This is a guest post from Forsyth Director Shad Forsyth. See what else he has to say on LinkedIn.
Price is a funny thing in our world.
On paper, hospital projects are full of precise numbers, clean columns, and neat comparisons. In reality, the work is messy. Things change. Details move. People are stretched. Unsurprisingly, this is where the difference between price‑based thinking and results‑based thinking rears its head.
Recently I was asked a very direct question: “Can you make your quote any cheaper?” No reason given. No mention of a competitor. Just a straight push on price.
I will be honest. I was not as prepared as I wanted to be in that moment (it happens!). I answered, but I walked away thinking, “how could I have handled that better?”
That night I found myself revisiting some content from a sales trainer I follow who talks a lot about showing up as a problem‑solver instead of a product‑pusher. It was a good nudge. The point is not to dodge price questions, but to zoom out and talk about what the price is actually trying to buy.
It pushed me to draft a few questions: The next time I’m asked a similar question, I want to be ready to explore what they really need, not just whether I can shave off a few dollars.
Questions like:
- Have you ever taken the cheaper option and quietly regretted it six months later?
- If this choice doesn’t work how you need it to, who will feel that pain the most day to day?
- When the dust settles and the project is complete, what outcome are you really hoping to achieve?
None of these are tricks. They are just an honest attempt to move the conversation from “What is the cheapest number on the page?” to “What outcome are we actually buying here?”
I firmly believe that in healthcare, the cost of a bad decision is rarely just the PO amount. It’s delays, rework, extra site visits, frustrated staff, and sometimes equipment that never really fits the space or the workflow. The invoice might be lower, but the total cost in time and energy is higher. Not to mention the cost to the healthcare system in general. Procurement teams in redevelopment projects never see the costs that come with having to replace incorrectly spec’d equipment. It happens every time, one way or another.
If we’re just handing you a price at the eleventh hour, all you’re really buying is a product code at the lowest possible number.
I guess I’m sharing this partly as a note to myself. I want to get better at helping people see the difference between commodity pricing and partnership pricing. If we have done the work up front together, all the walk‑throughs, the drawings, the refinements, then the number on the quote includes all of that invisible effort and all of that future risk we are planning to own with you.
If we haven’t done that work, then yes, all you are really buying is a product code at the lowest possible number.
I’m still learning how to have that conversation more clearly and more calmly. But I think it is worth asking, on both sides of the table:
Are we optimising for the cheapest line item, or for the result we actually need six, twelve, twenty‑four months from now?
