Undercharging

You say the figure. Before they can answer, you add that it includes extra rounds. Then that it can be lower. Then why it is fair. By the end of the sentence you have argued against your own price.

Or the client says yes straight away. Something in you drops. You send a note with the invoice: sorry this took a while, and I took a bit off.

Nobody asked for the discount. You offered it before they could.

The archive's full page on undercharging describes the body clearly. Heat rises up the neck into the face. There is a pull to look away and fill the silence. The voice speeds up. And there is an urge to keep talking after the figure is out.

That page files it under Compliment Deflection, the pull to push praise away as it arrives. If being told your work is good feels harder than naming its price, start there. If your stomach drops and an apology follows, the pull to smooth things over may be the one running.

It also explains why written quotes come out closer to the real figure. On paper there is no face to read and no silence to fill.

It seems strange to lower a price someone already agreed to. But the yes is a kind of praise. It puts a value on you in front of someone. For some people that is the moment the urge to shrink it fires.

Then comes the cost. You do the work at the low figure and resent it the whole way through. The resentment shows up as slower replies and less care. The work comes back with less praise, and the low figure feels confirmed.

Many people know exactly what others charge. They have the figure in a note on their phone. It does not survive the conversation.

That is because the problem was never the information. It is a few seconds in the room, when the number has to leave your mouth. Those seconds are what can change.

Start with the body, because it moves first. As the number gets close, notice the heat in your face, the stomach drop or the tight chest. Name it to yourself: there is the discount, coming.

Then say one short sentence out loud, even under your breath, before the number.

Then take the different action instead of the usual response. Say the figure and nothing after it. No qualifier, no smaller option, no apology. Let the silence sit. The other person is usually just doing sums.

Count that as one rep, one repetition of the different action. If you dropped the price anyway, name it out loud afterward. That counts too, and the next quote is another chance.