While discussing her practice, Shakisha shared that she was finding that some potential clients were asking her to negotiate her fee. For instance:
Shakisha: “My fee structure works this way …”
Client: “Oh. Could you do $X (something less than Shakisha had said), instead?”
Shakisha didn’t love having those conversations and wasn’t exactly sure of a good way to graciously deal with the requests.
So I suggested the addition of one word to the language she was already using when discussing her fee structure.
“My non-negotiable fee structure works this way….”
“Non-negotiable.” One word can change everything. One word can fix everything. There’s really nowhere for a potential client to go with that, in terms of negotiating. Sure, the client still has the choice to not move forward if he doesn’t feel comfortable with the fee structure, but that’s to be expected. And that would be true even if the fee were negotiable.
But what it did for Shakisha was it took the need to even consider the rest of that uncomfortable conversation off the table. And that made all the difference in the world to her in terms of being able to serve the client from a confident place during her consult..
Are there places where you might add a word or two to the language you’re currently using in order to make the conversations you have more ease-filled for you? Let me know if I can help with that. I’d love to!
