Phone Skills & Enrollment

The Three-Times Rule: How to Handle “What’s the Price?” Without Sounding Evasive — or Lying

A caller who presses for a number three times in a row isn’t trying to trap you — she’s telling you exactly what she needs to hear next, if you know how to listen.

I got a question on a recent mastermind call that every single one of you has lived through. Domenic, one of our members, had a lady call in asking about classes. She asked the price. He redirected. She asked again. He redirected again. She asked a third time, pushing for a specific number or at least a range, and by the end of the call he’d booked the appointment but walked away convinced she wasn’t going to show. He asked me how to handle it better, because it wasn’t the first time — it happens to every front desk person, every instructor answering the phone, in every school, every week.

This is one of those moments that separates schools that enroll consistently from schools that leak prospects at the very first point of contact. And the fix isn’t complicated. I’ve used the same rule of thumb for staff training for more than forty years. I call it the Three-Times Rule, and once you understand why it works, you’ll never wing a price question on the phone again.

The Double-Edged Sword of the Price Question

Here’s the trap most owners and staff fall into. There are two things you have to be true at the same time, and they pull in opposite directions. First, you don’t want to discuss price on the phone — not because you’re hiding something, but because a number with no context is meaningless and it invites the caller to make a decision before they’ve seen your facility, met your instructors, or understood what they’re actually buying. Second, you never want to come across as evasive. The instant a prospect feels like you’re dodging a simple question, you’ve lost trust, and trust is the entire game in this business.

So the real question isn’t “how do I avoid talking about price?” It’s “how do I not talk about price without ever looking like I’m avoiding the question?” That’s what the Three-Times Rule solves.

First Time They Ask: It’s Not a Price Question, It’s a Conversation Opener

Understand what’s actually happening the first time a caller asks “how much are your lessons?” In the overwhelming majority of cases, that person has no idea what to ask. They don’t know anything about style, lineage, curriculum, or how programs are structured. They’re not a martial arts buyer — they’re a person trying to think of a reasonable question to open a phone call with. “What are your class times” and “how much is it” are the two things everybody knows to ask, so that’s what comes out. It is almost never a serious pricing inquiry. It’s a conversational icebreaker.

So rule number one: I ignore it, and I ask a question back. I don’t stonewall — I redirect with genuine curiosity about them. Is this for you or for your child? Have you done anything like this before? How did you hear about us? Each of those questions does two things at once: it gathers information I actually need to help them, and it moves the conversation away from a number that means nothing out of context.

Once I’ve got a little bit of that picture, I pivot straight into the introductory offer. Here’s roughly how that sounds in practice:

“Well, how much are your lessons?”
“Oh, is this for yourself, or for someone else — a child, maybe?”
“It’s for myself.”
“Great. Have you had any experience with this before, done anything like it?”
“No, not really.”
“How’d you find out about us?”
“I saw you online, actually Googled you.”
“Fantastic. Well, like it says there, what we do is we start with two weeks free — no obligation. It gives you a chance to come in, meet the instructors, see the facility, and learn a bit more about the program. We’ve got a class tonight at 6:15, or tomorrow at 7. What works best for your schedule?”

Notice what that script never does: it never gives a number, and it never feels like a dodge. It answers a bigger, better question — what does it cost to find out if this is right for you? Nothing, for two weeks, no obligation. That is a completely honest, completely satisfying answer to a first-time price question.

Second Time They Ask: Redirect Back to the Introductory Process

Some callers accept the invitation and move straight to booking a time. Others push back: “Before I do that, give me an idea of how much it is.” This is the second ask, and it deserves respect — this person wants more than a conversational nicety, but they still don’t need a number yet. What they need is a clearer picture of the process.

So the second redirect goes back to the introductory experience, but with a bit more substance: “Sure. Generally what we’re going to do is a couple of lessons, completely free, no obligation. Then we’ll do a bit of an evaluation to see what makes the most sense — what type of program you’d be most comfortable with, what fits your goals, what you’d qualify for. I’ll go over all of that in detail at the lesson.”

That’s not a brush-off. It’s an honest description of how pricing actually gets determined at your school — because it does depend on the program, the schedule, and the person. You’re not hiding the ball; you’re describing the real process instead of quoting a number that hasn’t been earned yet.

Third Time They Ask: Give a Range — Never a Specific Number

Now here’s where it gets interesting, and where most schools get it wrong. If a caller asks a third time, they’re usually telling you something real: a parent might say “I don’t want to get her excited about this and then find out it’s not something we can afford.” An adult prospect might phrase it as “I don’t want to go through all that time and effort if it’s not realistically in the budget.” That’s not stalling. That’s a legitimate, reasonable concern, and it earns a real answer.

On the third ask, I give a range. Never a specific dollar figure — a range. And the range isn’t arbitrary. The top end of the range is exactly what I’m going to quote as the standard monthly tuition the day they enroll. The bottom end of the range is what that same monthly tuition works out to if someone pays in full for the year and gets a 15–20% prepay discount, divided back out over twelve months. So at current price points, that sounds like: “On average, it’s going to range from $337 to $397 a month, depending on how we structure things and what makes the most sense for you. But that gives you a general sense of where it lands.” Then I let it feel a little up in the air, because it genuinely is until we’ve done the evaluation.

The rule I never break: I will not go below what the monthly tuition would be if they prepaid the year, and I will not go above the actual full monthly tuition I’m going to quote at enrollment. That range is real. Both ends of it are numbers I could actually put in a contract that day.

The One Mistake That Destroys Trust Forever

Here’s the trap I want you to avoid at all costs, because I’ve watched it wreck enrollment conversations again and again. Some schools tell callers, “We have programs that range from $150 to $450 a month,” just to make the number sound more approachable on the phone. Then the prospect comes in, goes through the introductory lessons, sits down for enrollment, and hears the real number — say, $397 a month. And the very next question out of their mouth is: “What about the $150 option?”

Now what do you say? “Oh, I made that up to get you in the door”? There’s no way to answer that question without admitting you weren’t straight with them on the phone. I’ve heard people try to patch it by saying something like, “well, if you only trained once a week, that would be the price” — but if you’re never actually going to enroll anyone on a once-a-week program, don’t use it as one of your quoted options either. Don’t pull a number out of the air to make the phone call easier, because you will pay for it at the enrollment desk, and you’ll pay for it with the one thing you can never buy back once it’s gone: the prospect’s trust in what you tell them.

This is also all strictly a phone-call skill. On the phone, I’m never getting into the mechanics of the discount — I’m not explaining that the low end assumes paying in full for the year, I’m not breaking down the math. I simply say the range and move on: “On average, it’s going to range from $337 to $397 a month. Really, it depends on what type of program makes the most sense and how you want to structure it — but we’ll go through all of that after the introductory lessons.” The detail belongs in the enrollment conversation, face to face, where you can actually walk someone through it properly.

Know Your Number Cold

My business partner and multiple-time world champion Jeff Smith adds the piece that makes this actually usable under pressure: take your real, full monthly tuition price, subtract 20%, and divide by twelve. That’s your low end. You should know that number off the top of your head, every single time, without having to do the math live on the phone while a prospect is waiting on the other end. If your standard tuition is $397, your low end is roughly $317–$318. Round it, know it, and be ready to say it without hesitation.

Train Your Staff on This, Not Just Yourself

Domenic’s situation is a perfect example of why this needs to be a trained skill for anyone who answers your phones, not something each person improvises in the moment. He wasn’t doing anything wrong by redirecting — he was doing the first half of the job correctly. What was missing was the structure: knowing that the first ask gets a redirect toward the person and the intro offer, the second ask gets a redirect toward the introductory process, and only the third ask earns an honest range built from your real numbers. Role-play all three stages with your staff until the language is second nature. The words matter less than the sequence and the discipline of never inventing a number to make a phone call easier in the moment.

Handled this way, you never look evasive, because you’re never dodging — you’re answering the question underneath the question. And you never have to walk anything back at the enrollment desk, because every number you gave on the phone was already true.