Every day, people buy stuff.
Big stuff, small stuff, expensive stuff, cheap stuff.
Many people pay attention to every penny they spend, others not so much.
Who is better off? Yea, I’m not touching that one for sure!
The fact is that one particular item at a particular price might seem low-cost to one person, while that identical product will appear expensive to another one.
Hey, that’s just how it is, I’m sure you can see that too.
The topic today is how to express the feeling that something seems too expensive to you in the best and most productive way possible.
First, it’s helpful to have a good poker face (or poker voice or poker email presence) in this territory.
Not all prices on all items are negotiable (try going to Wegmans and telling them you’ll give them $4 for their $6 eggs! Not gonna happen). However, sometimes both negotiating sides have some flexibility. When that is the case, how you express your thoughts about the price can be the difference between saving some money and going back to the drawing board to get your item.
Here’s a hint: telling a customer service rep “You must be crazy” when he quotes you a price on something you want to buy is not likely to win you brownie points in a cost negotiation.
There are more professional, friendly, empathetic and kinder ways to express your impression of a perceived high price.
“That’s a bit more than I was hoping to spend, do you have any options to bring down the price?”
“Thank you for taking the time to put together this estimate for me. Unfortunately, this is out of my budget.”
“Great, I appreciate your time. I might have to consider some lower priced alternatives.”
Even though you are expressing the same opinion as Mr. Grumpy Pants did earlier, I promise that the results you get will far exceed the “you must be crazy” outcome.
How do I know this? It happened to me just last week 😊.
