John Yes it does sound confusing, doesn't it. The best way I can explain it is that it's OK to give a blanket discount to everyone in order to gain new customer or reward existing customers for staying with you. But you should not offer to discount your work over and above your blanket discount, especially repair or regulating work, in order to get a specific job. In other words, you shouldn't quote a price to regulate an action for $400, and when the customer hesitates, offer to do it for less. Then the customer will not respect your work, will not appreciate that you've done it, and perhaps ask for more work than you had specified. That's what happened to the other tuner. She lowered her price to do a specific regulating job, just to get the work. But when she brought the action back, the customer not only didn't appreciate the work, but complained that the piano didn't sound any better. She said that had happened to her several times. Wim -----Original Message----- From: John Ross <jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 1:36 pm Subject: Re: [pianotech] discount follow up Wim, Does this mean you have reconsidered your previous post, that told of you giving large discounts to gain business. You have me confused, I thought you said discounts were good, now they are not? John Ross, Windsor, Nova Scotia. ----- Original Message ----- From: wimblees at aol.com To: Pianotech at PTG.org Sent: Sat urday, April 18, 2009 8:23 PM Subject: [pianotech] discount follow up This is a follow up on offering discounts for not only tuning, but also shop work. Some of these ideas I learned from my recent "sale", but also as part of a discussion I had with another piano tuner who complained about customers not appreciating the extra work she did even after doing it for almost half price. When people call to schedule a tuning appointment because they’ve heard of you, or feel confident that you’ll be able to take care of their piano, they will pay almost anything to get their piano tuned, within reason. However, when the first thing they ask is your price, and then say: “I’ll think about it,” they are price shopping and don’t care about quality. So unless you’re the lowest priced piano tuner on your area, you won’t get the appointment. When you recommend repairs or regulations and they say they can’t afford it, that means they want to get the work done, but really don’t have the money. But when they say they have to think about it, or use any other excuse, then they might consider getting the work done, but for whatever reason, they don’t want to spend the money. There is a difference between not being able to afford something and not willing to spend the money. Not willing to spend the money means the piano is not important enough to them to get the work done. Howev er, if you lower the price to where they will eventually let you do the work, not only will the customer not appreciate what you’ve done, but you’ll wind up doing the work at a loss, and you might as well have done it for nothing. For those of you whocall your customers to schedule appointments, when you call and they give you all sorts of excuses why they don’t want to, except “I can’t afford it”, then they want to get the piano tuned, but for whatever reason, they don’t want you to tune it. But don’t take it personally. I learned a long time ago that you can’t please everyone. So accept the fact that for some reason, that customer wasn't satisfied with your work. However, again, if you try to talk them into it by lowering your price, they won’t appreciate it, and you’re working at a loss. If anything, you’ve just given them another reason not to have you tune their piano in the future. I send out reminder cards asking my customers to call me. If they don’t call me, I figure it’s their loss. When I have called them, I find that for the most part, the people who set up an appointment when you cal them, probably would have called me anyway, even if it's several months later. Therefore, it’s just not worth my time to call my customers anymore. I will send them several postcards, and maybe offer a discount, but I will not call them on top of that. Wim Why pay full price? Check out this month's deals on the new AOL Shopping. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090418/5449ee1b/attachment.html>
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