I don't see why asking for a discount is so toxic. We ask for a discount on every transaction with a 3rd party our business makes and more often than not we get one.
It seems like most business to business transactions start with the "dummy price" out the gate.
Because it's usually the people who feel that they're entitled to a discount no matter what, who also feel that they're entitled to white glove service, support calls after hours even for trivial questions (with 10 minute turnaround), similar discounts off their already discounted price, special features written just for them.
Oh and they get to stamp their feet and hop up and down with rage and send shitty emails when you don't live up to their expectations.
And they also usually do this to all of their other suppliers and customers too, which means that they tend to go out of business without warning, still owing you money.
> We ask for a discount on every transaction with a 3rd party our business makes
I'm curious to learn why you do that? On "contact a sales person" type sales I can understand but you use the term 'transaction' which implies you are doing this on self-service purchases.
Most self-service businesses are setup to streamline (ie avoid) human-interactions which would also suggest they are honestly pricing their goods/services. By contacting them for a discount you're already increasing their CAC before you then ask for a discount too.
If you have sticker-shock on the price because it's not offering a return value to you or you cannot afford it then you're probably not a target customer. That's why I don't go into the Ferrari dealership and ask for 10% off.
> Most self-service businesses are setup to streamline (ie avoid) human-interactions which would also suggest they are honestly pricing their goods/services.
This doesn't follow. It shows they are concerned with reducing their costs, not that they will pass those cost savings onto the customer.
Don't ask, don't get. If you are going to be a solid, profitable customer for a business, they have a clear incentive to get you on board by sweetening the deal.
People build self-service businesses because they don't want to build a sales team and/or be able to keep their price point competitive.
If everyone emailed in wanting pre-sales and discounts the price would go up because there would need to be a sales team to service the requests.
I'm telling you that as someone who runs such a business that has both self-service and sales-led products that are priced differently (partly) for that reason. (that business is hosting the OP site as it happens)
I don't think it's as big of an issue as you suggest. If you've spent umpteen hours developing the product, the amount of additional time and effort required to put a simple discount system in place is negligible.
You could even set up a standard response email. If someone writes asking for a discount, just send them a ~10% discount code.
It should pay for itself in the form of (even slightly) increased conversions in no time.
That's why the article talks about looking for "2 or 3" warning signs rather than just one. Just about any customer can show one of those warning signs and be a perfectly acceptable customer, but when they have several, they're almost certainly toxic.
It's unfortunate that businesses do this. Starting off a relationship with a new customer by effectively
saying that your pricing isn't 100% honest seems like the wrong way to go about it.
I want every one of our customers to be 100% confident that they are paying the same price as anybody else on the same plan. In our case, I've even explicitly refused to do any deals or promotional discounts. This keeps things simple for us to keep track of as well.
I don't think the author meant to imply that asking for a discount is toxic. I think he was saying that if combined with several other behaviors, it may be a red flag.
It seems like most business to business transactions start with the "dummy price" out the gate.