Don’t Give Discounts

You can expect your clients from time to time to ask you for a discount. It may be an existing client or a new client - most of my tips here apply to the latter case, as obviously an existing client you will have a relationship with and will already have an understanding regarding pricing an quality with your client.

Below are the five reasons not to offer discounts to your clients when they ask.

1. They’ll undervalue your services. Whether stated or not, the minute that you offer a discount on your services, the perceived value of your services just went down. You may feel that you are somehow doing the client a favor, although you will of course not state that explicitly. They, on the other hand, might even feel like they’re doing you a favor because at least they’re giving you the work, and if you accept the discount, they probly think that you need the work enough to accept a discount. Strange sort of contradiction…

2. They won’t expect discounted quality. Even though they know they are paying less for the work, they will want you to pick up the slack. They will still expect the same level of support, and their internal vision of how the product should work will not be changed by the concept that they received a discount. And, in a sense, it’s a valid point - for example, when you buy a discounted shirt at the store, you don’t expect it to come without one sleave. Now, we know that consulting services are a different beast than retail products, but that mentality is still there.
3. They’ll expect discounts in the future. If you accepted a discounted job once, what’s to stop you from doing it again? Although its difficult because you feel like you are being inflexible, you have to realize that’s just business, and if you do it once, they will expect it again down the line. You would do the same! If all of a sudden the store never had any more sales ever again, we would feel cheated in some way!

There was a post on a forums I frequent where a real-life scenario embodied exactly this situation. The developer gave the client a bit of a discount up front. Now when things got a little hairy with the project, the developer expected the client to have some level of flexibility, due to the discount. But the client didn’t! They wanted their website to work exactly the way that they had imagined it initially - discount or no discount!

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