The Pricing Flinch: Is It Nerves — or Is It a Signal?

In this episode of The Pricing Lady, we revisit an old episode called The pricing Flinch, and I'm gonna share with you what I see differently now. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the episode. Six years ago, I recorded an episode about what I call the pricing flinch. Now, this is one of my older episodes that was only live streamed and never brought onto the podcast directories, so I thought this was a really appropriate and good time to bring it back to the surface. Now, the flinch is that moment when someone asks you what you charge. And something tightens, you hesitate. You soften. Maybe you overexplain, you justify before you even really have a chance to react or respond to the situation. And back when I first recorded this episode, I framed it as mostly a preparation issue, but when I went back and listened to it again, there were a few other things that that came to me, that I've understood since then, and I wanted to make sure that I shared with you. Working with founders, consultants, boutique firms, startups, I've realized that not all flinches are the same. And if you fix the wrong layer, the flinch doesn't go away. It just keeps showing up again and again. So today we're gonna revisit the pricing flinch and we're gonna walk through the three layers I now see that lie behind it. Let's take a look. Sometimes the flinch is simply not nerves. It's your internal system, not actually trusting the number that you've set. In many cases when you don't feel comfortable or you don't feel certain about the prices that you have, it's based on the fact that you either didn't make or you delegated decisions. So maybe you didn't make the decisions, you delegated decisions or you the decisions you made, you don't feel very certain about or confident about. For example, if you've copied your prices from competitors. If you've got no clear segmentation in your pricing, so you have a price's, a one size fits all, but you've got a lot of different types of customers. Maybe you never defined a clear internal corridor for your pricing or rationale behind that pricing. Those types of decisions that either haven't been made or haven't clearly been made can show up as you not feeling so sure or not trusting the numbers that you set. For example, you might. Not be able to clearly explain to yourself why you chose that number or versus the other one. Except for that, oh, I, that's what everybody else is charging, right? And the problem here is that when you're asked what you charge, you don't flinch because you don't know in that case you actually flinch. 'cause you do know, and you know that that's not something you'd ever wanna share with the customer, that you just kind of borrowed those prices from elsewhere. The confidence follows that clarity that you have around why you prices are what they are. Preparation alone will not fix a number that was never properly decided. And that's where I see these different layers coming in because the last time I recorded this episode of focused on if you just prepare yourself, then. You won't have as much trouble. But here what I'm saying is if you haven't set that structure and don't have that base on the decision making on those prices, then preparation clearly isn't gonna fix that. The second layer I want to talk about is a misalignment layer. This is broader than just the decisions, it's a bit more market facing in concept. The core idea here is that the flinch itself is telling you your in the wrong conversation. Of course we get requests for quotes. We get customers who come our way, some are gonna be a better fit than others. If you're quoting someone for something outside of your ideal segment, or maybe you're quoting something that you don't normally offer, that can be in this misalignment layer, of course, you'll feel less certain about what you're doing. I get requests to do all kinds of different things and I know that when it's not something that I normally do, there's always a little bit more uncertainty behind it. If you've overbuilt or underbuilt the offer. So maybe you try to put too much in it, or it's not really super strong offer. That's also a misalignment layer, so you don't actually feel uncertain about the price so much as you do about the offer itself. If the scope is unclear or fuzzy, again, it creates this undercurrent of, Hmm, something's not quite right here. These are just a few examples of where this misalignment shows up and why that might then lead to, you know, this flinch when someone says, oh, what do you charge for that? Or what do you offer for that? Right. If you feeling the tension every time you're quoting. In this case, it's not necessarily the price could be the fit. It could be that this isn't the right kind of client for you. I had this conversation recently with a colleague of mine and she was saying, she's like, yeah, I have this client and it's. Just so hard and difficult every time, and she remembered when she first made the offer, she didn't feel so great. And the process around deciding on the offer and the price was much more complicated. Those can be early signals of this misalignment layer. If the offer isn't clean, then the price generally won't feel clean either, and that's something to watch out for as you're out there creating these offers and having these discussions with clients. Now let's go and look at the third layer, which is this preparation or performance layer. Now, this is what I focused on a lot in the original episode, but what I like here is that, if you feel that you have layers one and two, the structural or the decision layer and the misalignment layer, if you feel you have, you know that those things are in place for you and it's very good. Then the issue could be the performance or the preparation layer, let's call it preparation layer. And here the idea is about preparing or being prepared for those conversations. When you feel the pricing flinch, oftentimes it's because you haven't thought about how to answer that question. Of course, you can't prepare to answer every question, but your pricing can be there to help you navigate those discussions when you set it up in the right way and when you prepare yourself. And the idea here is that if you've thought about how you would respond when someone says, what do you charge for that? Then you don't have to make it up in the moment that they ask you, or if they say, well, why is that so expensive? Again, you don't have to make up an answer in the moment. If you've prepared, if you've even thought about that in advance, in a, in a somewhat structured way, then you'll kind of have that information too. Pull from your memory to, you know, pull as a, a recall to bring into the conversation. It's not always, it's not like memorizing things, but it is, you know, with the number, say it out loud. See what it feels like if you find yourself tripping over or not sticking, or you can never remember it. I've had prices that I just, I always said them wrong, so I just changed the price and suddenly it clicked better for me. It can be about thinking through the objections and how you would answer those in ideal situations. There's always more than one way to respond to a question, and having to make it up on the fly, especially when you might be feeling a little bit triggered, is going to usually lead to a less desirable outcome. Getting clear on the scope is another area before you make the offer. Sometimes for bigger projects, what I'll do is I only prepare scoping offers until the very end, and I don't give a pricing offer until we are clear on the scope. And for me, I find that better. Then I don't get into a lot of pricing revisions one, but. First the client and I can agree on this is what they really need. This is what they want, this is how we're gonna work together. And then I can give them that pricing offer. But setting these sort of. Let's say preparations up for yourself in advance can make having those conversations in the moment with clients much less or, or more frictionless, let's say. I don't wanna always say it's easier because it may still feel challenging, but you don't feel as triggered and you generally will be able to have those conversations from a place of responding and being able to help the client think it through as opposed to just reacting to the situation. The key here is that preparation strengthens delivery. It doesn't replace structural clarity. Those first two points are important that you look at what's going on when you do feel that flinch and understand what's behind it. I'd like to leave you with a reflection task, if you will, so the next time you feel that flinch, or if you're feeling it regularly, don't try to fix it first. Instead ask yourself, is this about the decision layer, is this about my decisions and that I don't feel so secure about my price? Is this about the alignment with the customer, or is this simply about preparing for these conversations? Diagnose the situation first and then focus on fixing the right layer. If you just focus on fixing preparation, and the root of the problem is in the decisions that you made earlier when you were setting the prices, then you're still going to find that flinch causing wreaking havoc for you. The pricing flinch isn't something that you can eliminate completely. We will always be thrown things our way that force us to step outside our comfort zone. So the flinch is feedback. That's an important point to remember. It's only useful if you interpret it correctly and use that information to take corrective actions. Sometimes you'll need rehearsal or preparation, and other times you'll need refinement and other times, and it could be different case by case, you might need to go back to the original decisions. Strong pricing isn't about pushing through the discomfort. It's about building something solid enough so that the discomfort fades. And when your pricing decisions are clear, aligned and intentional, you don't feel that need to go into defense mode or to justify, you can actually lead the conversation, which is precisely what I want for you. That's all for today's episode. I found it interesting to go back to this old episode. And see what I missed in the early days and be able to bring you something more robust. If you are interested in understanding pricing in your business better, a great place to start out is with a pricing review. If you're interested in that, you can contact me and I'll send you the details. I wish you a wonderful day, and as always, enjoy pricing.