Black Friday started on Thursday for many stores this year… even Wednesday.
Cyber Monday started on Thursday for some.
Honda holds a Cyber Monday sale that lasts two full weeks!
And not to be outdone, American Express hands us Small Business Saturday (note that Saturday is singular. Wow…one whole day for us small business owners), a day for small businesses everywhere to drop their prices, have a sale and bring in new customers.
While I hope all your businesses benefited from this outpouring of cash and credit cards, some danger’s hiding in this overanxious frenzy and attention on sales.
Merchants are training us—training us—to wait for the sales.
While sales bring us in, they don’t do much for margins and profits. Plus, we don’t come back when the sales are gone.
Frankly, sales do something else even more troublesome. As much as all of us love a good sale, sales can damage your business in another way.
Sales all too often create just that, a sale, a deal, a transaction. What we should be striving to create is a relationship.
Long-term customer relationships mean you’ve cultivated customers who buy from you again and again, who turn to you first to solve a problem, who recommend you to their friends and colleagues.
Let me give you a personal example. We currently are working with a prospect to do some positioning work for his start-up business. This CEO has said “Yes, let’s do this” four times.
However, he has yet to give us a credit card or check.
I can feel something going on that he hasn’t surfaced yet. First, he asked for references. Check. Done. But I could tell that wasn’t what he wanted.
Then he asked for an example of the work. Check. Done. But I knew that wasn’t the issue either.
Finally, we got around to why his “yes” hadn’t turned into kick-off money. He wanted a reduced price for the service. Yet, knowing he was concerned about money in this start-up, I had already rounded every corner and taken out anything that wasn’t necessary, as I do for every customer—many of whom are start-ups too.
I told him the price was the price.
The price is the price because I don’t want to train him to expect a discount. The price is the price because we want to do the next piece of work with him and not have the heart of the relationship be the price. The price must be equitable for both of us, but discounting will “train” him to always expect one, and frankly, we wouldn’t want the business for even $1 less.
Be confident in your prices when they are built on sound reasoning. Resist the request to discount that equitable price.
Don’t accidentally train your customers to wait for the discount.
Go forth and do great things,
Martha and Chris