The Greedy Reframe

The word that freezes sellers

Every seller I've ever coached has, at some point, held back on a price — or a fee, or a margin, or a standard rate — because deep down, they felt greedy for asking.

Not openly. Not out loud. But underneath, somewhere, a little voice: "this feels like too much. He's going to think I'm gouging. Maybe I should just come down a little so I don't look greedy."

The greedy-feeling is the single most expensive emotion in sales. Every dollar your company leaves on the table from discounts you didn't have to give, from rates you didn't hold, from margin you sharpened because you were uncomfortable — that's the greedy tax. You paid it. Your customer didn't.

The greedy reframe is the work of flipping that instinct. You are not greedy for charging fairly for what you do. The customer absolutely charges fairly for what they do. They're running a business. So are you.

Industry terms this page covers

The test — would your boss call it greedy?

Here's a clarifying move. When you're about to back down on a price because it feels too high — stop. Imagine walking into your boss's office and saying:

"Hey, I'm going to drop my number by $3 a yard on this one because I don't want to look greedy."

What does your boss say?

Most likely some version of "who the hell told you your job was to not look greedy? Your job is to sell at the price we need to make money." Your boss isn't going to say "good call."

Now flip it. Imagine your boss walking into your office and saying "hey, we should actually slow down on volume because I don't want to look greedy."

Nobody says that. No owner, no GM, no sales manager, ever. Because the entire business is built on the idea that you charge a fair price for a real product. "Slow it down so we don't look greedy" would get you laughed out of the room.

So if your boss wouldn't say it, and the company doesn't run on it — why are you carrying the guilt? You're subsidizing the customer with your own internal discomfort. Stop.

Your customer isn't worried about looking greedy

Here's the mirror. Your contractor customer — the guy hesitating to pay your price — he charges his customer plenty. He marks up labor. He marks up materials. He adds fees. He's running a business. He's not lying awake at night worrying that his homeowner thinks he's greedy.

So when he turns to you and goes "man, your price is a little high — can you sharpen that?" — ask yourself: is he asking me because my price is unfair? Or is he asking because he's doing his job as a buyer?

Always the second. It's his job to squeeze his suppliers. Good. That's the game. Your job is to hold your number — or move it thoughtfully, if there's a strategic reason — not to fold because you feel uncomfortable being squeezed.

The reframe is: the squeeze is part of his job. Holding is part of yours. Neither of you is being greedy. You're both being professional. Don't personalize it.

The "1% of their job" math

Here's a number I use all the time to shrink the greedy-feeling.

A customer tells you your price is $3 high. You start to panic. Let me do the math with you:

• Their job: $1,000,000.
• Your portion of the job (concrete): say $100,000 — 10% of the whole job.
• Your $3-per-yard gap: say $2,000 on the pour. That's 2% of your portion.
• Expressed against the whole job: 0.2%.

So the number that felt so big to you — the gap you were about to collapse because it felt greedy — is two-tenths of one percent of their project. Think about that. They're going to re-bid it, re-shop it, pull in another quote, spend three days negotiating — for 0.2% of the job.

Whenever I walk a seller through that math, their shoulders drop. The gap is not as big as it feels. Their panic isn't proportional to the actual money on the table. And once they see that, holding the price gets easier.

Questions that flip the greedy frame

When a customer plays the "your price is high" card and you feel the greedy instinct kicking in, try these out loud instead of folding:

"Wait — so you've got another quote right now that's cheaper than mine, and you're not going to go with them? How come? Help me understand what's keeping you in the conversation with me."

That's a move. You just made them justify why they're still talking to you. Nine times out of ten, they start telling you what they actually value about you. Now the price conversation has become a value conversation, and you didn't have to move your number to do it.

Or:

"If I could get to that number, would you go with me? Like, actually pick me? Or are we just sharpening for sport?"

This separates real negotiations from performance negotiations. If they can't answer "yes, I'd pick you" — you were never going to win by discounting. So don't discount.

Or the bluntest one, when the customer is clearly trying to weaponize another supplier's number:

"Just to make sure I understand — you're asking me to come down because somebody else is cheaper. But if the other guy's number is the only thing that matters, why not just go with them? I'm curious what's keeping you in a conversation with me at all."

That's not aggressive. It's honest. And honest usually unsticks the frame.

The subtle version — charging for what was already free

Sometimes the greedy-feeling shows up not on price, but on charging for things you've been giving away. A late-pour fee you never collected. Stand-by time you let slide. A small-load fee you waived because it felt mean.

Here's the reframe: every time you gave that away, you trained your customer that it was free. Now they expect it. And the next seller from your company walks into a market where that value is literally invisible because your book has normalized it.

You didn't do your customer a favor. You did your company a disservice, and you made the job harder for whoever follows you. The reframe is that charging properly for the things that cost your company money is not greedy — it's respecting the math that keeps the business alive so that you can keep showing up for the customer tomorrow.

When the greedy instinct is right

One honest caveat. Sometimes the greedy-feeling is a real signal — when the price is genuinely out of line with value, when you're trying to extract from a partner who's always been fair with you, when you're chasing margin at a level that breaks a real relationship.

That's different. That's not greedy-feeling — that's integrity telling you something. The test: would your boss call that a fair number in this specific situation? If yes, hold it. If no, you're not being greedy by reconsidering — you're being honest.

The greedy reframe isn't "never lower a price." It's "don't lower a price out of guilt." Lower it for a reason. Don't lower it because you felt uncomfortable.

Homework — the greedy audit

This week:

1. Track every moment in a customer call where you felt the urge to soften, discount, or back off a number because of a squishy feeling. Don't act on the urge — just notice it. Write down what you wanted to give away and why you wanted to.
2. At the end of the week, add up everything you would have given away if you'd acted on every urge. That's your greedy tax on a typical week.
3. Pick the three biggest urges and ask: would my boss have called any of these greedy? Bet you a coffee the answer is no on all three.

Bring the list to the next session. We'll work on the reflex.

Where to go next

• Price vs. Value Orientation — the frame that makes the greedy reframe stick
• Quote Posture — how you hold yourself when the squeeze comes
• The Last Look conversation — where the greedy reframe gets tested hardest
• Clark Kent — specifically the "twenty million in the bank" mantra that kills the greedy reflex

Source: drawn from 139 moments across the live-coaching corpus — including the 1%-of-their-job math, the "would your boss say slow it down" reframe, and the questions that flip the greedy frame. Voice preserved.