It’s really scary when a customer asks, “Okay, how much does it cost?” before you’re sure that the timing is right for that question. The topic hasn’t been fully explored, and discussing the price won’t be received positively. However, there are even more challenging situations.
Today, a really good person was trying to sell me his services. We agreed to meet and talked. I won’t mention that instead of understanding my values, he imposed his own on me. I won’t say that he didn’t listen to what I needed, but rather told me what my problems were and what absolutely had to be done. I won’t even go into how he criticized something that I, if I weren’t so self-critical, would consider a part of my soul. He was selling a very complex service that you can’t even touch, and the effect of which, he admitted himself, is impossible to evaluate. He was selling in a controlled environment—I clearly expressed my needs.
And so, when he finished telling me what he thought I needed in life…to reach a qualitatively new levelI asked, “Okay, what do we do next?” Strangely enough, I didn’t get a response. Instead, he paused and said, “…Well, as for the prices… it will cost 2000 dollars.” I didn’t even ask why it was in dollars; it seems ridiculous to set prices in a foreign currency when you’re not importing anything and are working with local resources.
But think about what my reaction will be if, after an hour and a half of storytelling, I still don’t have the impression that it’s worth it. No one asked me why I consider this important. Seriously, why exactly? In my mind, this is three days of work, and it’s not worth that much money. To be honest, it takes a week, but I wasn’t told that :-). I know that a “Mont Blanc” pen, which costs ten times less, would give me more than what was offered (and he agrees with that!). I can’t wrap my head around his subtle sense of beauty, which allows him to see that this is bad and cheap, while that is good and cool. And then they mention $2,000 after a brief pause? Before that, they were pushing a bunch of not-so-cheap additional services that, by his own admission, only provide 20% of the complete solution.
No, I didn’t resort to poaching or offer my services to the seller in return. I don’t do that. But, man, I really wanted to say something.