Sometimes, you should accept the prospect’s objection.

Hey friend,

What would you say when a prospect says:

“Let’s hold off with this. We lost a few big clients and won’t be able to sustain too many expenses,” just a few days after these happened:

• They offered you the LinkedIn ghostwriting gig; you didn’t pitch them.

• You offered to work around their budget, to which they agreed.

• You quickly whip up a sample post + design to see if your inspiration is on-brand, and they say it looks great.

What would you do?

I found myself in that situation about 18 hours ago. I had two options.

1. Turn the objection around by showing them how this project could be the key to landing more big clients. Convincing them that holding off now doesn’t make much sense, because even if they had all the clients they wanted, they still needed a great social media presence to grow and fill their funnel with leads. So, why not just start now?

2. Say “okay”

Which one would you choose?

I chose “okay,” after considering these two factors:

1. The contract terms were unsuitable as my delivery supersede the compensation.

I wanted to take the contract for one reason; to lay out the canvas for attracting, onboarding, and generating results for a LinkedIn ghostwriting client, as this was the first time. That way, I imagined getting paid to

• Develop a working process

• Have work samples

• Get testimonials

2. They were reluctant to discuss payment terms

You know this popular joke:

• $500 client: I just think what I am investing in you should match the output and supercharge our results and get us a 1000% increase in ATV, Ltv, VLC, blah blah blah

• $5000 client: Money sent, thanks

It might be a joke, but it's the reality of negotiation in freelancing.

The clients that frustrate me the most are those who are reluctant to commit. They are the non-committers; one of the types of clients to whom you shouldn't bother over-delivering.

Each time I raise money issues with them, they come up with a fresh objection.

In the case of this client, they raised the objection of losing a big client when I discussed my payment terms.

I didn’t say, “Here, send me 50% upfront” I just stated how and when I loved to get paid. Boom– we lost a big client.

So, instead of trying to beat the objection by showing the value they would get from this engagement, I chose to let it go. I was ready to over-deliver to them, but it was not worth it.

The lesson here is this:

• Handling objections is good, but sometimes, you don’t have to tackle it all.

• When you’ve designed most of the contract terms in favor of the client, and they still don’t want to commit, just let it go.

• It doesn’t mean you’re a quitter. I believe you’re just avoiding the bigger problem that would come up along the line.

Would you handle this issue differently?