Price Conversation Prep

---
name: price-conversation-prep
description: Prepares one page for tomorrow's price call with your number, your walk-away floor, your realistic alternative, the client's interests, your first two sentences and what you can and cannot trade. Use for "run price-conversation-prep", "the price call is tomorrow", "prepare me for the fee conversation", "I always discount before they ask", "help me hold my price", "what do I say when they push back on price", "walk the client through my proposal", part of the Pricing Under AI Pressure Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Price Conversation Prep Sheet

## When To Use
The price call is tomorrow and you know your habit: the client pauses, and you offer money off before anyone has asked. This sheet answers one question before you dial: what is my number, what do I walk away at, and what will I trade instead of the price?

## When Not To Use
If the client has already said "AI could do this", run AI Objection Answer; if they have asked for money off because you use AI, run AI Discount Response. If you have no number yet, run Value-Based Pricing Worksheet or Three-Option Proposal first.

## Inputs
- Your proposal or worksheet with the number you will put forward, your floor from the Floor Rate Calculator, and your pipeline and capacity for the period so the alternative is real (with Memory on, I can keep your floor and offers between chats)
- What you know about the client: their objective, who decides, what they said in earlier calls, in their words
If you have none of this, I start from your number and your floor alone and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
BATNA and interests, not positions, as the Harvard Program on Negotiation explains them on its public pages. Your best alternative to this deal is what lets you stay calm at the pause, and a weak one cannot be hidden by confidence, so it is written down honestly. The failure this prevents is the pre-emptive discount: the price falls in the first minute because you feared a "no" that nobody said.

## Workflow
1. Ask, all at once: what number are you putting forward and from which document? What happens to your next quarter if this deal does not close? What has the client said about budget, in their words?
2. Write your number and your walk-away floor side by side. The floor is internal and comes from your Floor Rate Calculator plus the delivery days for this job; it never appears in anything the client sees.
3. Write your alternative if there is no deal: other work in the pipeline, capacity freed for a better client, a planned offer. Compare it on equal terms with this deal (money, time, effort). If the alternative is weak, say so plainly; it changes how much you will concede, not what you say.
4. List the client's interests behind their likely position (spend, risk, timing, proving value to their boss), only from what you know. Add the questions that would teach you what you do not know. I never guess their budget or their walk-away point.
5. Name the objective criteria you can point to: your scope, the assumptions the price rests on, the outcome they described; these carry the price, not your nerve. Draft your first two sentences in your own voice: the number, then what it buys. Then the questions you expect, each with an honest answer you can say out loud.
6. List what you can trade (scope, timing, phasing, payment terms) and what each costs you; then the line you will not cross: the same work at a lower price.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Price Conversation Prep Sheet
Client: [name or code] · Call: [date] · Offer: [proposal or option]
## Numbers (internal)
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| My number | [your figure] | [proposal, worksheet] |
| Walk-away floor | [your figure] | [Floor Rate Calculator x delivery days] |
| My alternative if no deal | [what, in money and time] | [pipeline, capacity] |
## Their interests
| What I know (their words) | Interest behind it | Question to learn more |
|---|---|---|
| [as said] | [spend / risk / timing / proof] | [open question] |
## What I say
- Criteria that carry the price: [scope line, assumption, outcome they named]
- First two sentences: [the number] [what it buys]
- Expected question: [question] · My honest answer: [answer]
## Trades
| I can offer | It costs me | I ask in return |
|---|---|---|
| [scope, timing, terms] | [cost] | [what you value] |
Not on the table: the same work at a lower price.
## Decision
[You] decide before [call date] the lowest point you will accept today and which trades you will offer; you have the conversation yourself.
```

## Done When
- Number, floor and alternative are filled from your own records, or marked missing
- Every interest traces to something the client said, not a guess
- The first two sentences state the number before any explanation, and each trade has a cost to you and something asked in return

## Quality Bar
- The floor never leaves the internal section
- No tactic scripts: no anchoring, no silence tricks, no deadline pressure
- The client's negotiator is described by interests, never by personality
- No market rate or competitor price is offered as a reason; I do not know them
- You have the conversation; Claude prepares, never scripts tactics

## Next
Run price-ai-objection-answer (AI Objection Answer) for the moment the client says AI could do this.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).