Talking a Client Out of Spending Earns Their Trust

Imagine a home organizer named Harriet Lowe who is working on Mrs. Castellano’s bedroom closet. Mrs. Castellano has seen a custom closet system in a showroom, with lit shelves and drawers that glide shut. With installation, it costs $9,000. She asks Harriet to order it. Harriet orders the systems her clients buy and earns 20% on each one, so this order is worth $1,800 to her.

Harriet looks inside the closet first. The rods and shelves are sound. The closet is full because about a third of the clothes in it have not been worn in two years.

She has three more appointments that afternoon. “It’s a beautiful system,” she says. “I’ll order it today.” The system goes in a month later. By spring, the lit shelves are full, mostly of the clothes Mrs. Castellano does not wear. She has spent $9,000 on a closet that works no better than before.

When a friend asks about Harriet, Mrs. Castellano says, “She’s lovely. She sold me a very expensive closet.” The friend calls a different organizer. So does Mrs. Castellano, when the garage needs doing.

Suppose instead that Harriet says what she saw. “I wouldn’t buy the system yet. Your rods and shelves are fine. The closet is full because a third of what’s in it hasn’t been worn in two years. Give me one day to clear it with you. If it still doesn’t work after that, I’ll order the system.”

Mrs. Castellano books the day, at $600, and afterward the closet works. In the spring she hires Harriet for the garage and the guest rooms, and she gives Harriet’s name to two friends.

Harriet looked at the same closet both times. What changed was whether she said what she saw when saying it cost her $1,800. A client asks four questions about you, and your work cannot answer the third: “Are you on their side?” Until the closet, every job that was good for Mrs. Castellano was also good for Harriet. The closet was the first time the two pointed different ways, and Mrs. Castellano watched Harriet choose. Here is why that moment counts for more than the sale.

A firm that teaches trust tests a salesperson with one question

In 2007, the firm Trusted Advisor Associates published an article on its site with a test for salespeople. Its writer is one of the authors of The Trusted Advisor, a book on how professionals earn a client’s trust. The test is one question. “Have you ever recommended a competitor to one of your better clients?”

A yes, the article says, means that “you have demonstrably put your customer’s short-term interests ahead of your own.” If you have never done it, the likeliest reason is that “you always shade your answers to suit your own advantage.”

The reason is in what the book calls the trust equation. It has four parts: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation. The first three add to trust. Self-orientation is how much a client thinks you are in it for yourself, and it takes trust away. The article says the other three pale beside it, because a doubt about your motives spoils everything else. “Bad motives taint every other aspect of trust.”

The article also lists four kinds of yes that do not count. The client did not matter much to you. You were going to lose the client anyway. You had nothing to sell them in that case. Or you sent them to a competitor you expected to fail. The only yes that counts is an important client, better served by someone else, in a case that matters.

That test is about sending a client to a competitor. The step to talking a client out of a purchase is the course’s own. Here is the step. Tell a client not to buy something you would have earned on, and you pass the same test in a smaller form. The client sees you give up money to protect theirs. That is the answer to the third question, and your skill cannot give it.

A designer stopped earning on what clients bought, and a business manager promised her referrals

Kishani Perera is an interior designer in Los Angeles. In 2022, she told Business of Home why she stopped adding a markup to what she bought for clients. She “always felt like markups created a bit of conflict of interest.” She had worked with a designer “who was always trying to buy the most expensive things for her clients, so she could make more on markups.”

A few years earlier, when she wanted to simplify the business, she dropped the markup as an experiment. She let clients pay for everything directly, passed along all of her firm’s discounts, and charged by the hour for her time. “I found that I make more money this way, and the clients are so much happier, too,” she said. “They feel like our interests are aligned because they know I’m looking out for them and trying to get them the best deals.”

Then she described a large project for a celebrity. The client’s business manager had budgeted $3 million for furnishings and fees. Perera came in at $1.5 million. The business manager told her, she said, “I will refer you to all of our clients.”

The business manager looks after the client’s money for a living. The reason the business manager gave was the $1.5 million she did not spend, and a happier client. Perera changed how she bills so that her advice and her income no longer pull against each other. In the moment a client is about to spend, you can make the same choice without changing your billing at all.

A designer urges the bigger job when the cheaper one will not do

In 2020, Business of Home asked 11 interior designers what they talk clients out of most often. Jill Litner Kaplan, a designer in Boston, gave an answer that runs the other way. Her clients often want a kitchen makeover, one “that doesn’t require a full renovation.”

When she hears that, she asks herself whether to do the makeover. The alternative is to “spend the time educating and urging my clients to do a renovation that will require patience, time, effort, and most of all, money.” The conversations can be difficult, she said. “Those clients who have placed their trust in us and followed our advice have thankfully been very appreciative and happy with their new-and-improved kitchens.”

Measured against this lesson, Kaplan talks clients out of spending too little. So the test is not the size of the bill. The test is whether the money will get the client what they asked for. Harriet’s closet needed less, and Kaplan’s kitchens needed more. So when your best version of the job is what will serve the client, offer it at your full price. The moment that earns loyalty is the one where the right answer costs you. Only then can the client see whose side you are on.

Why pointing out what your advice costs you goes wrong

Imagine an event planner named Talia Brook who is planning Mrs. Ferreira’s 60th birthday dinner for 80 guests. Mrs. Ferreira asks for a dessert truck at the end of the night, at $4,000. Talia earns 15% on every vendor she books. Dessert is served at 9:30, and the dinner ends at 10, so nobody will want a truck.

Talia is right about the truck. Between two calls, she says, “I’d skip the truck. Nobody will eat after the dessert course. Most planners would book it anyway, because they take a cut, but I’m not going to do that to you.”

Mrs. Ferreira skips the truck. She also hears the last sentence. Now she knows that Talia takes a cut on what she books, and that Talia wants credit for not taking it. Two weeks later, Talia recommends a florist at $6,000, and Mrs. Ferreira asks two other florists for quotes first. When her sister asks about Talia, Mrs. Ferreira says, “She’s good. She makes sure you know when she’s saving you money.”

Talia’s advice was right, and her first two sentences were the whole answer. The third sentence put Talia in the middle of a decision about Mrs. Ferreira’s party. It is the self-orientation the trust article warns about, said out loud. The version that works stops at “after the dessert course.”

Turning down money is not bad for business

The money is real, and telling a client not to spend can sound like advice to earn less. The trust article answers that directly. “No client expects a professional to go out of business serving them; the need to make a good profit is easily accepted.”

The test is also narrower than it sounds. It counts a client who matters, in a case that matters, when the purchase will not do what the client wants. Every other purchase you sell at your full price. Harriet gave up $1,800 on one closet. She got the garage and the guest rooms, and Mrs. Castellano gave her name to two friends. Perera found that she made more money once her income stopped depending on what her clients bought.

How to talk a client out of a purchase

When a client asks you to order or sell them something, ask what they want it to do before you agree. For example, a personal stylist can ask, “What’s the coat for? The office, or weekends in the country?”
Check whether the purchase will do what the client wants. If it will, sell it at your full price and do the job well. Do not add a cheaper option the client did not ask about.
If the purchase will not do it, tell the client in the same conversation. Say what you would not buy, your reason, and what you would do instead. For example, a specialist realtor can say, “I wouldn’t redo the kitchen before you list. Buyers at this price want to choose their own, and you’d get back less than you spend.”
When the job needs to be bigger to work, say that too, with your reason. For example, a tutor can say, “One session a week won’t get her there by the March exam. She needs two, from January.”
Leave out what your advice costs you. Do not mention your cut, your commission, or what someone else would have sold the client. The client can work that out, and saying it makes your advice about you again. For example, a caterer can say, “You don’t need the second main course. With the canapés, one is plenty for 30.” Then she stops.
If the client buys it anyway, do the job well. Do not bring your advice up again, because the client heard it the first time.

Next: You will see how to make that honesty a habit, so a client never mistakes it for a tactic.