2 The Five Fears

      When it comes to approaching price increases, sales professionals tend to worry about five potential outcomes. They fear that their customer will:

Though these five fears are not completely unfounded, at the heart of each one of these worries is the deep-seated fear of conflict and rejection. These fears cause you to hesitate, procrastinate, hide from potential conflict, and make excuses. They cloud objectivity, leading to anxiety, insecurity, and worry.

      Worry is a byproduct of the human safety bias. Our brains are programmed to be hypervigilant in detecting and avoiding risk, so we are almost always focused on what could go wrong rather than what could go right.

      In my first experience with price increases I wasted a lot of energy and time wrapped up in fear, anxiety, and worry over pending price increase conversations. My fear caused me to procrastinate until it was almost too late, which ultimately made those price increase conversations much worse than they had to be.

      But, despite the worry and fear, it was still my job to sell price increases, and that job was never going to go away, no matter how much I wished that it would.

Nobody Wants a Price Increase

      When I'm training people how to sell price increases, I start my classes with this: “Raise your hand if you'd like to pay more.” No one ever puts up a hand, because nobody wants to pay more. I seriously doubt that you've ever received a call from a customer asking you to please, please raise your prices because they want to pay more.

      When the companies you buy from tell you that their prices are going up, you don't do a happy dance and post on Facebook about your lucky circumstances. It is more likely that you call or write customer service to complain, seek out competitors, express your displeasure to friends and family, post something nasty about that company on social media, and sometimes get angry.

We Want Happy Customers, Not Conflict

      As sales and customer service professionals, we are specialists at building relationships. We live to make our customers happy. We're good at discounting to get the deals closed and keeping customers satisfied.

      Conflict with customers over price increases is not natural for us. We want customers to appreciate, accept, and like us, not reject us. It is this need to feel accepted that makes approaching customers with price increases such a powerful emotional destabilizer.

      The fear of rejection can push you to emotional extremes, causing you to hesitate, procrastinate, avoid price increase conversations, and make big mistakes when you finally do engage your customers. It erodes confidence, making it easier for customers to push you around and get their way.

      When you choose a career in sales, you are choosing a career in which you will be forced to face conflict and deal with the potential of rejection. There is no way around this. Price increases are a norm—not an exception. So you have a choice. Either cause yourself unnecessary stress and worry over a job you will still have to do, or learn to control your emotional responses, gain confidence, and rise above your fear of rejection.

      You may be able to avoid the emotional discomfort of approaching customers with price increases in the short term by dragging your feet. But sooner or later, the roosters will come home to roost and you will be forced to have that conversation—usually not on the best of terms.

Mastering the Fear of Rejection

      The fear of rejection is your Achilles' heel when approaching customers with price increases. This is why mastering your fear is the real secret to mastering price increase conversations.

In every price increase conversation, the person who exerts the greatest emotional control has the highest probability of achieving their desired outcome.

      It's natural to feel like you have little control when dealing with savvy customers who have many alternatives and threaten to go to competitors when there is even a hint of a potential price increase. In these situations you must focus on what you can control rather than what you cannot:

      That's it – nothing more. You can choose to be disciplined and prepared with your messaging and business case. You can choose to plan for objections and pushback. You can choose your attitude and beliefs. And in emotionally tense price increase situations, you have absolute control over your emotional discipline and response to the fear of rejection.

      But let's not minimize just how difficult it is to rise above the fear of rejection and choose your response. It is very difficult to quell your emotions and approach price increase conversations with relaxed, assertive confidence when everything inside you just wants to run.

      At this point, it would be easy for me to tell you to get over it and use dispassionate clichés, like “just let it roll off your back.” But that would be completely disingenuous, especially since I've walked in your shoes. We've all experienced the insecurity and emotional disruption that comes with this insidious fear. We have all been there – because we are all human.