How to Handle Price Objections Without Losing Your Nerve
Everyone runs into price objections. Doesn’t matter if it’s the start of a call or right at the close. Customers will push back, and it can throw even experienced sellers off their game.
But there’s a smart, confident way to handle pricing conversations that doesn’t end with you giving everything away. Here’s how to keep your footing.
Start with Confidence
Price objections aren’t a sign you’ve failed. They’re part of the process.
The first rule: bring your confidence. Buyers can sense weakness. If you waver, they’re more likely to press harder and expect you to cave. This is about maintaining belief in your solution’s worth, not puffing up with arrogance.
“Your own confidence. You have to be confident… if they see that you are weak, they’re going to take advantage of you.”
Spot When the Objection Hits
Timing matters. When a buyer objects early, it signals qualification. Do they even fit your offer or are they just shopping? If it happens late, you’re in negotiation territory.
For early objections, don’t race to a discount. Outline that your price is rarely more than a single high number and let them react.
Shoppers who call just to squeeze a price? Don’t waste cycles unless they’re a loyal, returning customer. Otherwise, walk away.
Don’t Rush—Start Asking Questions
Most salespeople hear “too expensive” and start bargaining. That’s a trap. The better move: get curious.
Ask questions to uncover what the buyer truly values and why they’re hesitating. Let them talk. Most will reveal whether the real issue is price, perceived value, or something else entirely.
“The more you can frame the questions around the outcomes, not the product… nobody buys anything; they want a solution.”
Separate Budget from Value
Buyers sometimes have a pressing need, but not the cash. Others have budget, but aren’t convinced they should spend it with you. Both situations sound like price objections, but require different responses.
If budget is the issue, help them find a solution. Change the scope or collaborate on funding. If value is the concern, zoom in on outcomes. Paint a clear picture of what they stand to gain.
Listen, but Don’t Defend
When a buyer vents about price, fight the urge to jump in. Don’t get defensive. Let them air their concerns. Interrupting makes you look insecure and signals maybe your price really isn’t justified.
By listening more than you talk, you gain insights and build trust.
Trust Builds Leverage
Without trust, everything is about price and only price. Build trust through listening and thoughtful questions. If they see you as an advisor, not just a vendor, price loses its grip on the conversation.
“In the absence of trust, low price is everything. My whole objective is that the more I can get you talking, the more confident you’re going to see and the more you’re actually going to accept me.”
Never Discount Without Giving Something Up
Dropping your price at the first objection? That just teaches buyers to keep haggling. If you must cut price, remove part of your offer. Always have elements you can subtract.
Confident sellers present their value, stand firm, and only negotiate price after all other avenues are exhausted and only in exchange for something.
Restate the Problem, Not the Price
The best move when pressed on price is not to backpedal, but to reinforce the urgency and pain of their actual problem. Remind them what’s at stake if they do nothing.
Demonstrating confidence and focusing on outcomes inspires confidence from the buyer as well, and makes price less important.
Nobody Wins by Panicking
Keep your tone and body language steady, whether you’re on Zoom or in-person. Don’t let panic dictate your reply.
Avoid quoting price by email if possible. Email gives buyers room to stall or attack pricing without a real conversation.
Confidence is Everything
Price objections are an invitation to prove your worth and build trust, not slash your margins.
Clarify, don’t cave. Listen, don’t argue. Always focus on outcomes, and hold your ground with steady confidence. That’s how you handle price objections and win the long game.
Mark Hunter :
Handling price objections. We run into them all the time in sales, and it seems like whether it be at the beginning of the call, the end of the call, they come up, how do we handle it? That’s the topic of today’s show, and it begins right now. You are listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here’s your host. Okay, let’s cut to the chase right now. Handling price objections. And I’ll tell you what it starts with. Confidence.
Mark Hunter :
Your own confidence. You have to be confident. If you’re a new listener to the Sales center podcast, go back and catch some of my other episodes where I talk about how do you get confidence? Because I’ll tell you what, you hear that objection, and customers are. They’re going to take advantage of you if they see that you are weak. Now, it’s not about you being arrogant. I want to walk through. I want to share with you how you handle price objections. First of all, when you hear a price objection, you got to stop and ask yourself, am I hearing it at the beginning or at the end of the sales process? Because there’s a big difference.
Mark Hunter :
If I’m hearing it early, I, yeah, I want to address it, and if I hear it late, I want to address it. But the manner with which I do is a huge difference. Let’s break it down. If I hear it early, I’m trying to validate as to whether or not they’re even qualified for me to spend their time with. Now, if you know that they fit your icp, you already know that they have intent to buy, there’s interest and all those pieces. Then you do need to address it. Say, well, typically it comes in at, you know, a range. But here’s the problem.
Mark Hunter :
This is where so many salespeople go wrong. They begin handling it by giving a low price. What’s the. The only price the customer hears is the low price. They don’t even hear the high price. They don’t even hear it. That’s the problem. When you sit there and say, well, it’s typically between X and X.
Mark Hunter :
No, what I typically say is it’s usually never more than boom. And I put one single price out, a high price, and I go ahead and let them flinch. I let them flinch, and that’s okay. I let them. And I’ll say, what? That’s okay, because again, we want to make sure that it’s right for you, because I would never expect you to invest your money in something that’s not right for you. So let’s have the conversation. Now. If it comes up late, then we’re into the negotiation phase, and here’s the situation.
Mark Hunter :
If it comes up late. And again, don’t answer too quickly. You have to answer it by coming back and asking them questions relative to the critical need that you’ve uncovered. And that’s a big difference. Big difference. Now, there’s one other time when the price objection may come up, and that is when the customer sits there and calls you up on the phone and they say, hey. And you throw out a price and they object to it. You have no clue.
Mark Hunter :
And you know what? Those you want to end right away because all they’re doing is shopping for price. Unless they’re a current customer, they bought from you a number of times in the past. It’s not even worthy of your conversation because all they’re doing is they’re shopping. And I don’t want to deal with shoppers. Okay, now let’s really start unpacking this. You’ve got to be able to ask questions. And this is why I say, don’t answer too quickly because your assumptions are going to kill you. Asking questions also allows you to build your confidence because what you’re doing is you’re asking for the customer to explain, hey, tell me, why do you say that? Price.
Mark Hunter :
Share with me. Help me understand the value that you’re looking for. What is it that you’re looking for? Come back and ask them questions. And again, those questions are going to be different if it’s at the beginning or at the end. Totally get that. Okay. But the more you can frame the questions around the outcomes, not the product. Don’t.
Mark Hunter :
Do not ask questions relative to the product, size, the product features, the product, color, something like that. No, because remember, nobody buys anything. They want a solution. Focus your question around the outcome that they’re looking for. What you want to do is, I want to ask them questions and I just want to get them talking. I just want to get them. Now, what I found is this many times, if I can just get them talking, they’re going to feel better once they vent their views. I’m going to share with you in a bit two examples where I’ve had this whole price objection problem and the way in which I handled them both dramatically different.
Mark Hunter :
But I’m going to give you that, give you those examples. Here’s the whole thing you are attempting to clarify. What is the real reason for their issue? Why? Why? In other words, what I’m doing is I’m trying to understand what’s their basis point. Is it because they have bought similar type of items, similar type of things from other companies in the past? Is it because they’ve never gone down this path before? Is this a new issue? Whatever. But it always has to come back to the outcome, the real problem that they have. But here’s the thing. When they’re talking, don’t interrupt them. As soon as you interrupt them when they’re talking, they’re going to now see you as being defensive and you’re trying to defend what they believe is a high price.
Mark Hunter :
So just let them talk. What I found is this. If I can just ask you questions and I’m trying to get you to, to really just, just clarify, why do you feel this way? It’s amazing how you’re going to feel better. And then I can begin to come across and share by asking questions. Again, don’t assume. Now I’ve also got to make sure that I separate budget from value. What do I mean by this? This is, this is a big thing. They may have an absolute critical need.
Mark Hunter :
They’ve got to get this fixed, but they simply just don’t have the money. We see this in the home repair space. I’m going to give you a B2C example. In the home repair space, homeowner may absolutely need to get a new roof, but they just don’t have the money, see? So the need is there, but the budget’s not. So now I’ve got to come back and I’ve got to try to help them find a way to either get the budget or adjust what it is that I’m going to deliver. Conversely, they may have all the money in the world to replace their roof, to fix their roof, but they don’t see the value. We see this in so many B2B investments. Also, I see this a lot in consulting projects with clients, with salespeople I work with who sell consulting services.
Mark Hunter :
They are selling a service and there’s absolutely no doubt that the client has that major problem. They have the major problem and they actually have the money. But see, they just don’t see enough value. So then what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to back up and really help them see more value. So when I hear a price objection, I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried about it. See, at the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is I have to create a level of trust with the customer. And when I create Trust, they become more confident.
Mark Hunter :
Because remember, in the absence of trust, low price is everything. In, in the absence of trust, low price is everything. So my whole objective is that the more I can get you talking, the more confident you’re going to see and the more you’re actually going to accept me. It’s amazing how in, in, in surveys time and time again, when customers are asked why they trust a salesperson, it’s because they listen. That’s exactly what, what you’re doing here. Now there’s a couple of other pieces. When you hear the price, you know, objection, you do have to stop and ask yourself, am I dealing with a person who can actually really be helped in terms of do they fit my icp, my ideal customer profile? It’s example I love to use when I’m speaking to groups. I say that you can’t turn a Walmart shopper into a Nordstrom customer.
Mark Hunter :
You know, if, if I’ve got somebody who is absolutely bent on being low price oriented, I can’t turn them into a Nordstrom shopper. It’s just not going to happen. So there is, there is some qualification process you got to do. But here’s where you get into trouble. You get into trouble by assuming. Now let’s go back to this whole piece of handling the price objection. And should you handle the price objection by throwing out a lower price? No, no, you heard me say that. Do not handle the price objection with a lower price until the customer has absolutely refused to buy what you have.
Mark Hunter :
I’ll give you a couple examples here in just a bit. Now if you do have to come back with a lower price, you have to make sure that you’ve removed something from the offer. Otherwise all you’ve told the customer is just argue on price and you’ll get a better deal. Make sure that you always remove something. This is why I say when you’re putting the proposal across the table, make sure that you have in there things that you can remove if you get into the situation that the customer refuses to pay the price. Let me give you two examples. I was speaking with a regional vice president of a bank. The bank officer called and was clearly looking for some assistance from my company.
Mark Hunter :
We had a great conversation. They had the need, they had, they had the money, they had the budget. And we went through a process and I gave them a price and he said, oh, that’s way too much money. Thanks very much. And it ended. No matter what I tried to do, it just simply ended. And I allowed it down because I was not Going to cut the price because I knew what the outcome was. Two days later, this person calls me back and he says, the president of the bank said he wants you in here right away.
Mark Hunter :
You see, I held my ground. Now what would have happened is I, I could have lowered the price, but no, there’s no reason to yet. There is no reason to. My, my strategy, my strategy was to just end the process. I knew he wasn’t shopping for anybody else, so I knew I was the only one in, in the game. And I was gonna, I was just gonna wait three or four days, call him back up and say, hey, have a conversation. And at that point, I might have said, I can take a couple things out of the program and we’ll go ahead and do this. But again, I was only going to lower the price if I took something out.
Mark Hunter :
But in the meantime, the president said, no, we want you in here. Another example, and this is why it’s so key. Confidence is so key. Company called. We were, had great conversations with him, Nick. We worked out a great plan for them. Absolutely great plan. And everybody agreed.
Mark Hunter :
The VP of sales was in alignment. Everybody else on the team was in alignment. Everything was. Contract was ready. I got the word yes. We just have to send it over to legal. They sent it over to legal, and legal looked at the amount and was a little bit shocked by it. They took it to the president, CEO of the company.
Mark Hunter :
President, CEO of the company called me up and said, your, your, your fee is just way too high. How much will you cut it by? I immediately responded with a question relative to the pain that they had. Because, because I asked him, I said, how much business do you expect to lose from the new competitors that are coming in to your marketplace next year? That’s that, that, that’s how I responded. I didn’t say I would cut the price. I just shared with him. There was this long pause. Then he comes back and he goes, that was good. You’re hired.
Mark Hunter :
Because see the problem, we knew. We knew what the problem was. We knew exactly what the problem was. And I was confident enough in believing in the problem, and I knew that he had to solve it because there was urgency. These, they had two new competitors that were coming into their marketplace. They were going to lose a fair amount of business. There was going to be some real pressure, and they needed me and my company in there. I knew that and that was helping me with all the confidence.
Mark Hunter :
Because here’s what’s interesting. When you are responding to an objection and you respond to a pricing objection, by restating the problem they have, you actually become more confident. Because now guess what? You’re now believing, yeah, this is a great price. This is. This investment we’re asking you to make is absolutely right. So you’re doing two things. You’re lifting yourself up and you’re lifting the customer up. The worst thing you can do is panic, because when you panic, that’s when you go and give the discount.
Mark Hunter :
This is why I say handling a price objection. Don’t allow your body language to change. Don’t allow your tone of voice to change. Don’t allow any of that change. You’ve got to hold fast. And I don’t care if this is on a teams call, zoom call. I don’t care if it’s in person. I don’t care.
Mark Hunter :
It’s also why I do not like putting price into an email. Because when I put price into an email, it gives you a better chance to fire back problems than that. I should do a podcast on that. Hey, I trust I’ve given you some examples here. I’ve given you some. Some confidence here as a hand how to handle a price. Objection. Remember, it all comes down to you and your confidence.
Mark Hunter :
Hey, I wrote the book Integrity first selling. I do hope you check it out. Do me a favor, leave me a review on your favorite podcast app, would you please? It’s how we get this show out to more people. I’m Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. I’ll see you on the next episode. Great selling.
