This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Jeff:
I’ve been targeting an ideal client and had good conversations. They have a position that’s been open a year and a half, and they’ve worked with other recruiting companies without success. Everything was going well, we were finalizing the agreement—and then they sent back a new agreement nixing my pricing, saying it’s in line with what they have with other recruiters. I felt myself getting upset and second-guessing my pricing, and I actually felt it was a bit insulting. I’ve already decided I’m sticking with my price, even if it means walking away. But how do I make good with all of that, especially when scarcity is the other voice talking to me?
First, congratulations that you’ve already made the decision. That’s absolutely fantastic.
I’ve got a couple suggestions. One is to never take it personally. Never take any rejection, no matter what their reason is, personally.
When you say it’s an insult, you’re coming from “they should understand what my value is.” People don’t automatically understand what your value is. And sometimes, even if they do, they don’t understand their own value in order to pay you what you want.
Think about this: if I don’t know my value, I’m not able to determine what I’m willing to pay for something else, because I’m projecting that onto another person. If I had a company in that situation, it would be very valuable to me to be able to pay for the result I wanted—not to nickel and dime while I’m still stuck with the problem.
The reason I’m pointing this out is you don’t want to carry that energy. That’s where the lack part will start to mess with your mind. So make it clean. This is not about you, it’s about them, it’s about their ignorance, it’s about their issue—unless you determine there’s something they don’t understand or you haven’t explained well, and you go back and do that.
In order for you to see your value and say “I’m not lowering my price”—that’s abundant thinking. When you make that decision, your energy switches. Get rid of the insult part, just be grateful. Your energy switches when you hold on to your value, and you begin to raise your ability to attract somebody else at a higher value.
A lot of people don’t see that standing up for ourselves and saying no really locks in the energy of what we’re going to attract futuristically, even in the short term. You don’t want to waver in your energy. When you waver, you’re sending the wrong signal to the universe, and you don’t get back a clear one.
One more thing: when you get insulted, you lose the ability to rationally think about whether they have a good point or not. We always need to be thinking about that with our customer base in mind—are they making a suggestion we actually need to look at? But if I don’t get insulted, I’m like, okay, that’s just what they’re saying. Let me think about it. No, I don’t agree. Okay, I’m going to say no to this offer.
My approach to this would be to go in asking questions. I don’t want to go in assuming anything.
I’d say: “I appreciate your response and your time. Let me ask you—you said you’ve changed the pricing based on what you’ve paid current providers, is that correct? But you haven’t gotten the result from those providers, correct? Well, let me tell you why you’ll get a result with us.”
So you’re speaking into value that they’re not seeing. And then you can say, “I’m not willing to do this work for what you’ve paid previous recruiters. It’s very important that we’re on the same page with this, and if this isn’t a possibility for you, then I’m happy to go our separate ways.”
It’s clean, it’s clear, you get an opportunity to state your value in case they don’t see the difference between what you do and what previous providers did, and it also allows you to stand in your own truth of “I’m not willing to compromise on the pricing.”
