How to Respond When a Lead Asks How Much You Charge

When a lead asks “how much do you charge?” by text or web form, reply within the hour with three things in one message: a Range whose low end is your real starting price and whose top sits no more than about 25% above it, one Reason the price moves, and one Next step the lead can say yes to.

This is for premium service businesses that get the price question before any call. If the objection arrives after a discovery call, see what to do when prospects say your price is too high.

Rules of thumb

• Put your real starting price at the bottom of the range. Ames and Mason (2015) found that this “bolstering” range earned offer-makers better terms than a single figure, without making them seem more aggressive (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).
• Keep the range width between 5% and 25% of the low end. That is the band more than 80% of range offers fell into in the same paper’s pilot survey of a used-car negotiation, and the authors say wider ranges add little. The worked replies below run 17% to 20%.
• End with one question, not three. Each worked reply below asks for a single fact or offers two call times.
• Reply inside the hour. Firms that tried to contact web leads within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify them as those that tried even an hour later (HBR, 2011).

What is the Range-Reason-Next-Step reply?

The Range-Reason-Next-Step reply is a three-part answer to a first-touch price question that gives an honest number, explains it in one line, and asks for one small commitment. Each part does a separate job.

1. Range. Two figures, low end first, where the low end is a price you would genuinely accept for the most common scope. “Most clients invest $15,000 to $18,000.”
2. Reason. The single factor that decides where in the range this lead lands, in their words, not yours. “Where you land depends on whether we search one city or several.”
3. Next step. One question that also qualifies, or two specific call times. “Is it just Sydney, or are you open to Melbourne too?”

The framework neither hides the price nor forces a call: on a premium enquiry the price question is often the lead checking whether you are in their world. WeddingPro’s guide to the same question makes the matching point for wedding businesses: if you need more information to quote, ask for it rather than sending generic pricing (WeddingPro, 2020).

FAQ: how to respond when a lead asks how much you charge

Should I give my price by text or wait for a call?

Give a range by text. Refusing any figure until a call reads as evasive to a lead who is comparing providers, while a range with one reason and one question answers honestly and keeps the conversation open.

Is it better to give a range or a single price?

A range with your real starting price at the bottom. In five studies, Ames and Mason found these bolstering ranges led to better deal terms than a single figure without worse impressions of the offer-maker (Ames and Mason, 2015).

How wide should my price range be?

Between 5% and 25% of the low end. For a $9,000 starting price, that means a top figure between $9,450 and $11,250.

What if the lead asks for the price again after I sent a range?

Give the figure plainly and ask one question about the difference between the low and high end. A second ask means the lead wants a straight answer, and a further deflection often ends the thread.

What do I do if the lead goes quiet after hearing the price?

Follow up with a short message that adds something new, such as what the price includes, rather than repeating the number. If the objection comes up on a call, treat it as a discovery problem instead.

How wide should the price range be?

A price range in a first reply should be 5% to 25% wide, measured as (high minus low) divided by low, with your real starting price as the low end. That comes from negotiation research, not lead-handling studies, so treat it as a starting rule.

Ames and Mason ran five studies on opening offers and distinguished three kinds of range. A bolstering range starts at your target and extends upward ($7,200 to $7,600 instead of $7,200), and in their studies it led to better deal terms for the offer-maker without worse impressions. A backdown range starts at your target and extends downward ($6,800 to $7,200), and the authors call it “generally ill-advised” because it gives away value. A bracketing range straddles the target and mainly helps the relationship. On width, they write that a normative-width range, “on the order of 5% and 25%”, may yield most of the benefit and that extreme widths risk unhelpful reactions.

The arithmetic is quick. For a $15,000 starting price, a 20% range tops out at $15,000 × 1.20 = $18,000. A 50% range would run to $22,500, which can read as “they don’t know what it costs”. The rule breaks if you put your hoped-for price at the bottom: if the low end is a figure you would not accept, the lead will hold you to it.

Four worked replies: matchmaker, wedding planner, concierge and agency

The four worked replies below apply Range-Reason-Next-Step to the businesses that most often get the price question by text or web form before any call. Prices are illustrative placeholders, not market rates. For what matchmakers publish, see how much matchmakers charge; for planners, luxury wedding planner fees.

Why a bare number by text stalls the thread

A bare number sent by text gives the lead a complete answer and no reason to reply, so the thread often ends before any value has been shown. Nothing in the message asks for anything back.

These two threads show the same enquiry handled both ways. They are illustrations of the pattern, not measured outcomes, and no conversion rate is claimed.

The dodge fails too, in the other direction. “Pricing depends on your needs, let’s jump on a call” answers nothing and asks for a large commitment, so a lead comparing three providers often moves to the one that gave a figure. If the lead goes quiet after either reply, the sequence in how to follow up leads who ghosted picks up from there.

When to send a range, a starting price or a full quote

A range fits when you can bound the most likely scope within 25%; a starting price fits when scope can vary by more than that; a full quote fits only once you have the facts that set the price. This threshold table turns that into a decision.

The second-ask row matters most. A lead who asks twice has told you the dodge did not work, and a third deflection often ends the conversation. Answer it straight.

How fast should you reply to a price enquiry?

A price enquiry should get its reply within the hour, because lead responsiveness drops sharply after that point in the best-known study of web leads. In the 2011 Harvard Business Review analysis of 1.25 million leads at 42 US companies, firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried even an hour later (HBR).

The same article reports an audit of 2,241 US companies in which 37% responded to a web test lead within an hour, 23% never responded, and the average response time among those that responded within 30 days was 42 hours. The data are from 2011 and the US, so treat them as directional. A saved Range-Reason-Next-Step reply for each service is what makes an evening reply possible.

What answering price enquiries yourself costs in time

Answering price enquiries yourself costs one template per service plus minutes per enquiry, and the real cost is the hours you cannot cover. The figures are assumptions.

• Set-up: about two hours to write and test one Range-Reason-Next-Step reply per service, using your real starting prices (assumption).
• Per enquiry: 3 to 5 minutes to personalise the reason line and send (assumption). At 60 enquiries a month that is 3 to 5 hours.
• Coverage: an enquiry at 7:42pm on a Saturday waits until you are free, which is where the one-hour window is lost.

Below a few dozen enquiries a month, a saved template on your phone is enough. Past that point, or when enquiries arrive mostly after hours, owners often hand first response and booking to someone else; outsourcing lead follow-up sets out the options. LeadsNow’s AI setters call, text and message each new lead within permitted calling hours and book the call, and LeadsNow counts 50,769+ AI-booked sales appointments since 2017; AI appointment setting explains the method, and lead generation for high-ticket service businesses covers the wider funnel.

Sources

1. Ames, D. R. and Mason, M. F. (2015), Tandem anchoring: informational and politeness effects of range offers in social exchange, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108(2)
2. Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K. and Elkington, D. (2011), The short life of online sales leads, Harvard Business Review
3. WeddingPro (2020), How to answer “How much do you charge?”