Tweet
Grrrr....
I haven't had any customer use "in this economy" since the jerkface who got a free update thrown at him.
But I've noticed that folks are being a lot more insistent about getting a discount.
It's not that I've ever minded anyone asking for a discount. But when I say we don't have any, that means we don't. Arguing the point is annoying to me and a waste of YOUR time. Because you will get noplace fast.
Here's the scoop. We are a small family business that makes one product that is useful to a specific group of people. It is also useful to small businesses, schools, agencies and non-profits that make products for the same group of people.
None of our customers are rolling in money. None.
We have to earn a specific amount of money to meet our obligations (bills, payroll, equipment, etc.) and continue developing and improving our product and provide service for our customers.
We could decide to offer one group of customers, for example agencies, a discount, but then we'd have to charge other groups more to meet our costs. Who are we going to charge more to?
Small businesses? Schools? Non-profits? Families and individuals?
How on earth would doing such a thing be fair? Well, it isn't fair. So we don't do it.
I am actually allowed to use that above explanation to folks who don't want to take "no discounts" for an answer. It usually works.
Until yesterday. I pulled that out after the customer, who represented a state agency, kept asking for a discount after I said "no" three times.
Want to know what he did?
He decided to appeal to our greed. See, he was going to recommend us to everyone he knew and it would lead to tons of sales. He was handing us a freaking *opportunity* here.
That was almost insulting, but he doesn't know that nobody who works at our company does it to get rich and nobody here gets commission. Ours is not a wealthy clientele so we'd be pretty stupid to expect to get wealthy off it.
So yeah. That didn't get him anywhere either. I expressed appreciation that he was familiar with our product and let him know it made me happy to hear that he felt it was of high enough quality that he'd feel comfortable recommending us the State of XX's clients.
Was our intrepid discount-seeker going to give up? Not quite yet.
His next argument was that State of XX has to jump through many more hoops (e.g. getting quotes from multiple vendors) to get purchases approved over a certain amount, the amount just so happened to be the price he had been angling for all along. Now that could be a coincidence, it could be a lie or it could be that avoiding paperwork could be the actual reason he'd been going through the entire song and dance routine in the first place.
If it was the third possibility, he should have just cut to the chase in the first place. Obviously, we don't offer an avoiding-paperwork discount, but we can make it slightly easier for them if they need to get multiple quotes. So I offered him the names of two resellers and offered to put our (full price) quote in writing so he'd have three quotes. Would that work for them?
That did the trick. No more arguments. He even thanked me nicely.
I haven't had any customer use "in this economy" since the jerkface who got a free update thrown at him.
But I've noticed that folks are being a lot more insistent about getting a discount.
It's not that I've ever minded anyone asking for a discount. But when I say we don't have any, that means we don't. Arguing the point is annoying to me and a waste of YOUR time. Because you will get noplace fast.
Here's the scoop. We are a small family business that makes one product that is useful to a specific group of people. It is also useful to small businesses, schools, agencies and non-profits that make products for the same group of people.
None of our customers are rolling in money. None.
We have to earn a specific amount of money to meet our obligations (bills, payroll, equipment, etc.) and continue developing and improving our product and provide service for our customers.
We could decide to offer one group of customers, for example agencies, a discount, but then we'd have to charge other groups more to meet our costs. Who are we going to charge more to?
Small businesses? Schools? Non-profits? Families and individuals?
How on earth would doing such a thing be fair? Well, it isn't fair. So we don't do it.
I am actually allowed to use that above explanation to folks who don't want to take "no discounts" for an answer. It usually works.
Until yesterday. I pulled that out after the customer, who represented a state agency, kept asking for a discount after I said "no" three times.
Want to know what he did?
He decided to appeal to our greed. See, he was going to recommend us to everyone he knew and it would lead to tons of sales. He was handing us a freaking *opportunity* here.
That was almost insulting, but he doesn't know that nobody who works at our company does it to get rich and nobody here gets commission. Ours is not a wealthy clientele so we'd be pretty stupid to expect to get wealthy off it.
So yeah. That didn't get him anywhere either. I expressed appreciation that he was familiar with our product and let him know it made me happy to hear that he felt it was of high enough quality that he'd feel comfortable recommending us the State of XX's clients.
Was our intrepid discount-seeker going to give up? Not quite yet.
His next argument was that State of XX has to jump through many more hoops (e.g. getting quotes from multiple vendors) to get purchases approved over a certain amount, the amount just so happened to be the price he had been angling for all along. Now that could be a coincidence, it could be a lie or it could be that avoiding paperwork could be the actual reason he'd been going through the entire song and dance routine in the first place.
If it was the third possibility, he should have just cut to the chase in the first place. Obviously, we don't offer an avoiding-paperwork discount, but we can make it slightly easier for them if they need to get multiple quotes. So I offered him the names of two resellers and offered to put our (full price) quote in writing so he'd have three quotes. Would that work for them?
That did the trick. No more arguments. He even thanked me nicely.
Comment