You can’t just lower all the prices in your operation. There are two reasons this doesn’t work. First, you no longer communicate the story of ‘special deal’, instead you communicate ‘we’re in trouble.’ Second, you end up charging everyone a lower price, even the people who were happy to pay more–who wanted to pay more, in fact. link »
So, empower your staff, all of them, to take 10% off the price of anything if someone asks or seems concerned. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll just take $20 off the price of the room if you can book it now.” For retailers or personal selling situations, you can give your staff a pile of “manager’s coupons” that they can just whip out… peel one off and quietly hand it to the waffling customer. It needs to have a date on it, probably hand written. Even better, let them write in the discount (up to x%, and of course they’ll always write x, which is fine, because that’s what you planned on.) link »
– from Seth’s Blog: Creating a clearance sale culture via sharedcopy.com
