My Three Most Hated Words

Here's a list of the three words that make me cringe the most whenever I hear or see them:

1. Discount.
Whenever customer's ask us if we have any discounts on offer, my heart sinks! After we explain that discounts only exist after a company has added money on in the first place, just to take it back off again, they see the light as it were. Most consumers out there now realise that a company isn't just going to take off money willy nilly, they know it's already added on and taken off.

2. Deals.
I HATE this word. To me it screams 'cheap and tacky'. It always reminds me of the type of customer who tends to be a bit of a DIY, hands on kind of person, looking for the cheapest of the cheap, and generally comes out the with the line : 'have you got any deals on at the moment?'
God I hate that word!

3. Sales.
A mix of the two reasons above really. I think the word 'sale' has been plugged as much as it can be plugged, I think the general attitude of consumers towards a sale is: 'oh look, the sales on again'. Customers have wised up a lot and realised that in most cases companies add a margin on, take it back off again and disguise and advertise it as a 'sale' or 'discount'.

I think you could put my frustration of these words and tactics down to the fact that, rather than use these techniques to hood-wink those who aren't as alert to these methods, as a company we just price the job in hand as keen as possible in the first place. We make this absolutely clear to our customers and I think they appreciate this. We get a lot of positive feedback from our customers commenting on the honest and straight forward approach to our pricing methods. What we also see a lot of now is customers asking for the bottom line price straight away, no flanneling or pretend discounts, which suits us to the ground!