Do Discounts and Sales Devalue Your Offering?
“Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they don’t need the approval of others.”
~ Roy T. Bennett
Given that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are right around the corner, I wanted to take this opportunity to look at whether or not sales and discounts decrease the value of your brand or offerings.
I know that a lot of people feel that the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday affair is pretty gross and simply feeds consumerism on a grand scale but I actually have a different view.
As a family of four, with Christmas and a 1st birthday around the corner, we’ve had several gift-worthy items bookmarked on Amazon for the last few weeks, and will as we do each year, wait to see if any of them go down in price during the sales. I must admit, this is my partner’s influence as I have zero patience and would probably pay more than something is worth just to get it sooner. However, each year, thanks to his thoughtful planning, we save some of our hard-earned cash.
It would, therefore, be safe to say that I don’t see sales as a bad thing and I also don’t see them as devaluing the worth of what’s on offer. If I think of one of my favourite brands, Apple, I absolutely would not see anything I might buy from them as having any less value simply because it was discounted in the sales. I would, instead, be delighted (their products are pretty expensive!)
Yet, I hear many small online business owners arguing the case that offering sales and discounts (or heaven forbid freebies) is a sign that you don’t value your own worth or that of your products and services.
There are two points I want to make to this.
First of all your value, as a human being, is not determined by your business, your products or your services, nor is it determined by the price you attach to them. You are inherently valuable as a precious expression of life on this planet we call earth.
Secondly, discounting your products and services does not and cannot devalue their worth. How can it? What you offer is either valuable to the person receiving it or it’s not. To person A your product or service might be insanely valuable and to person B it might have no value whatsoever.
I also hear this argument made about offering taster or complimentary sessions, in that when you give something away for free, people will undoubtedly see it as less valuable than if you charge for it. I also call bullsh*t here too. Personally I’ve had people pay me thousands of dollars for a coaching program that they haven’t made the most of and arguably failed to get their money’s worth, while I’ve had others who have squeezed every last drop of value out of a complimentary session or two that they didn’t pay a dime for.
The idea that the price of something determines its value doesn’t make sense to me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I too used to think that offering sales and discounts devalued my brand until I looked at some of my favourite business people online, whose offerings I have bought in abundance, and whose discounts and sales and I’ve gladly taken advantage of.
Highly successful, Authentic Business Coach, George Kao runs a new online course every single month and before he puts the sales page up on his site, he offers the course at a discounted rate. I nearly always buy his courses using the pre-sales page rate and I’m deeply grateful for it.
Marketing legend, Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies runs a birthday sale every year where he offers a whopping discount across all of his digital products. During these sales, I nearly always buy one of his amazing, high value eBooks and learn a ton of new strategies and business ideas as a result.
Kelly Rae Roberts, a hugely successful artist and online entrepreneur, runs sales on the regular and I’ve bought (and completed!) all of her online art courses by taking advantage of the reduced price on offer during these times. You can see one of my pieces from her Angel Wings class below :) I don’t believe I got any less pleasure or value from this class than someone who paid full price for it.
Now for sure there are people who would argue that to discount your prices is to dishonour the time and effort you put into creating your product or delivering your service, but it saddens me to say that I see people with beautiful gifts to share with the world, not making any money because they refuse to reduce their prices. Personally I think it’s better to sell more of something I poured my heart and soul into at a lower price than sell very few or none at all of something people aren’t paying full price for.
So you see, whether you agree with my point of view on this or not, an argument can definitely be made that a lower price does not necessarily mean less value and to think otherwise seems a tad crazy to me.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your view so feel free to drop a comment below and let me know what you think.
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