Should You Give Discounts?

A difficult question that all business owners have been asking themselves is whether or not they should provide discounts. This can be tricky to answer and certainly relies on a number of factors. They range from the types of services you would be providing discounts on, to what you can afford to give, to how badly you need new clients. In this article, we will take a look at some of these factors, and give you some tips as to how you can decide whether or not and if so, on what services, you should provide discounts.

The first thing you will want to look at is your client base. If you have a large amount of loyal clients, then you probably do not need to provide discounts on many of your services. The only ones you would want to consider discounts on are those that are used more rarely than the others. If you are looking to recruit new clients, however, a great way to do this is to offer discounts on your most popular products. This can put a dent in your profits, of course, because your regular customers will likely capitalize on this, you may want to make the discount for new customers, or something of that nature.

If money is tight for your company, this decision gets even harder. Providing a discount means you will be making less money than normal, which means money will get even tighter, and the return might not be what you expect. However, as we mentioned earlier, if you want to expand your client base (and therefore the amount of sales you make, and therefore the amount of profit you get), offering discounts is a great way to do so. One-time deals and other discounts that will attract clients without causing serious damage to your cash flow are probably the best ideas for those simply wanting to attract more customers.

On general principal, however, discounts are an odd thing. Many stores mark up their prices and then offer discounts to make their prices seem lower than normal, even though the discounted price is roughly the same as the average market price. Other places will offer discounts but provide services that are lower in quality or speed than the actual price dictates. It is ultimately up to you to decide whether, and if so on what and when, you want to provide discounted rates on the services you provide. Author Resource:- Lilach Bullock runs 2 full time businesses, asklilach providing virtual pa services & Virtual PA Training, helping people set up their own successful virtual assistant business. Lilach recently attended an Award Ceremony at Downing Street for best Mumpreneur. asklilach.co.uk