Discounts, What do they mean?

Today i wanted to share with you what discounts really mean.

I've had in the past on a number of occasions customers asking me "what discount am i getting?" it's a fair question but one i despise being asked, in my mind it's a question that if i answered correctly (from a companies point of view) i could make alot more money out of your sale, so lets put a situation forward:-

Customer approaches me with 10 items of underground drainage, i start a ticket to process the order, half way through he asks what discount is he getting?

So to this i answer "your getting 65% off list" now a few maybe raising there eyebrows thinking that's a good discount and again a few maybe thinking that's rubbish but if your doing this your making a very dangerous assumption.

List prices vary greatly! If you assume there all the same then you won't get the best price, yes you may have a higher discount than the place down the road but if your paying more what's the point?

No two companies have the same list price, and that's not just plumbing materials.

I had a customer once when i first got into working within the building merchant sector and he asked for a large job to be priced, now my supplier gave me the list price for all underground drainage and offered 80% off list, the customer came back to me after to say another merchant had offered 83% he placed the order with them.

Afterwards i spoke to my manager at the time and i had made the same assumption as my customer, even though he was getting 83% off he would still be paying £500 more than what i had quoted, the list price with my competitors was higher than mine which meant i was cheaper yet like my customer i just looked at the discount figure, to this day i have never made the same mistake.

To summarise this post, always look at the price not the discount, it may seem like a fantastic deal but looks can be deceiving, i could offer you 99.9% off an item and my fellow merchant could be offering 10% off but what if his list price was £10 and mine was £100,000? Don't assume.

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