Handling the Too Expensive Objection: What to Actually Say

Handling the too expensive objection starts with a question, not a discount. When a customer says your quote is too expensive, they mean one of two very different things: either the number is genuinely more than they have, or they cannot see what they are paying for. Those need opposite responses. So ask one thing before you say anything else: "Is that more than you want to spend, or more than you expected?" If it is more than they expected, show them the labour cost against the material cost and let the split do the explaining. If it is more than they have, take work out of the scope until the price fits, and never take money off the same scope. And if all they want is for you to match someone else's number, say no politely and move on to the next job.

"Too expensive" almost never means "too expensive"

Two customers say the same four words for completely different reasons.

• The budget wall. They have a number in their head, or in their account, and your quote is above it. Nothing you say about your workmanship moves that number. Only scope moves it.
• The value gap. They can afford it. They just do not understand why a day and a half of work plus a box of parts costs what it costs. They are not arguing with your price. They are asking a question, badly.

Guessing wrong costs you either way. Explain your value to someone standing at a budget wall and you sound defensive and a bit desperate. Knock money off for someone with a value gap and you have just told them the first number was invented — and that the next one is negotiable too.

The one question that separates them

Ask it on the phone, not by email. Email lets them think about the number in isolation; a call lets you hear the pause.

• If they say "more than I expected", it is a value gap. Go to the breakdown.
• If they say "more than I've got" or name a figure, it is a budget wall. Go to scope.
• If they say "the other bloke said 30% less", it is neither. It is a comparison, and you deal with that by comparing scopes, not totals.

Then shut up. The silence after that question does more work than any script.

Show the labour against the material

Most customers price your job in their head using the only number they can look up: the parts. They saw the board on a wholesaler site for £180 and your quote says £1,251. The gap looks like profit. It is not, and one table fixes that faster than five minutes of talking.

Here is a real-shaped example — a domestic consumer unit replacement:

Now the conversation is different. Roughly 61% of that job is a qualified person's time and a certificate with their name on it. About 35% is parts. The customer thought they were buying a fuse board. They are buying nine hours, a test schedule, a notification to building control, and someone who carries the liability if it goes wrong at two in the morning.

Two rules for the breakdown:

• Never itemise your margin. Show labour, materials, travel, waste, certification. Do not show "markup 18%" — you are inviting a line-by-line negotiation you cannot win.
• Put hours on the page, not just money. "9 hours" is arguable. "£522" is arguable. "9 hours" plus "£58/hour" together are surprisingly hard to argue with, because the customer has to attack your rate, and most people will not tell a tradesperson to their face that their time is worth less.

Cut the scope, not the price

This is the whole discipline, and it is the part almost everyone gets wrong.

If you take 10% off the same scope, you have not made the job cheaper. You have made your day cheaper. The work is identical, the hours are identical, the risk is identical — you just gave away most of a day's profit to avoid an awkward pause on the phone.

Instead, hand back a smaller job:

• Split it into phases. Board and the two dead circuits now; the outbuilding and the garden lights in the autumn. Same total over time, a payable number today.
• Move labour to the customer. They lift the floorboards, clear the loft, take the old unit to the tip, do the making good and the painting. Real hours off the quote, and they feel like they won.
• Change the specification, and say what they lose. A cheaper brand, fewer ways on the board, surface trunking instead of chasing. Write down the trade-off in one line so nobody is surprised later.
• Drop the nice-to-haves. Anything you added because it is good practice but is not required, priced separately from the start so it can come off cleanly.

Then send two options, not a new price. Option A is the original. Option B is the reduced scope with the removed items visibly listed as removed. Seeing what disappeared is what makes Option A look reasonable — and a surprising number of people buy A after you offer B.

Three answers that lose you money

• "I can do it for X if you pay cash." You have just admitted the price was soft, and you have made the job about tax rather than work. Everything after that is worse.
• Instant matching. Meeting a competitor's number within a minute of hearing it tells the customer your quote was theatre. It also means you are now doing your scope at their price.
• Apologising. "Sorry, I know it's a lot." You have agreed with the objection before they finished making it. Say the number, say what it buys, stop talking.

Scripts you can actually say out loud

• Value gap: "That's fair — most of it isn't the parts. The unit's about £340. The rest is nine hours on site, the testing and the certificate. Want me to send the split so you can see it?"
• Budget wall: "Right. What number were you working to? I'd rather take work out and land on something you're happy with than pretend the hours aren't there."
• Cheaper quote: "Could be a better price, could be a smaller job. Send me their quote and I'll tell you honestly what's different. If they're doing the same work for less, take it — I'll say so."
• Asked to match: "I can't do that scope at that price and still do it properly. Here's what I can do for that money instead."

Sweden: ROT changes the number the customer is looking at

If you work in Sweden, the price objection has a built-in answer that many firms bury at the bottom of the quote. The ROT deduction takes 30% off the labour cost — not the materials — and the customer gets that as a reduction on your invoice, not as a refund they chase later.

Take a 25,000 SEK job including VAT: 15,000 labour and 10,000 materials. ROT takes 30% of the labour, so 4,500 SEK comes off and the customer pays 20,500. You then claim the 4,500 back from Skatteverket. There is an annual ceiling per person, shared with RUT, and it moves — check the current amount at skatteverket.se rather than quoting a figure from memory.

Two consequences worth understanding. First, the labour-versus-material split stops being an explanation and becomes money: on a labour-heavy job the deduction is worth far more than any discount you were about to offer. Second, showing the gross total first and the ROT net price second is throwing away your best answer — the net figure should be the big number on the page.

Outside Sweden the mechanism differs but the principle holds: check whether any reduced VAT rate or scheme applies to the work before you discount, because a scheme is free to you and a discount is not. In the UK, reduced or zero VAT rates apply to certain energy-saving installations and some residential conversion work — verify the current rules with HMRC for your specific job rather than assuming.

This is the sort of thing worth automating. In OdinTask, quotes calculate the ROT deduction on the labour lines automatically and show the customer the net price, so the deduction is doing its job in the first ten seconds instead of the last.

When to say no instead of matching

You need a floor, and you need to know it before the phone rings. Work out your break-even day: add everything you pay in a year whether you work or not — van, insurance, tools, accountant, software, phone, your own wage — and divide by realistic billable days. Not 260. Take off holiday (25 days is the statutory minimum in Sweden; 28 including bank holidays in the UK), public holidays, sick days, and the days you lose to quoting, chasing and paperwork. Most owner-operators land somewhere near 190 to 210. That number is your floor. Below it you are paying for the privilege of working.

Say no when:

• They want your scope at another firm's price and will not discuss what is different.
• The discount would take the job under your break-even day.
• They are negotiating hard before you have lifted a tool. They will negotiate harder at the final invoice.
• They want no paperwork, no certificate, cash only. That is not a cheap job, it is a liability with a deposit.
• Your gut says the after-sales will eat the margin. It is usually right.

Say it cleanly and without sulking: "I don't think I'm the right fit on price for this one. If the other quote falls through, call me and I'll still be here." Some of them call back. The ones who do not were never going to be profitable.

Kill the objection before it ever arrives

Most price objections are a quoting problem wearing a sales costume. Fix the quote and the conversation mostly stops happening:

• Split labour and materials on every quote, every time.
• Show hours, not just money.
• Quote within 24 hours. Speed is worth more than price to a customer with no hot water.
• Price the good-practice extras as separate optional lines so they can be removed without touching your rate.
• State what is not included. Half of "that's expensive" is really "I thought that included the making good".
• Send two options on anything above a day's work: the proper job, and the smaller job.

None of that is sales technique. It is just refusing to send a single unexplained number and hoping. If your quotes go out fast, break out the labour, show the deduction net, and offer a real second option, you will hear "too expensive" a lot less — and when you do hear it, you will already know which of the two things it means. Start a free trial of OdinTask and build the quote that answers the objection before the customer makes it.