How much do you charge?

What is the best way to handle these premature pricing questions?

Are you ever asked to give a price for your services before the actual job has been defined? If you own a business then I know you have.

How do you handle these requests gracefully? The people asking usually do not know that the job has not been defined well enough and they are asking to get a handle on their investment without investing a great deal of time.

There are two reasons why someone would begin early in the discussion about your services to ask for prices. First, they may be just looking for a way to exclude your business and price is always a big factor. Second, they may truly not understand the parameters or options involved.

In either case, you need to dignify your potential customer’s request and provide some information along the way to actually determine a price.

I start by giving a ballpark range and some job parameters that might define the very low end and the high end. It is not really in anyone’s best interest to ignore the question because the person asking it doesn’t really know what they want.

In addition, I use these questions as a way to educate my potential customers as to the parameters of the job. For example, if we are asked to build a website of approximately five pages there are quite a range of services and work involved that may not be apparent to the customer.