Pricing Is Positioning

When you're first starting out, or even if you're a seasoned professional, you can fall into the “stench of desperation” trap. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever had this happen? You send out a proposal. Then after five minutes, you begin to wonder why you haven’t received a response from the prospect. And then the obsessive thoughts start to kick in.   “Has the prospect received the proposal or did it get lost in cyberspace?” You then continuously hit refresh on your email inbox. And, you’ve even begun to draft a follow up email. Next comes, “Was my quote too high?” You begin to beat yourself up and start planning how to broach the subject of discounting your fees if you do get pushback on your original proposal quote. Finally, you get to the part where you throw up your hands in exasperation and decide, “That’s it. They just don’t like me.” It’s now been 10 minutes since you’ve sent the proposal and you’ve already thrown in the towel. That, my friends, is what I mean by the stench of desperation. I