If you’ve been making sales for a long time, you probably understand, like many people, how difficult sales can be. Often customers will claim that they cannot afford your product or services or claim that the price is too high. Some of these customers may try to ask you if you can lower the price a bit more so they can afford it. Often times, many merchants are willing to do this in order to get the customer. But the question remains whether this is a good strategy or not. This article will not take sides, but will present points that support and go against this strategy.
# 1: Advantage of Lowering Prices for a Specific Customer
Sales is a pretty tough job. It is difficult as you are drawing the attention of a potential customer. You’ve probably gotten a lot of denials from people who won’t even talk to you, either because they’re just not interested or because they insist they don’t have the money. At the rate he is going, he calculates that he will earn zero dollars. So, you finally find someone who is interested in buying your product or service and they ask you to lower the price.
One of the biggest advantages is that you will most likely get a sale. Considering the amount of no’s you’ve received so far, a “yes” sounds like a welcome addition. Also, if you can get a customer, you may be able to get other customers with the help of that customer. Sometimes it may only take one customer to get others through the door. Sounds like a win-win situation. But you also need to be aware of a key scam in this situation.
# 2: downside of lowering prices for a specific customer
You run two major risks in this situation: 1) your customer will continue to ask you for discounts for each subsequent item they buy, and 2) other people will find out about these discounts and request the same. You have to be careful not to let your customers take advantage of you in this situation and be careful that if you do not grant them the discount, they will write bad reviews about your business. It is very difficult to decide whether you should bend the rules for a specific customer, and hopefully this article will present a starting point for tackling this problem.