You’ve pitched. You saw real interest. It’s time to talk numbers.

This is a crucial step in a sale — and it’s one so many people get wrong. We get in our heads about whether the price we intend to quote is too high, so we start low. You’re negotiating against yourself. You’re making less money. It’s a problem.

Our fear is that if our prospect doesn’t like the price, they’ll ghost us and no longer engage.

That’s a misplaced fear. Real prospects don’t ghost.

If you email over a proposal and the price is too high, prospects who are genuinely interested will write back and say, “Boy, we’d love to do this, but the price is too high.” They won’t just go dead silent.

And by the way, if they do go dead silent, you can always nudge them again, too. But the ones who vanish because they don’t like the price are almost never serious customers. Real prospects respond.

Recently I joined a client on a sales call. We met prior to the call to talk about which discounts to include and how to frame pricing. I asked the same question you should remember to ask yourself: What do you actually want to get paid for this deal?

Obviously many, many of us have the instinct that we need to start higher than that number, since many, many of us also have the instinct that everything’s negotiable — so we often assume most prospects will ask for some sort of discount.

(My approach isn’t for everyone, but I hate that dance. I tend to start by saying this is the price I need, I didn’t start high, so this is what I need you to pay. It works for me.)

With the above client, we had the call, and we gave the price without a bunch of discounts built in; we simply said, here’s what we charge. And the client’s response? “That’s a great price.”

Don’t be afraid that your price will scare off your buyer. If they’re serious, they’ll tell you what their concerns are, and you can figure out if there’s a solution that works for everyone.