There are certain people who will not do business with you unless you lower your price. They’ll feel as if they’re winning or scored a real deal.
When someone asks me to lower my price I say, "Pardon me for asking an obvious question, but why do you ask?" They may say, "We can't afford it," or, "We think it's high." Until they tell you what’s going on you’re going to be left in the dark. Do they really think your price too high? Did they get a bid from somebody else and they thought yours was a lot higher?
They might say, "Well, we did this in another facility and it was a lot cheaper per square foot," or, "Do you negotiate? Because we'd like to do business with you, but our guys are going for a cheaper price. We've got to see how far you can come down in return for giving you our business.”
You don't want to be flip or arrogant when you respond. For example, you could say, "Well, let me be frank. We sharpen our pencil whenever we give a bid. We don't go in thinking we’ll give you a price and then we're going to haggle down to the real price we wanted, because that would be disrespectful to you.” I think that’s an honest, open way to respond rather than saying, "No, we don't negotiate."
There are other ways you can address their objections as well. You could say, “This is the best price we can do for the scope of services we’re offering. Now if you want less scope, we could certainly reduce the price. If you want to add scope, we could reduce the price as well to the extent that it afforded us an additional economy of scale. We can accept a lower margin if we do a larger job. Are you suggesting that you have other projects that you'd like to expand the scope to include?”
In many cases, you’re finding a gentle way to answer the question “Could you lower your price?” with “Do you want less service?” If you couple this with the specific value you’re bringing to their situation, this would definitely give them pause.
