you haven't turned your attention to. Now, I was trying to think of some fears that could make sense for this particular scenario, and one of them that came to mind, and this may not land with you, but me talking about this may spark other fears that do relate. But I'm assuming by working with such a high-caliber client who is a government department, a government company, there would be some kind of point in this outcome whereby you would have to do some public speaking, get into a room of potentially high-calibre individuals, and potentially you have some kind of fear of walking into such a high standard fear, uh, a high standard room, or some kind of fear around public speaking. And just for the sake of labeling this fear, let's call it a fear of public speaking. So consciously, you really wanted to land this client. Consciously, things looked great. It was the kind of client you had been working to work with. Again, the pitch went really well. You could see the financial reward, you could see the impact reward. Consciously, you wanted this. But if there was some kind of fear that was attached to you getting that outcome that your subconscious was aware of, it's going to sabotage the process. And again, perhaps there is a fear of public speaking, a fear of walking into such a high-caliber space that your subconscious has realized would eventuate if the outcome manifests, and therefore those that fire alarm has gone off to sabotage the process. So you aren't in that position where you are in a threat scenario. So it may not be public speaking for you, but have a think about if you got the outcome you desired, what's the fear? What's the worst case scenario that could eventuate by you getting the thing? Sit with that. And if you're listening to this, also do that scenario. If I got the thing that I want, what's something bad that could happen? And if that something bad that could happen is attached to memories from your past that creates this emotional state where you freeze and you go into survival mode, you are going to avoid the outcome from manifesting to avoid being in that situation because the last time you were in that situation, it was very traumatic, and your body remembers that. So that's step number one: identifying a fear attached to the thing that you want. Step number two, or something else to consider within our first layer being you is what we call the ecology of the outcome you are trying to create. Again, often in business, we get so narrow focused. We just focus on the financial reward, we just focus on the fact that we're going to work with a better client. We just focus on something so narrow in terms of the outcome, but we're not considering the full picture of the outcome. Now, one very easy analogy to help you understand what I mean by the ecology of the goal. Let's say you have a client in Europe. You are in Australia, you have a client over in Europe, and that at face value face value sounds like the dream. Working with a client over in Paris, paying you a lot of money, getting to live in Paris, like, oh my god, it's the dream. It's the conscious dream. However, not considering the ecology of the goal would look at, let's say you have kids. Can your kids go to school over in Paris? If not, the subconscious is going to realize that that's going to sabotage another part of your life that carries a lot of value and therefore the outcome may not manifest, even though consciously you really want it. Or maybe you haven't actually spoken to your partner yet about whether he wants to move to Paris and he actually does not want to go to Paris. So now the whole idea of you going to Paris isn't actually going to work out. So it's the ecology of the goal, it's everything that's going to go into you having that outcome. We need to go through and assess it all. We either need to tick it off and go, yep, it's all fine, or if it's not fine, we need to then turn the cogs behind the scenes in relation to that. For example, if the client in Paris required you to move to Paris the six months of the year and you do have kids, and you have established there are schools over in Paris, well, one thing you could do to tick off that part of the goal is start to research schools over in Paris and what's required to get your kids into that school. So realizing that analogies does not apply to you, but that's what I mean by the ecology of the goal. What's required of you if you did get this client? The full picture of it, your time, your commitment, the hours you had to work. Let's take a look at the whole big picture, the good and the bad of this goal, and take a look. Is it going to contradict something else that has value in your life? Maybe in order to work with this client, you would have to be in their offices at 9 a.m. on a particular day, and at face value, you hadn't remembered or realized that your daughter actually has a dance rehearsal at 9 a.m. on that day, which means if you did land that client, you would miss out on the dance rehearsal with your daughter. And because you um, because family is so high up on your values priority list, now we have butting heads, the client and another part of your life that carries a lot of value, if not more. And this is a real reality for a lot of women, not necessarily women with business, but sometimes our business and making money isn't at the top of our values list. Other parts of our life are at the top of our values list, and so that therefore that is always going to take priority. And so, if getting an outcome is going to jeopardize other areas of your life that sits higher on that values list, subconsciously you're going to sabotage getting the outcome because again, it was going to pose a risk or a threat to you being able to enjoy that other part of your life. Freedom is a big value that is often jeopardized, if not looked at properly, when it comes to achieving outcomes. So a lot of women in business are actually subconsciously holding themselves back because they have a fear that if their business grew to where they consciously want it to go, it's going to strip them of their time and their freedom. And time and freedom for them sit high up on that priority list. So that's always going to take reign over the business growth, even though you think you want the business growth. So considering the ecology of your goal and whether getting that client was going to contradict or go against other areas of your life that hold a lot of value in your life. And it's really taking a look at that priority list. The third factor to consider in our first uh in our first um layer is the price. So you mentioned in your scenario that the price was kind of low, like you could have priced it more, but you went in with that price because it felt like it made sense for you. But my first question when I was listening to your voice message was if you could have priced more, why didn't you? And I'm assuming whether you are aware or not, potentially there was a fear that if you priced higher, the client would have said no. So you've kind of kept it safe and you've you've kept it lower, even though you could price higher. The reason this comes back to you and the you layer as opposed to the brand positioning layer is because if you price something and it's not going to actually be worth your time, even though it's going to be money in your pocket, the return on your time doesn't make sense or doesn't fulfill you. And so if, and this happens a lot, a lot of women are working for such a low amount and then wonder why there is resistance, it's like, well, you would have to work so much for not much in return. And so that may have been the case with you. The amount of value and time that you were going to pour into this project was going to outweigh this$4,000 price point. And so, therefore, there's this part of you that's like, actually, you know what, I'd rather not go ahead with that client because again, the financial return and my return on there, oh sorry, my the financial return and my commitment to this is so out of balance. And that's why I always talk about price is so important. You've really got to nail your pricing, whether you have high prices or not, but it's going to it's got to stack up against your value, like how much value you're pouring in, how much time, how much you are committing to this project, so that it makes sense for you to push forward with it. So, yeah, that was my very first question. Why did you price it low if you felt you could have gone higher? And I would definitely encourage you to price it at that higher point if you feel that makes sense and if that more accurately represents the value they are getting from you, the experience they are getting from you, and the deliverables they are getting from you. And then just going back to the price, you mentioned you did price it lower than what you could have. Again, I'm really curious to know why. I'm assuming there was a belief that they wouldn't have paid a higher price. So now this comes back to something we call confirmation bias. And so if you have a belief subconsciously that something will happen, you'll create something in your reality to confirm that belief. So even though consciously you thought that price was a no-brainer because it was lower than what you could have charged, you still kept it low, which tells me there are some fears attached to pricing. And so perhaps you've mostly worked through this, but there could still be this fear around pricing that is going to keep playing out to justify the pull the belief around pricing. Again, it's confirmation bias. And so again, we really need to dig up were you fully, fully, fully on board with the price point in this arrangement, or are price objections something you regularly experience? Or when you go into a proposal, is the price the main sticky part for you? And again, if the price is a sticky part for you, if there is any doubt attached to your price whatsoever, it's likely you will manifest a price objection, or you will manifest a outcome that confirms and justifies the price insecurity that you had. So again, given the price was objection, it tells us there is some kind of inner connection to a fear or a doubt or an expectation you had around pricing that we really need to dig into so that you can start to get paid without hesitation from these premium clients. Okay, that is your first layer. And I always say to my clients, these questions will not come to you straight away. You have to sit with these questions and keep looking at them and keep reviewing them. We are wanting to dig up subconscious stories, subconscious beliefs. And given you are such a driven, ambitious woman who wants to grow her business, often that's all we look at. No, I believe in myself, I believe in my prices, I don't know what's going on. We need to open up that trapdoor and get a little bit deeper on what's really going on within the subconscious mind. What fears are there? What doubt was there? There, what beliefs were there that would create or did create the undesired outcome? So a few questions in there, and a few journal problems that I would definitely start with. And I'm very confident you'll find some correlation between something internally within yourself: a belief, a fear, a doubt, an expectation, like I've mentioned, and the outcome of not proceeding with the client. The second layer to this scenario is, of course, your brand positioning. So price is the easiest objection for a client to have. It's the easiest thing to say. Like we it's out of budget, we can't afford it. Yeah, that's not the amounts we were looking for. Even if, which you explained at the start of the scenario, this particular client has money. Money isn't actually an issue for them, but they used it as an objection. And that tells us that price is the easiest objection. And one thing I will say is a premium client who does have a big budget rarely walks away because of price. They may tell you they're walking away because of price, but that's rarely truly the reason. And so this is where we bring in what we call the perceived value effect. Now I want to take you back to your pricing for this project. And again, you mentioned it was lower than what you could have priced. Now I know they told you that the price was too high, but we don't believe them. That was just a cop-out, that was just an easy objection. You mentioned you could have priced it more. And therefore, they may have also assumed you would have priced it more. And therefore, when you pitched and you included this lower price, they might have then assumed that you weren't as good as what they thought. You think about if you were to walk into a car a car dealership and you saw this beautiful, luxurious Mercedes-Benz, and the way it was presented to you was so premium and exactly what you were looking for, and it had all the bits and bobs, and then they told you this particular car was$20,000. You would immediately question the quality of the car. You would immediately assume there's something wrong with the car. Even though they're telling you it's exactly what you're looking for, it's such a great car, it has all the bells and whistles. The moment they mention that lower price, you pull back and make the assumption it's actually not what I'm looking for, or it's not as good as what you have made it out to be. And this is what we call the perceived value effect. And this is why pricing is such a massive part in my world, and we're going to we're going into it in so much detail in the collective because there really is this sweet spot. Of course, you cannot just rise your raise your prices for the sake of it, because if you don't feel subconsciously safe to receive that sum of money, you simply won't receive it, no matter how good you are at marketing. On the other end of that, you don't want to be pricing too low because then you run the risk of these premium clients stepping straight over your work, which may have happened in this scenario. So if you feel you could charge more, absolutely charge more. And you know what would be a fun experiment to do? Raise your prices, repitch to this client in the future, and I bet you they will come back and say, let's push forward. Even though last time they said they didn't have the money, you've increased your price, and now suddenly they have the money. It's because of the way you've positioned the value of your services. Now it makes sense to them when they're looking at how good you are and that price tag attached to you. And pricing really is such a powerful way to position yourself in front of a premium buyer. And again, you think about yourself when you are browsing, you always assume the higher product is the better product. And so this is something we must not forget when it comes to pricing our services. Low is not always better. And again, it's a it's about finding that sweet spot whereby you can receive the sum of money and position it in a way where the perceived value makes sense to the client and to the buyer. There is other layers to positioning, it could have been the way you presented your proposal or what you focused on when you were in that pitch, but I'm not going to go into that in too much detail because you did mention in the scenario that they loved you and they walked away from that meeting thinking you were it, and everything you spoke about when it came to your services was exactly what they were looking for. It was just the price point that was the issue. And so that's telling me there's some work to do when it comes to receiving money, holding money, andor just pricing your services in a way where you feel your return on time makes sense, and when they look at that price tag, the perceived value has been achieved. So they are some things that I would consider. There are so many things we can unpack in scenarios like this in terms of going deeper in each of those things, but without being able to have a two-way conversation with you, that's what I can give you for now. But hopefully, even if some of the fears or some of the examples I was providing didn't necessarily make sense for you, hopefully, it's posed some questions for you to think about. Because again, so many women would walk out of that situation, and this is why I've I love that you submitted this scenario. So many women would walk out of that situation and just assume, like actually believe that they didn't have the money to spend on this service, or walk away and assume that their proposal was wrong, or walk away and assume that maybe they didn't present their proposal properly. But that's probably not the case. You're probably doing everything right, and you probably nailed that proposal, and you know, we can assume they actually did love everything you did. It was just this subconscious programming that got in the way of this outcome actually playing out because it always is. It's never really timing, it's never really the buyer economy, it's never really the algorithm. It's a subconscious program. Your reality is simply just a printout to your subconscious program. Your fears, your doubts, your beliefs, your expectations will always be printed out. And so that's why we need to get in and we need to shift that program so that when you go in and you present your work and you go to these meetings, the printout is actually the outcome that you want to create. So there you go. Thank you very much for submitting the first scenario and kicking off this segment. Hopefully that has helped. My DM, my DMs, my inbox is open to you if you want to go back and forth briefly about this. Otherwise, the collective would probably be a really, really great space for you to be on, be in, um, so that we can really get these premium clients through the door, get you paid well on those higher prices, and you're not left feeling frustrated, but instead you're in so much momentum with this demand and actually completing the projects and getting paid accordingly. If you have a scenario, like I said, scroll down to the show notes and submit something. I loved this conversation. It was really cool to take a real life scenario that you guys are playing, like you know, living out and and talk about on the podcast, as opposed to me just making up topics and scenarios that may be unfolding, even though I know the ones we talk about are always very relevant for you guys. Um, but that's where we're gonna leave it for this week. I am here if anybody has questions about the collective. If you want to chat with me privately, again, my DMs are always open. Otherwise, I really look forward to welcoming you through the doors of this exclusive mentorship space. And yeah, getting started in just a couple of weeks. We'll leave the podcast here for now. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will talk to you in the next episode.