How To Discover Your Prospect’s Budget
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3 Steps To Uncovering Your Prospect’s Budget
Prospects are often secretive about how much they can spend, and rightly so. Just because they can afford to spend a certain amount does not mean they should reveal that figure. Doing so will make it far harder for them to negotiate a lower price.
On this page and in the free-to-download guide, the sales experts at Sandler UK explain their foolproof three-step approach to getting prospects to reveal their budgets.
Step one: Summarise and review
The first thing to do before discussing the price is to review everything you have learned so far about the prospect’s specific needs, situation, and business. This should be done during a meeting or call with them, so they can share anything else you might have missed in an earlier conversation that could impact their budget.
Step two: Is money available?
Avoid asking directly about a prospect’s budget. This approach can make them feel attacked and will often make them uncomfortable and defensive – the last thing you want as a salesperson. A better technique is to try and learn if money is available. This can be achieved by responding to them with plenty of questions to gather more information. A technique that we call ‘reversing’.
Using third-party stories as examples is another great way to gauge budgets. You can talk about how much other clients spent and what they gained, and then ask if either of those scenarios sounds relevant to them.
Step three: How much money?
Once you have learned if there’s money available, it is time to work out how much. However, asking directly can still be offputting so it is best to be more subtle. One good approach is to use bracketing, this is where you give a range of prices and ask them where they see themselves within it. Before asking for the range you can make the prospect feel more comfortable by using a softening statement. Something like ‘I am not sure if you have nailed something down yet so wanted to ask if you see yourself paying somewhere roughly between…’. You can then use the third-party example again with a question like ‘Last time we did a project this size for X client, it was around £X. Would that number be out of budget for you?’.
Sales and negotiation training sessions
At Sandler UK we have over four decades of experience in sales and negotiation training. If you are after full-service sales training courses on questioning strategies, approaches, techniques, and more, look no further than our team of experts. You can join us for engaging face-to-face training sessions at one of our local training centres or get in touch for more info on all the ways we can help your business close deals and grow sales.
