Bill Canady outlines four rules for pricing conversations: never apologize for your pricing strategy, never negotiate the principle in the moment, never promise to escalate, and never invoke a supervisor as relief. Each concession undermines your authority and invites pushback.
The alternative is a 26-year-old inside salesperson improvising your pricing strategy at 4:15 on a Friday. Good luck with that. And here's the principle the script has to encode. 4 things. You do not apologize for the strategy. You do not negotiate the principle in the moment. You do not promise to escalate. You do not invoke the supervisor as a possible source of relief. Let me take those one at a time because each one is a specific failure. I have watched happen. You do not apologize for the strategy because an apology is an admission that the policy is a mistake, and the customer will correctly hear it as an invitation to keep pushing. Be warm. Be sorry the change is inconvenient.
