“What did you have in mind?” Then you turn her number into your price.

You know this sentence. It comes out of your mouth every time someone asks for your price. Even as you say it, you already know: the number that comes next will not be yours.

From the outside, the question looks professional. Almost consultative. You are only finding out the parameters. In reality, it is an outsourcing move. The client is supposed to name the number so you do not have to.

Let's be honest about the numbers for a moment. If her range is below your calculation, you work to her budget from that second on. Your price is now based on her bank balance instead of your work. Across a year, you subsidise other people's budgets with your lifetime. The client also learns something you never meant to teach her: with you, it pays to start low.

Every time, you promise yourself that you will simply name your number in the next conversation. Then someone asks again.

You are not insecure. You are trained.

Thoughts often follow. “I want to hear what is realistic first.” Or: “If I start too high, she will leave.” I am flexible. This is client-centred.

From my work, I can say this: the women who ask this question are usually the most adaptable people in the room. They can place themselves inside every client. That is exactly why they sense what the other person wants to hear. The ability has taken them far. At the price, it starts working against them.

The question has a function. As long as the client names the number, your number cannot be rejected. It protects you from the moment your calculation meets a real no. The price becomes negotiable so it never has to become an imposition.

What I look at first

When a client tells me this, I check three things.

First, strategy. Is there a number that is fixed before the conversation begins? A real calculation with a lower limit that is not created in the moment? A surprising number of businesses have none. In that case, the question is not a pattern. It is simply the absence of a pricing structure. Build that structure and part of the problem disappears by itself.

Then, identity. This is usually where the core of this subject sits. Which role names the price? The service provider asks what the client can afford. The business owner says what her work costs. For someone who was liked for adapting over many years, her own number feels like something she is doing to the relationship. I can rehearse a pricing conversation a hundred times. The old role still takes over in the decisive moment.

Then comes a data point that often makes the difference for me. What happens inside her in the silence after a number enters the room? How does her body respond while the other person thinks? Tolerating that silence without filling it with a discount, an explanation or another question is not a negotiation technique. It is capacity. Capacity can be built in doses the system can hold.

What this looks like in my work

In my work, we build the fixed number first. Calculated. With a lower limit. Decided before the conversation. Then we do not work on the script. We work on saying it in stages her system can hold: say the number out loud alone and allow the silence afterwards; name the number in writing without adding the discount sentence; say it live and leave the next sentence to the other person. What changes is not the negotiation technique. It is whose number is in the room.

If you regularly answer a pricing question with a question, the honest question is often not how to become more confident. It is which number is fixed for you, which role says it and what your system can hold in the silence afterwards. That is what I work out with women before the next pricing conversation.

This text reflects my perspective and my work. It is not medical or therapeutic advice and does not replace medical or psychotherapeutic treatment. I do not diagnose. Where needed, I refer clients to qualified professionals.