How to Help Your Clients Pay for Your Programs

May 24th, 2009

You want to hear something interesting?

I’ve gotten a number of emails from people who tell me how really excited they are about the “What to Say If You Hate to Sell” program, and how great it would be for their business results to learn what I’m offering, and then they sadly say, “But I can’t afford it.”

Now, for a very small percentage of these people, it’s true - they can’t afford it right now.  And I look forward to working with them when their budget allows. But the thing that’s so interesting to me is that, for the vast majority of them, it’s not true at all.  They’re operating from a mistaken perception.

“Love to but I can’t afford it” is undoubtedly something you’re going to hear from your prospective clients as well.  So let me tell you what’s going on and how to deal with it.

Everybody’s a little wiggy about money (especially nowadays), and so the brain automatically translates that concern into a “good reason” why they can’t invest. (It’s that Default No I’ve talked about before.)

Internally, they’re seeing the money flow out – but not seeing it come back in.  That equals Expense.

The way to deal with that is to give them a different perception.  You always want to be sure your response is linking back to two things:
- the cost of not investing in a solution
- how that investment will actually pay for itself

Let me offer you a specific example of how to do that.

Have you considered what the cost is of not investing $297 in my
What to Say If You Hate to Sell program?

Well, let’s say you’re a coach, and a new client is worth $500 per month, and you typically work with each client for about six months.  So even at that low figure, increasing the number of yeses by just 4 new clients a month would mean $2000 that first month, and a total of $12,000 over the six months.  That’s $12,000 you would have lost otherwise.

The very first new client will earn back your investment money instantly – and of course, you’ll have the ability to use your new skills over and over again, so the return on investment keeps growing over the lifetime of your business.

You can see from this example that when you put the up-front investment into perspective like that, your client will be able to spot the error in their own short-range thinking.  In my example, those business owners who are committed to their success realize right away it’s more expensive not to have a simple, step by step strategy for increasing the number of people who say yes to your offers.

So, bottom line, “I can’t afford it” is code for “I don’t see how this will create immediate value for me.” All you need to do is show them!

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Entry Filed under: Heart-based Selling Tips, Product/Program Campaigns