Getting comfortable with silence in your pitches

“What’s your rate?”

“That depends…what’s your budget?” 

A lot of people don’t like pitches or negotiations because they feel like a duel. In a way, they are. Two people stare each other down, wondering who will shoot first. The person with the least to lose has the advantage—but only if they can keep their cool. 

Thankfully, most of life’s negotiations don’t involve potential gunfire. They’re not deadly. But they can feel that way because they involve money, and our brains interpret the potential gain and loss of money as a survival issue. We stress about negotiations as if they’ll kill us. 

If we can’t keep our cool, it doesn’t matter how good our offer is. How many times have you packaged your rate in a series of qualifications? How many times have you stated your number, then said “but I can be flexible,” or “but I can work with any budget.” When we lose our cool, we also lose leverage in the negotiation. We cut the legs out from under our offer before our client even has a chance to counter it. 

“You will save yourself from yourself by learning to just state the number and shut up,” says Blair Enns in this podcast. He goes on to describe how if we leave the floor open after stating our number, the client will fill it with helpful information. They’ll either say “yes, let’s do it,” (which they may not have said if we qualified our offer with discounts in advance), or they’ll say “no, here’s why that won’t work,” (and share information that can help you reach a deal). 

There is a price for your services that you are completely comfortable with. Let’s say it’s $500. You can look someone in the eye, state the number, not need to qualify it, and not be willing to negotiate at all. There’s another price for your services that you are completely uncomfortable with. Let’s say it’s $500 million. You can’t even say that number out loud without smirking to yourself, much less look someone in the eye while you say it. There’s a third price somewhere in between those two that you’re only slightly uncomfortable with. It’s a number that’s completely justified, but maybe a little uncomfortable for you because you haven’t charged that much before. 

The challenge of pitching, negotiating, and growing your business is to constantly find the number you’re only a little uncomfortable with, and say it with a straight face. Then, to be silent after you do.