Find out what "too high" means before you answer it. Sometimes the budget isn't there, and sometimes the value never landed. Those are different problems with different fixes, and neither one gets solved by taking money off the number you already sent.
Ask what they had in mind before you say anything at all about your number.
Too high can mean no budget or no value established, and the two need opposite responses.
Draft the one question you'll ask next time, and keep it somewhere you can see it.
Never voluntarily offer a fee reduction.
Leah Neaderthal, Smart Gets Paid
"Too high" is three different messages wearing the same words, and your response depends on which one you're hearing. Before you say anything about your number, work out which one it is.
| What they say | What it often means | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| "That's more than we expected" | They had a figure in mind and yours is above it | A conversation about what's included |
| "We don't have that budget" | A real constraint, often set before you arrived | A different option, or a different timeline |
| "I'm not sure it's worth that" | The value never got established | Back to outcomes, not down on price |
The third one is the one that stings and it's also the most fixable, because it's a message about your proposal rather than about their wallet. When a client can't see what changes for them, any number looks like too much. When they can, the conversation moves to what's included.
Ask one question, then stop talking. The question is some version of "what were you expecting?" or "help me understand what's driving that," and the silence after it is where you find out which of the three messages you're dealing with.
What to do, in order:
Step five is the one that saves proposals. The instinct is to fix it in the moment while they're on the phone, and that instinct is what produces a discount nobody asked for.
Not as your first move, and never on the spot. A number that drops the moment somebody pushes teaches your client that your pricing responds to pressure, and it re-prices every conversation you have with them afterward.
The rule I teach is short:
There's a real method for getting to that agreement without touching your fee, and it has its own answer in this cluster. What holds on this page is the shape: your number and the work move together, or neither one moves.
Establish the money conversation before the proposal exists, so the number in the document is never the first number they've heard. A proposal is meant to be a summary of what you've already agreed, and a price objection at that stage usually means the agreeing part got skipped.
What to put earlier in the process:
Do that and negotiation stops being a separate event at the end. The first call is where most of this gets set up, and the moment they ask what you charge is its own skill.
Here's the sentence I hear: we got all the way to the proposal and now they're saying the number is more than they expected. I don't want to lose the work, and I don't want to cave.
Sit with how much is packed into "cave." You're already treating the conversation as a contest with a winner, and you've cast yourself as the one about to lose. That framing is the actual problem, and it's what makes women drop a number before anyone has even asked them to.
So let me offer the reframe I use. Their reaction is information about their side of the table. It tells you what they expected, what they have, and how well the value landed. None of that is a verdict on you, and none of it obliges you to move.
What I'd like you to do is get curious instead of getting scared. Ask what they were expecting. Then be quiet. Most of the time what comes back is smaller than you feared, and sometimes it's "we can probably find it, we just wanted to ask." You can't hear any of that while you're explaining your price.
Plenty of clients won't name a figure, and you can still learn what you need. Ask what they've spent on work like this before, or what range would be straightforward to approve. If nothing comes back, offer two ways to work together at different scopes and let their reaction tell you where they are.
Ask for a call. A price conversation over email loses tone and invites a written comparison of numbers, and anything you offer in writing becomes a position rather than a conversation. A short call lets you ask the question, hear the real constraint, and keep the relationship at eye level.
An objection from a stranger usually means the proposal reached a finance or procurement layer, and the person raising it is reading a number with none of the context you built. Go back to your contact and ask what would help them make the case internally. The answer is almost always a clearer link between the cost and the outcome.
Give it a few days, then follow up with something useful attached rather than a nudge. A price objection often needs an internal conversation you're not in, and that takes longer than silence feels like it should. What you want to avoid is treating one week of quiet as a no and pre-emptively offering a lower number.