The Last Look Conversation

When a customer says your price is too high, most sellers panic. I celebrate.

When I first heard sellers describe the Last Look conversation, it pained me. You actually have customers who call you and tell you to lower your price or you won't get the work?

And the sellers I was working with would shrug: "Yeah, happens all the time."

Okay — so what do you do?

"Well, we lower our price. Or we walk away."

That's where I got intrigued. Because what they were describing to me as a problem, I heard as an opportunity — it's time for us to negotiate. But first we have to hear the sentence correctly.

Industry terms this page covers

If a customer is using any of these phrases with you, they're putting you in the Last Look bucket — see Partnership Progression for the full model.

The sentence I love

"I want to work with you, but your price is too high."

This is a fantastic statement. You may dread it — but I love it.

Why?

Let me color-code it.

Green part: "I want to work with you."

They have some compelling reason to call you. Think about it — if they're looking at two pieces of paper with two quotes, and your price is higher than Brand X... why are they calling you? Just go with Brand X. Go with your competitor.

But they don't.

There's something else there. A fifth-grader could figure it out: "Wait a second. Both quotes say the same. Same yardage, same destination, same date they're pouring. Oh — the price is different. Let's call the cheaper one."

But they don't do that. They're talking to you.

Red part: "But your price is too high."

That's the part everyone hears. That's the part that hits your button. It's the easy button — they literally hit the button that says "what are you gonna do about the price?"

And unfortunately, what happens for most sellers is: all they heard in the sentence was "your price is too high." So all the questions they ask back are now about price. What do I need to discount? What's the gap? What do I have to do to close this so I can handle the objection?

It feels like the right move. They set it up for you — handle the objection. Makes sense.

But the problem is they actually told you something else first: I want to work with you.

What are we going to do with that?

The move — slow down and ask why

What I want to teach you right now is not the easiest thing to figure out. If you've already got it, this part is going to be easy. If you go straight for price — how much? walk away? sorry man, that's all I can do — then this one's tough, because you're missing the game. The game is being played, and you're not playing it.

What we want to do instead is take the first half of the statement — "I want to work with you" — and respond like this:

"Wait a second. You want to work with me? You do? Really? How come? Why do you want to work with me?"

You've got quotes in front of you. I'm not the lowest price. But you're calling me. I don't understand what's going on. Help me understand. Why do you want to go with me?

A recent coaching session

I had a recent coaching session with a seller — one of the top sellers in the market — and I brought this up. He goes:

"Steve, I just immediately go: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Before we start talking about price, I want to understand why you think I'd be the right fit for this job. Why do you think I'm the company you should use as your supplier?"

I applauded him. That's exactly what I want all of us to do. Hear "I want to work with you" — and shut up. Stop listening to the rest of it.

What comes next — they'll try to bait you

They're going to try to throw out something for you to deal with. "But your price is too high. But you guys are charging me for standby time. But you guys are charging me for this. You guys don't do that. You guys, you guys, you guys..."

They're going to throw out an objection. But if they've said "I want to work with you," then you get to ask the question: Really? How come?

They might even say, "Steve, I want to go with you man. If it was up to me I'd give you the business. But here's the problem..." And then they state the problem.

Don't solve that problem yet.

What I'm going to teach you is that we need to slow down the negotiation. We need to take this information and get leverage.

Finding their value

We need to actually find out why they value us.

"Well, we've been working together a long time."

No — I don't know what that means. How does that help you?

"Well, because you've got great locations. You've got lots of trucks. You've got openings for me. Your drivers are safer."

They're going to bring up a whole bunch of crazy good stuff that we could leverage to say: isn't that worth something? Isn't that worth a buck or two? Or three? Or ten? Or fifteen? I don't know. We've got to find out.

I've heard such great stories over the years:

• "You guys were there when we needed you most."
• "You guys helped us get out of that big bind."
• "You saved us a ton of time and money on that one job — I just feel like I want to go with you guys."
• "I like working with you. You know my business. When I call you, I don't have to tell you all this stuff or call an 800 number. I get to talk to you, and you know me, so you know exactly what I need."

There's a reason why they work with you — but we tend to overlook it. We tend to get stifled by "but the problem is your price needs to be lower," and that's where we give up all our negotiating power by assuming we know why they want to work with us.

Homework

Next time a customer says "I want to work with you, but..." — before you do anything else:

1. Stop listening after the word but. Whatever comes next is the distraction.
2. Ask: Really? How come? Why do you want to work with me?
3. Write down every reason they give you. You are going to need these later to negotiate.
4. Do not offer a discount yet. Not until you know what they value.

If you want to see the whole framework for finding and using customer value, go to The 3 Buckets of Questions.

Where to go next

• Partnership Progression — the full model and why Last Look is above the line
• The 3 Buckets of Questions — the framework for finding the value they care about
• The Bidding Matrix — once you know their value, here's how you price
• Moving a customer up the progression — how a Last Look customer becomes a Partner

Source: training video "2-Partnership" (second half). Supporting examples drawn from the live-coaching corpus.