Those Who Get Negotiated Down vs. Those Who Sell at Their Asking Price: Learning the 'Anchoring' Trap from a Masterpiece

I am your sales consultant, Gorigori no Ochibi-san.
Thank you for always reading.

As we enter June, we have started to see words like "summer sale" and "bonus campaign" on the streets and online.
On the other hand, with the daily price hikes in food and daily necessities, this is a time when consumer psychology to "get things as cheaply and advantageously as possible" is even more active.

Caught up in this public mood, creators and sole proprietors who run their own businesses may also have moments where they feel weak, thinking, "Won't they buy it unless I offer a little discount?"

At the very end of a business negotiation, when you state your fair price, have you ever been told this by a client?

"Hmm, that's over budget. Can you make it a little cheaper?"

Easy discounting is the most dangerous act that damages your own brand value, but the conflict of potentially losing the deal if you refuse this negotiation is extremely painful.

The "Anchoring Trap" that both sellers and buyers fall into

In fact, behind the normalization of such discount negotiations lies the "anchoring trap" that both buyers and sellers have fallen into.

First, we as sellers are caught in the trap ourselves.

By using low market figures as our own anchors, thinking "the going rate for competitors is around this much" or "the average unit price on the internet is around this much," we are putting the brakes on ourselves when it comes to confidently presenting a fair price.

And the customers, who are the buyers, are also caught in the trap.

When a price is presented without a proper basis for comparison, the human brain unconsciously pulls out misguided standards (past experiences or completely different daily expenses) and assumes it is relatively "expensive."

People cannot understand the "absolute value" of things

There is one book I would like to recommend for understanding this irrational mechanism that humans use when judging prices.

In this book, the author points out that humans do not have the ability to measure the "absolute value" of things and are creatures that are simply dragged along by the numbers presented to them.

For example, suppose you simply present this price: "This plan is 300,000 yen."

Then, the customer's brain will unconsciously use their daily expenses, such as a lunch costing a few thousand yen or rent costing tens of thousands of yen, as an anchor for comparison.
As a result, they make an extremely irrational judgment that it is "expensive compared to daily expenses."

This is the "anchoring trap" where you get negotiated down despite presenting a fair price.

So, how do sellers who win contracts at fair prices avoid this trap?
It is that they intentionally drop a 'virtual anchor' into the customer's brain before presenting their own price.

For example, if you are a creator, you should not convey the price simply as a "production cost."

Make the client first aware of the 'loss incurred if they rely on a low-cost freelancer and damage their brand image' or the 'millions of yen in costs if they hire a major agency'.

If you are a consultant, do not let them compare you based on a simple 'hourly rate for meetings'.

Set the benchmark as the 'opportunity loss of wandering on your own for several years' or the 'enormous costs wasted on failed hiring'.

Shallow interpretations and the 'three deep mechanisms' manipulated by top salespeople

When browsing platforms like note, I sometimes see articles that proudly explain the 'anchoring effect'.
However, most of these are discussed in the context of 'techniques to make discounted prices look like a bargain by crossing out the list price,' which is certainly a valid theory for retail goods.

However, when you are trying to deliver your own value at a fair price, it is somewhat dangerous to interpret behavioral economics in such a superficial way, like 'price tag tricks'.
Clients with high literacy will see right through it, and it will actually lower the dignity of your brand.

Professionals who move people in real-world scenarios do not rely on visual tricks.

We master this theory as a powerful set of 'three deep mechanisms' that hack human cognitive biases.

① Irrelevant Anchoring
Interestingly, the human brain is susceptible to price perception being pulled by a large number heard just before, even if that number is completely 'unrelated' to the price. By simply mixing unrelated large numbers into the conversation before presenting the price, such as 'it took 10,000 hours to master this skill' or 'we analyzed data from 2,000 people in the past,' the resistance to the subsequent price is unconsciously lowered.

② Precision Anchoring
If you present a round number like '300,000 yen,' the other party will demand a large discount, saying 'how about 250,000 yen?' However, if you present a precise number with fractions like '314,500 yen,' the other party will mistakenly believe it is a 'strictly calculated limit price,' and the range of the discount will shrink drastically.

③ Self-Anchoring
This is the most powerful method. Instead of the seller stating a number, you make the client say it themselves: 'If we were to hire staff in-house to do this, it would cost about 3 million yen in total, wouldn't it?' People resist the words of others, but they cannot deny the words they have spoken themselves.

How to naturally drop the 'ultimate anchor' during a conversation

Shift the yardstick of comparison from daily expenses to business investment, and precisely place these psychological biases.

So, how do you make the client aware of this advanced psychological technique 'without it feeling like a hard sell, and within an extremely natural conversation'?

The other day, when I decided to pay for a 640,000 yen consulting contract out of my own pocket, I was perfectly targeted by this deep 'anchoring effect'.

The representative on the other side did not suddenly bring up the 640,000 yen figure, but first set an 'enormous virtual cost of 18 million yen' in my brain without any sense of discomfort.

I was completely convinced, thinking, 'I see, in that case, 640,000 yen is actually too cheap,' and I proceeded to payment without even a hint of haggling. The full details of that conversation and the psychological design behind it are dissected in this article.

The valuable product you have created with passion and time should not be appraised in units of tens or hundreds of yen, like a supermarket's evening clearance item.

'I have confidence in the quality of what I make, but when it comes to the final talk about money, I get weak and end up offering a discount.' If you feel that kind of frustration, it is not because you lack skill.

You just need to first pull out the anchor of 'market price' stuck in your own brain and learn the correct 'structure of price presentation'.

For those who want to deliver their value at a fair price without compromise.
Let's change the landscape of your business negotiations starting tomorrow.

A hardcore little one