Don't lead with price

A founder gets asked what it costs and answers immediately, because being straight about price feels like integrity. Four hundred a month. Then a pause, and the conversation becomes a negotiation about four hundred.

Nothing was wrong with the number. It arrived before there was anything to weigh it against.

What a price is for

A price is a comparison. The moment it is said, the other person compares it to something, and if you have not established what, they will pick for themselves, usually the cheapest adjacent thing they can think of. Another tool at nineteen a month. The free one. Doing nothing, which costs zero and requires no meeting.

Against those, four hundred is a lot.

Against forty thousand a year of somebody's time, or one lost customer a quarter, four hundred is not a lot. Same number, different sentence before it.

Getting the other number first

This is not a trick and it does not require a script. It requires asking what it costs them now, and then being quiet.

What are you doing about this today? Who does it? How long does that take them in a week? What happens when it goes wrong? Has it gone wrong? What did that one cost?

Most buyers have never added it up. Doing the arithmetic out loud, in their words, with their numbers, is the single most useful thing that happens on an early sales call, and it is useful to them whether or not they buy. By the end there is a figure on the table that they produced, which means they believe it.

Then the price is not a comparison. It is an answer to a question they have just asked themselves.

Where founders get this wrong in the other direction

There is a bad version of this, which is refusing to say the price. Dodging the question, "it depends", "let's talk about your needs first" three times. People know that move and it costs you trust immediately.

The fix is not evasion. It is order, and it takes one sentence: "It depends a bit on how many people. Before I give you a number, can I ask what this costs you today?" Almost nobody objects. Then answer plainly, with an actual figure, the moment you have theirs.

The awkward case

Sometimes you do the arithmetic and the honest total is small. They spend two hours a month on it and nothing has ever gone badly wrong.

That is worth knowing on the first call rather than the fourth. It usually means one of two things: they are the wrong buyer, or you are aiming at the mild version of a problem that is severe somewhere else. Both are useful and neither is discoverable if you led with four hundred and spent the call defending it.

Lead with their number. Yours only means something afterwards.