How often when you go shopping do you walk away with nothing? Absolutely nothing! I regularly do, I love to window shop and I have a fantastic strategy in place to stop me buying things that I’d like and know I’ll probably never ever use. Do you often enough find when you make a sales pitch to a customer and you’ve overcome most of the obstacles and they say: “I just can’t afford it, I know we need it but….” or attend a free event where there is the hard sale towards the end and you know in your heart and soul you’d really benefit from it, do you say to yourself “I’d love to buy that, I just don’t have the money for it.”
My question is Really? Honestly? You can’t find the money to buy that training or product that you really, really want? Now before you snap back at me saying, “I just told you, didn’t I?”, stop and really think it out. What people who have an average, or above average income are really telling you is “I don’t want to have to change anything in my current lifestyle to enable me to get that product/training, I just don’t want to admit it.”
I’ve heard a world class trainer recently say the following to the crowd he was talking to: “If buying 
this is going to leave you in financial hardship, and by hardship I mean your basic bills, groceries, utilities, loans & mortgage are not going to be paid then you really can’t afford this. If however, you really want to do this training and it means you cut out a social event, or cut back on a luxury and you are not prepared to do so, then you really don’t want this training, and that is fine, just don’t lie to yourself and me and say you can’t afford it.”
The nice thing was it took the excuses away that the average person uses and people were either interested in doing the training or they weren’t. Either was ok, the main thing was they were honest. I used to use a similar line when I was a party plan manager and was giving the blurb at the sales pitch time: “Only buy what you know you can afford and will use, don’t buy if it’s going to sit at the bottom of your wardrobe”. I had top sales in Ireland for three years and very, very few cancellations or returns.
When we really, truly want something we will move heaven and earth to get it. We always find a way, be it cutting out something we currently do, cutting back on our spending, taking out a loan, looking for a payment plan instead of paying it all up-front, re-arranging our time to fit it in. So next time you hear yourself even thinking “I can’t afford it” ask yourself what you are not prepared to give up in order to have it?