How to avoid committing to a price, without pissing off potential customers!
13 April 2026
There’s little that’s more anger-inducing than a salesperson who refuses to discuss price early in the sales discussion.
We all know why the salesperson is reluctant to name a price early, and there’s a solution to his dilemma. But the solution fails until you understand these additional requirements.
By the way, this doesn’t just apply to salespeople’s conversations. It also applies to quoting.
So, we have a Mexican standoff. The customer doesn’t want to have a conversation until they have an idea of price. And the salesperson doesn’t want to name a price until they have a clear understanding of requirements.
The obvious solution is for the salesperson to quote a range. But here’s the problem (and this particularly applies to written estimates). The salesperson wants to quote a wide range (from $3k to $15k, let’s say), but the customer is not happy with that. It doesn’t provide the certainty they’re looking for.
The salesperson could quote a fixed price and call it an estimate, but a fixed-point estimate creates a (legal) obligation for the final price to be within ±10% of the estimate.
The solution is to quote the range, to indicate the central tendency (for a job like this), and then detail the one or two parameters that have the greatest bearing on the final price.
If you are providing numbers early in the discussion (which you should), or if you are generating estimates, you should do ALL of the following:
- Quote a range
- Indicate the central tendency
- Detail the parameters that primarily drive where the final price will fall within the range
This makes it clear to the customer that they can choose their own adventure. It also gives them the information required to generate their own fixed-point estimate, if they really need one!