Building Your Price Discount Strategies and Authentic
Prosperity
by Molly Gordon, MCC
Should You Discount or Give Your Work Away?
As a business owner you may be surprised to discover
how often you are asked to donate your services. This may delight or disconcert
you depending on who asks, how often, and how your practice is doing.
In addition to responding to requests for donated or
reduced fee services, you may be wondering how to build your practice
by giving work away. Both situations raise important questions on building
your price discount strategies, and answering these questions is an exercise
in authentic prosperity.
• What do you want to give?
• What results do you want from giving?
• When has giving been effortless?
• What has giving been a problem for you?
Giving in accordance with your deepest desires and in
accordance with your resources and needs is energizing, motivating, inspiring.
It is relatively easy to make a sustained contribution when you truly
care about a cause. It is relatively easy to complete a project when you
have the resources to do so. It is relatively easy to stay committed when
you experience benefits from doing so.
However, if your donations and reduced-fee work feel like demands that
distract from your core purpose, you are almost certain to feel resentful
about offering discounts or giving your work away.
To discover what is right for you and your business and build price discount
strategies that work, start by regarding these requests as opportunities,
which you can accept or decline according to your values, resources, and
needs. Then your giving will be generous and relatively effortless. After
all, "no" or a counteroffer are perfectly valid responses
to a request. Otherwise, the request was an ultimatum, and you need not
be subject to a third party’s ultimatum; unless, perhaps, it comes
from the tax collector.
In other words, being able and willing to say "no" is essential
in order to be able to say "yes" with conviction and clarity.
Examine your commitments, noticing especially where you might feel resentful
or anxious. What is behind this resentment or anxiety? Is there a disconnect
between your core values/concerns and this activity? Are you giving in
a fashion that results in your offer being valued and bringing significant
benefit?
Do you care deeply, yet feel that you have committed more than you can
give from available resources? Or do you have needs (for example, community,
visibility, professional alliances, or learning) that are not being satisfied
in the context of this commitment?
You can think about other forms of compensation besides cash while building
your price discount strategies. How would it feel if you were to give
away or discount your services in exchange for specific and authoritative
feedback? Is there an opportunity for barter? If you barter, how will
you measure the respective value of the goods and services being exchanged?
If you were only concerned with how responding to a request might feel,
and not with how it might look, what decision would you make? How would
it be to utterly trust yourself to make the decision that works for you?
As you ask these questions, allow the answers to arise without criticism
or censorship. Know that letting yourself be honest about what you do
and do not truly value will help you to make stronger commitments -- commitments
that you will love to keep and that will serve others.
Next article: Pricing
Strategy Matrix
* * *
 Learn
more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small
business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into
a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
In particular, the pricing strategies you learn to apply will build the
solid foundation for your authentic prosperity as an entrepreneur.
* * *
Contact an acknowledged expert
on small business marketing Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
