I always get the participants to write down the questions they always ask the customers in my sales training.

Understanding their current questioning habit will allow me to help them uncover their limiting beliefs and blind spots in questioning skills.

And one of the most common questions is – “What is your budget?”

After the customer mentioned their budget, most salespeople will propose solutions within the “mentioned” budget.

I then challenge their assumptions with curiosity:

“What leads you to this conclusion that the customer will not buy the solutions that are higher than his/ her mentioned budget?”

Imagine when you were a customer …

If you have a budget of $5,000, how much would you tell the seller about your budget?

$4,500?

$4,000?

$3,000?

Do you agree that most of us will not tell the seller our exact amount of budget?

So, what makes us think that the budget mentioned by the customers is the actual budget?

Suppose we believe the mentioned budget is the actual budget. In that case, we will miss out on the opportunities to up-sell better solutions to the customers.

So, how much would you tell the seller about your budget?