March 2, 2010Poison Phrase: How cheap can you go?
Some people are fun to work with and it’s almost an honor to accommodate their tight budgets. Others seem to slime vendors just by asking. A client asked a friend,
- How cheap can you go on this?
He angrily replied,
- How cheap are you?
Of course that signals the message “I’m the kind of person who goes cheap.” Who likes that? But wording like,
- Can you work with me on the price?
signals a message, “I’m the kind of person who works with people.” That feels so much better!
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
A printer I knew had a sign: “Fast, cheap and good. You can have two of the three.”
The need to sell value is always important. Re-framing the discussion as you suggested is much more helpful.
Comment by Sharon — March 3, 2010 @ 9:29 pm