Stop Offering Discounts & Make More Money

Contrary to my thrifty consumer desires, I want you to stop doing something.

Stop offering discounts.

There are only certain specific businesses that should discount their stuff and only at certain times.  These are retailers but not all of them and not all of the time.  We’ll talk about them one day.

I subscribe to Groupon, not to buy stuff, but to find local businesses that are desperate and stupidly selling themselves short on how to be successful. 

Professionals should NEVER advertise discounts.

Think about it, do you want to go to a discount dentist or a discount lawyer, or a discount ________ (fill in the blank) ?

Or do you want to go to a Trusted dentist, Trusted lawyer, Trusted __________(fill in the blank) ?

I realize that there is a percentage of the population that are price shoppers but the problem is that unless there is a very good reason to be offering a discount in your advertising messaging, those discounted offers will damage your credibility and make you less trustworthy.

We needed a plumber to check out a problem that had us stumped last month.  When my wife asked who to call, I had her call the plumber I trusted.  It cost me $79 for him to offer a diagnosis and tell us that the faucet was getting old and that I should (and could) replace it myself one day.  He also told us what to do in the meantime to prevent the problem from reoccurring.

Who knows what another plumber would have done?  Tried to convince my wife that we needed $500 worth of repairs right now?  Maybe.  I’ve been through horror stories like that.

I had a dentist for awhile that was finding cavities that my previous dentist didn’t find and when I switched dentists again, the new dentist didn’t find the cavities my the other dentist warned me about. I had a gut feeling about the one dentist that was finding all these cavities and decided not to trust him, even when they offered special pricing to fix these problems.  Or maybe it was because they offered special pricing…

Trust is more important than discounts in nearly any situation.  Part of that trust is that trusting that the company or the people are going to provide you with the value you expect for the price you agree to pay.  No one can put a dollar discount on that.  And you shouldn’t.

We will pay more if we trust you and that’s how you make more money.