Mastering the "Too Expensive" Objection: Why Print and Packaging Sales Need a Paradigm Shift

By Emily Yepes
Published via Printing Impressions Insights

Main Facts

In the high-stakes world of print and packaging sales, few moments cause more anxiety than the inevitable price pushback from a prospect. When a potential client utters the words, "That’s too expensive," the typical salesperson falls into one of two damaging traps: they either cave immediately by offering unwarranted discounts, or they get defensive and launch into a feature-dump justification of their pricing.

According to top-performing sales strategist and Sandler trainer Emily Yepes, neither approach works. Price objections almost never happen in a vacuum. Instead, they are symptomatic of a deeper disconnect in the sales process—specifically, a failure to establish whether the prospect’s underlying business pain is large enough to justify the financial investment.

The core takeaways from this modern sales methodology include:

• Price is relative to pain: A quote only feels "too expensive" when the value of solving the underlying problem has not been properly quantified.
• Discovery must precede numbers: Sales representatives must uncover the true cost of a packaging failure (e.g., missed deadlines, spoiled runs, or lost clients) before ever dropping formal pricing.
• Proactive anchoring prevents sticker shock: Floating a reasonable pricing range early in the conversation allows reps to test the waters and manage expectations before a formal quote is generated.
• Handling early price inquiries: When prospects demand numbers on the first call, reps should avoid evasiveness and instead offer a wide, honest range tied to qualifying questions to maintain momentum.

Chronology

To understand how modern print sales organizations are transforming their approach to pricing, it is helpful to look at the traditional timeline of a sales call—and where it typically goes off the rails—compared to the optimized framework advocated by industry experts.

Phase 1: The Traditional (and Flawed) Sales Timeline

• Minute 1–5 (The Greeting): The sales rep connects with a print buyer or packaging procurement manager. Pleasantries are exchanged.
• Minute 5–15 (The Feature Pitch): The rep immediately pivots to talking about press capabilities, color matching, stock varieties, and turnarounds, assuming the buyer wants a quick transaction.
• Minute 15–30 (The Quote Request): The buyer asks, "What’s your baseline for a run of 10,000 folding cartons?"
• Minute 30+ (The Sticker Shock): The rep delivers a formal quote. The buyer gasps, declares it "too expensive," and negotiations stall or die entirely.

Phase 2: The Optimized Consultative Timeline

• Minute 1–10 (Deep Discovery): Before a single press specification is discussed, the rep investigates the business impact of the packaging. They ask about historical failures, supply chain bottlenecks, and shelf-date pressures.
• Minute 10–20 (Pain Quantification): The buyer and rep calculate the real-world cost of these issues together (e.g., thousands of dollars lost in retail penalties due to delayed product launches).
• Minute 20–25 (Early Range Floating): Armed with context, the rep provides a realistic budgetary bracket ("Projects of this complexity typically land between X and Y"). The buyer responds calmly, having already contextualized the investment.
• Minute 25+ (Collaborative Closing): When the formal quote arrives later, it matches expectations. The price is no longer viewed as an arbitrary expense, but as a cost-effective solution to an expensive problem.

Supporting Data and Industry Context

The printing and packaging sectors operate on notoriously tight margins. With fluctuations in substrate costs, supply chain volatility, and fierce global competition, sales teams are under immense pressure to close deals quickly. However, rushing to quote often destroys profitability.

Data from elite sales organizations—including top-tier performers in the Sandler training network—reveal distinct patterns in how sales conversations succeed or fail:

• The Cost of Premature Quoting: Sales studies consistently show that deals where pricing is introduced before the 50% mark of the discovery phase have a 40% lower close rate than those where value and pain are established first.
• The Psychology of Sticker Shock: When a print buyer hears a number without context, their brain defaults to loss aversion. Without a quantified counter-weight (the cost of the current problem), any price tag greater than zero feels like an unnecessary burden.
• Training and Execution Metrics: Industry leaders who have overhauled their sales methodologies to focus on psychology-based frameworks—such as those taught by Emily Yepes to packaging giants like JS McCarthy Print+ Packaging, Sonoco, and ImageMark—report substantial improvements in win rates, average deal sizes, and client retention. Programs built on these principles regularly score near-perfect satisfaction ratings (such as Yepes’ 4.9 out of 5 average) because they solve practical, everyday frustrations for sales reps.

Official Perspectives and Expert Analysis

Emily Yepes, a powerhouse sales trainer and revenue producer who consistently ranks in the top 5% of over 400 Sandler sales executives worldwide, offers a direct, psychology-based perspective on why traditional pricing conversations fail and how sales professionals can reclaim control.

"When a prospect says ‘that’s too expensive,’ most reps either cave or get defensive. Neither works, because price objections almost never happen in a vacuum. They’re really a question about whether the pain is big enough to justify the spend."

Yepes illustrates this dynamic using a common print industry scenario: a print buyer evaluating a quote for a new packaging run.

"What they’re actually doing is running the math: is this problem worth this number? Your rep’s job isn’t to argue the price down. It’s to make sure the size of the problem was established before the number ever came up."

Rather than viewing sales as a high-pressure persuasion game, Yepes emphasizes a consultative, diagnostic approach.

"What’s this packaging issue actually costing them? Missed shelf dates, reprints, a client they’re at risk of losing? If your reps quantify that pain first, they can float a reasonable range early… That single step prevents the sticker shock conversation entirely, because you already had it."

Addressing the common dilemma of early price inquiries—where prospects demand figures on the first touchpoint—Yepes advises against evasive tactics:

"Resist the urge to get evasive. Give a wide, honest range tied to a couple of quick qualifying questions. It keeps the conversation moving without boxing you into a number that has no context behind it yet."

Implications for Print and Packaging Manufacturers

The shift from transactional quoting to pain-quantified selling carries profound implications for print service providers (PSPs) and packaging converters navigating modern market conditions.

1. Shifting from Commodity to Consultant

In a crowded marketplace where print is increasingly treated as a commodity, price wars erode profitability for everyone. By training sales teams to anchor pricing in business pain, companies can elevate their market position. A print rep who talks exclusively about paper weights and press speeds is easily replaced by a cheaper competitor. A rep who uncovers supply chain vulnerabilities, brand-damaging packaging flaws, and retail compliance risks becomes an indispensable strategic partner.

2. Eliminating Quote Factory Waste

Many printing estimators spend hours generating complex quotes for prospects who are merely "shopping around" or have completely unrealistic budget expectations. By enforcing a rule of discovery before numbers, sales reps can weed out unqualified buyers early, saving countless hours of estimating labor and freeing up production resources for high-probability jobs.

3. Transforming Sales Culture through Training

As Emily Yepes frequently underscores in her work with printing associations and packaging leaders, great salespeople are built, not born. Adopting a psychology-based sales framework requires deliberate, ongoing coaching. Organizations that invest in shifting their sales culture away from defensive discounting and toward confident, value-driven conversations will see immediate improvements in top-line revenue and bottom-line margins.

Ultimately, how a sales team talks about price is a direct reflection of how well they understand the customer’s problem. When the pain is sized up front, every quote feels right—and the "too expensive" objection becomes a relic of the past.

(Disclaimer: The preceding content explores sales strategies within the print and packaging industries. The views and methodologies discussed are designed to support professional development and revenue growth.)