Yesterday at the KBK Connections Professional Coaching Group we discussed sales, negotiation and money. The group did an interactive exercise and in my planning I anticipated the dialogue would be about the fear of rejection when selling your product or service. Boy, I could not have been more wrong in this assumption!
What the group really focused on was how setting fees and asking for money brings up mixed emotions about what our clients can afford and judgements about how money should be spent. A few stated that they would slide their fee, without being asked, based on the belief that the client needed financial assistance. These business women, very good at their respective occupations, did not require an application for financial aid nor did some of them talk about it with their potential customer. To me the idea that a client needs a reduced fee based on no hard data says more about the business owner's relationship with money than the clients. Therefore, I challenged each group member to think about where the responsibility lies for making spending decisions. Is it with the business owner or the customer?
Having worked both personally and professionally on my tendency to take on too much responsibility for others, I believe that our clients make the call. Isn't it really our own money beliefs and gremlins convincing us to charge less, thereby devaluing ourselves and our products or services? Or is it something else?
The bottom line question is who's money is it anyway?
Friday, May 23, 2008
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1 comments:
I love what you wrote, Kathleen! I think part of the problem is that we get our own money issues mixed up with our perceptions of our client’s money issues. No good can come of this. And when you ask it the way you did, spending decisions should be made by the client, not us acting on their behalf! Women take on way too much. When you decide what is in a client’s best interests, well…. That sounds like a parent-child relationship, not a professional one.
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