Be careful how you wedge an appendage

By Kurt Schröder

Perhaps you have heard this from a customer before. "Won't you give us a deal on this first one? We're really looking forward to doing more work with you. Maybe we start at a lower price now, and then we scale and grow together."

Yeah. That seldom happens.

I understand the pull, because I have felt it. An ideal customer you have wanted to work with finally opens the door a crack. The brief is smaller than the work you actually want, the price is thinner than the value you actually bring, but it is a way in. And we all see the glass half full. We will deliver, then over-deliver, squeeze more toes through the gap, maybe get the whole foot in, sneak the fingers through, crack the thing open, and unlock the work we really want at the rate we really want to bill. That is the plan. It is almost always the plan.

Two things happen instead, and the second one is the one nobody warns you about.

The first is anchoring. Retail has understood this psychology for decades: the first price you encounter in a store anchors how you judge every price after it. Walk in on a discounted rate or a diluted version of your value proposition, and you have set the anchor yourself. Every future conversation with that client negotiates against the number and the scope you arrived with. You do not get promoted from the work you took to get in. You get re-hired as whoever they met.

The second is quieter and more expensive. Word of mouth travels, and it travels with the price attached. Inside that customer, you become known for the thing and the rate you entered on. Then one day the intro you dreamed of actually happens. Someone influential there refers you to another ideal customer, exactly as you hoped, and the intro sounds like this: "You should use these guys. I told them you'd give them a good deal." Your pipeline is now pre-discounted before you have had a first meeting. The referral engine you were trying to build is working perfectly, and it is distributing the wrong price.

Add up the real cost. More work at lower margin, held together by hope. Your best people spending their hours on an account that undervalues them, while opportunities that would pay full margin and full appreciation get less of your attention because the discounted foot needs constant tending.

And still, nobody wants to say no. Saying no is scary, especially as an entrepreneur who is not funded or listed and does not have someone else's money to spend. So for fear of saying no, we jam a foot in the door and hope and pray we can kick it down. Most of the time you just end up with a really bruised foot, a slightly bruised ego, and the job of finding another way in anyway.

We have paid this tuition ourselves. More than once. Which is why the rule now is simple: if they will not open the door and let you walk in as who you are, at what you are worth, be very careful about how you wedge an appendage.

Worth asking of your own client list: is there an account on it right now where you are still billing the price of your foot in the door? What has that anchor cost you since?

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