My price ain't high, your budget is too low...

A few days ago, a client that I had previously blogged about, dropped me a message asking me when I would be available for a call, since I was still sleeping at 10.30am in the morning when I got the message, I decided to wait till I was fully awake to respond back to him, which was about an hour later when I finally gave him permission to call me for a chat.



When the client requested to talk, I knew for sure it was going to be about the price of the quotation, and I have been in this line long enough to know what the selling price for most of the renovation works should be at, so I wasn't worried about getting "called out" for being too expensive, because I know I did not overcharge them for anything and what I am charging is is actually lower than what my other colleagues will charge their customers.



So the call comes in and the client is very cordial at the beginning, asking me how my weekend was, if it was any good and I was already anticipating this conversation to take a huge turn once the niceties were out of the way, and it went according to how I predicted.




Let's just call this client Patrick.


So once the niceties were out of the way, Patrick starts going through the quotation I have prepared for him with me over the phone, going over the different points he had issues with and just straight up exclaiming that I was selling at a price point that was way too high to be acceptable.


He did his own break down of how much he thinks each item cost and then managed to calculate the total profit my company will earn, and I was quite impressed with his accuracy because he was just a thousand dollar short from the actual cost price.



The conversation went on for quite a while and he was progressively getting more and more aggressive with his tone, it sounded almost confrontational at one point, that I started to wonder if the whole point of this call was just him trying to "call me out" and make me feel guilty for trying to take advantage of him, so I got pretty offended with his accusatory tone and just told him straight...

"If you think my price is too high, I would advise you to hire a contractor instead."

... because I have not been engaged by him yet, there is no obligation for him to engage me if he thinks my pricing is unfair, and I just do not like the way he was speaking to me, it didn't feel like a respectful conversation and I do not want to work with someone who won't show me any respect, I have zero interest to work with someone like this, so I would prefer him to leave me alone, which made my "advise" to him come across as a very valid option. I am not trying to do some sort of reverse psychology and hope he would be scared and then adjust his tone, I just straight up do not want to work with him.

Upon hearing my response, he quickly changes his tone and goes...

"I hope that you understand it is not my intention to offend you. My wife and I like you very much, that is why I am calling you to try and work something out."

.... and then he goes on to use his position as an expat and a Caucasian as an excuse for his "bluntness" , and I honestly don't care if you are a Caucasian or an Expat, that is really not a valid excuse for being unpleasant.

Of course I did not tell him that, but instead told him I will rework the quotation and see if I can lower the price any further, that I will email the new quotation to him by the end of the week. 

The quote has been recalculated and the price is pretty much unchanged, I don't really plan on sending him the updated quotation because if he isn't agreeable with the first one, then this quotation isn't really going to make much difference. I also don't want him to call me again to negotiate further because I did not enjoy the phone conversation with him. If this is the attitude he is going to be giving me before an agreement has been signed, then I can only imagine how much of a nightmare he will become once the renovation starts.

At the end of the day, what I got from his phone call is my service isn't worth the money, simple as that. He calculated a $8000 profit from the project, so if we were to break down the commission based on his calculation, I will earn about $3200, which is honestly the average for a project of his size, and his exact words to describe the profit was...

"It is way too high"

... which really makes me wonder then how much would he be expecting me to earn, a few hundred dollars for 2 to 3 months worth of work?

If he does reach out to me, then I will just send him the quotation, just as a courtesy, but I am not going to allow him to engage me for his renovation works. I have turned down projects before and I am feeling very strongly against Patrick. I shall not let this be a repeat of the J&J fiasco.