Use Positioning to Avoid Discounting

Hope you guys enjoy part three in our series on not discounting your services – if you missed the first post in this series “How to tell a Bride you don’t offer Discounts – Part One” go back and get caught up now. If you happened to have missed the last post “The Top 2 Ways To Use Value Added Incentives And Stop Discounting Your Services! Part Two” go read it now!

Now let’s begin this post……..

 

There are a ton of ways to avoid discounting, but the best way overall is to not get yourself in a position to be asked at all.

How do you do this?

I would describe the positioning that I’m referring to as setting yourself apart in your market category, with a particular identity. Basically, setting yourself apart from your peers and competitors so much so that you don’t need to focus on discounting or price to land that next bride.

Are you using the words savings, discount, budget, cheap, affordable, and other “F” words anywhere on your website? Well if you are then you’re “F’ing”  yourself! Because you’re using language that specifically speaks to the budget bride – and that’s who going to call you.

And they’re going to ask for every discount under the sun. AAA? Sure. Junior League Member? Why not? Military discount? Well certainly, I would love to service your cheap ass wedding while deeply discounting my services and eventually putting myself out of business all together! Sound familiar?

There’s a discount for every day of the week and every cause under the sun, and if you take one, you might as well take them all – or just stop that shit all together and firmly state your prices, and start making what you’re worth.

You use your website as a conversation – an actual conversation that you would have with your ideal bride and groom.

Explain in your blog all of the details ( and enormous amount of time) that goes into the service that you offer. If you’re a DJ, highlight all of the behind the scenes work that you do and the hours of work that you put in before the wedding even happens. If you’re a florist you could describe the process that you go through from proposal to wedding day.

Most brides have no idea that you spend 4 hours just building their proposal. So tell them!

Justifying your rates on your website or in a blog post is one of the best things you can do to combat price shoppers. Most brides have no idea what goes into what you do for them. So, you can’t be offended when they ask for a discounted rate, unless you’ve done your job in educating them why you charge what you charge.

And the great perk about working this into your website is that you no longer have to spend your consultation time with them explaining yourself and your process.

In fact, when they set up a consultation with you send them an email reminder with a link to your Q&A or your blog where you explain your process or your pricing or the fact that you don’t offer discounts.

Now they will know what to expect from you when you meet.

Remember – every website and magazine out there is telling them to ask for a discount!

So be prepared for it by addressing it directly.

 

 

Tell us how you are positioning your business to avoid discounting below!