Like always, most customers do not have a solid idea of what our "stuff" costs beyond amazon and best buy.
Take an example of a Media Room/Home Theater - When I ask the "what are you looking to spend?" question of a customer, the reply is generally "send me a good, better, best list of proposals and I can work from there." When my "good' media room is about $7K in electronics alone and best is (in their minds) - $15K!, I find my self more and more lately building various proposals, taking a lot of time and getting pushback on anything over $5K. These are people in $400K + new homes. They they tell me how this $800 Epson projector got all these great reviews and they are not Videophones and don't need to buy the best.

So i have started telling them in the consultation that my most popular package is $X,000, and consists of X, Y, Z, ect. The step down is $X,000 and the step up is $X,000 - whatever. I tend to avoid the good, better best conversation because range perception can be WAY off between us.

I believe some are hesitant because if they say "10k", they think I will somehow try to screw them. Maybe they watch too much Pawn Stars where Rick will NEVER give a price first..

What methods do you guys use to try to get the customer to give you an actual answer for budgets these days?