How to say the number
There is a specific ten seconds that decides more appointments than anything else in this course, and it is the ten seconds after you say the price. Almost every rep fills it. They say the number and then immediately keep talking: justifying, listing inclusions, mentioning finance, comparing to the competition. The reason is obvious and human, which is that the silence is uncomfortable, and the rep is the only person in the room who can end it. Ending it is the mistake. The customer needs those seconds to do something, and if you take them away they will do it later, without you.
What the customer is doing in that silence
They are doing arithmetic, and it is not the arithmetic you think. Not whether your price is fair, which they have no way to judge, but whether the money exists: what is in the account, what the credit card would take, what this means for the holiday, what their partner will say. That is a real calculation about their own life and it takes a moment.
A rep who talks through it interrupts that calculation, and the customer has to restart it later, on their own, without the ability to ask you anything. Worse, the talking usually consists of justification, which tells the customer that you think the number needs defending, and a price that needs defending is a price that might move.
Silence also produces the most useful sentence of the whole appointment, if you let it. Left alone for a few seconds, people say what they are actually thinking: that it is more than expected, that they need to talk to someone, that they were quoted less elsewhere, that they cannot do it until spring. Every one of those is the real objection arriving voluntarily. You cannot get that by asking.
Say it plainly, once
Numbers get softened in all sorts of ways and every one of them costs something. "It comes out at around nine, nine and a half, somewhere in that area" tells the customer the price is negotiable and that you are braced. "We are looking at nine and a half" is a fact.
Do not pre-apologise. "I know it is a lot, but" hands the customer an objection they had not yet formed, and it frames your own price as unreasonable before they have decided whether it is.
And do not bury it. A number that arrives at the end of a long list of inclusions, or that lives on page three of a document you are reading from, reads as a number being hidden. Say what it is, then explain what is in it if they want that, which they usually will.
The sequence, and it is short
- Say the total, in one sentence, at normal volume
- "For everything we have talked about, it is nine and a half thousand." No preamble, no hedging words, no apology. If a document is in front of them, point at the figure so they are reading it and hearing it at once.
- Stop
- Genuinely stop. Count to five if you need a mechanism. This is the hardest instruction in the course to actually follow and it is the one with the largest effect.
- Let them speak first, whatever they say
- Including if what they say is nothing but a facial expression. Wait through it. The first thing out of their mouth is the real objection, and it is worth more than anything you were about to say.
- Answer the thing they raised, not the thing you prepared
- Reps have a rehearsed value speech and deploy it regardless of what the customer said. If they said their sister paid less, the value speech is not the answer. Module 6 covers each objection separately for this reason.
- Only then, what is included
- Once the real question is on the table, the breakdown becomes useful rather than defensive, because it is answering something.
What it sounds like
The same quote, nine and a half thousand, delivered two ways. Watch the second and third lines.
What to notice. Rep A filled the silence with genuinely good information, and got the polite ending that means no. The customer never said what was actually in the way. Rep B said the number and stopped, and the customer volunteered the real constraint, which is not the price at all but an unrelated bill they cannot size yet. That is a solvable problem and Rep A will never learn it exists. Note also that Rep B offers a choice rather than pushing finance.
The mistake: filling the silence with value
The instinct feels like good selling. The customer looks uncertain, so the rep supplies reasons, and the reasons are all true: the guarantee, the disposal, the accreditation, the fact that the cheaper quote excludes scaffolding. Delivered into that silence, none of it lands, because the customer is not currently evaluating value. They are working out whether they can pay.
It also has a specific cost beyond being ignored. A rep who justifies unprompted has signalled that the price is contestable, and a proportion of customers who were not going to negotiate now will, because you told them there was room.
The tell is the polite ending. "We will have a think and get back to you" delivered without any objection having been raised almost always means the real objection never surfaced. Reps read it as needing time. Usually it means the moment where they would have said the true thing got talked over.
There is an opposite failure worth naming: weaponising the silence, letting it run for twenty seconds while maintaining eye contact. That is a recognisable technique and it is unpleasant. Five seconds of ordinary quiet while you look at the document with them is not the same thing as staring someone down.
The ten seconds after the number
- Did I say the total in one sentence, without hedging words?
- Did I pre-apologise for it?
- Did I stop talking, genuinely, and let them speak first?
- Was the first thing they said the real objection, and did I hear it?
- Did I answer what they raised, or what I had prepared?
- Did I mention finance before they raised money as an issue?
- If they went straight to "we will have a think", do I know what is actually in the way? If not, the objection is still in the room.
Read next
- The budget nobody stated Why giving a range earlier makes this moment much less fraught.
Five seconds of silence feels like a very long time. Is it really necessary?
It feels far longer to the person who could end it than to the person thinking. In practice customers do not experience a short pause after a price as awkward, because they are occupied. The discomfort is almost entirely the rep's, which is why the instruction has to be mechanical rather than a matter of judgement.
What if they genuinely say nothing at all?
Then ask one open question and stop again. "What are you thinking?" is enough. What you are avoiding is answering on their behalf, which is what a value speech does.
Should I mention finance when I give the price?
Not unprompted, in most cases. Leading with finance implies you expect the number to be unaffordable, which is a judgement about them that you have not earned. Offer it once money has actually come up, and offer it as a choice rather than a rescue.
Is it better to give the number verbally or on paper?
Both, at the same time, with the paper facing them. Hearing it and seeing it together prevents the misremembering that module 4 is about, and having the figure in front of them means the conversation is with the document rather than with you.