Don’t give it away

This is true for both service and product based businesses.  So here are a few points about this.

A sample is not a giveaway.  In fact, the free sample or intro offer is a very astute mechanism for getting customers.  Just make sure you budget / plan this into your cost of sales and hence it has value and is smart business.

Don’t discount.  One more time.  Don’t discount.  It only devalues you, the product, the service.  It requires an exponential amount of sales to recoup the loss of margin.  However, if you offloading capacity, obsolete stock, etc, let the customer know this is what is happening.  Let them know this is an extraordinary circumstance.  And if you need to do it again, you need to review your stock holdings, your margins, prices and perhaps even your ‘grade’ of product / service.

Give them the correct amount.  Yes, the correct amount.  Not more, not less, the agreed amount.  This is pretty easy with product but so much harder for you service type people.  I know we are supposed to go the hard yards, under promise, over deliver.  But if you set this expectation, then your clients will not know when to stop.  They will ring you at night.  They will expect weekends.  They will want you to come in between planned visits because of their current crisis.  Deliver the agreed outputs and should they want more, charge them, rearrange them, decrease the service offering but make sure they know that they are getting what was agreed to, including the bill for the extra hours.  And if they are not in your standard terms for deviations, better get them.