I was chatting to a couple of people earlier this week about some of the insanely steep vendor discounts that are offered from time to time. You know things like 50% of our software if you buy it this week only. Ultimately vendors do this to promote sales of their products, typically when THEY are not meeting THEIR budgets. I wonder however just how many vendors take a moment to consider their channel resellers or business partners. Do they consider that by dropping the price at the vendor level by 50% that they are ALSO affecting the profitability of their business partners as they make less margin?
Consider for a moment how most good SMB IT Professionals work with the end users. Most of us are the clients trusted business advisor. The clients look to us not to buy a specific product, but for a solution from someone they trust. When we go to a client with a solution and it’s cost, we are telling them that this solution will solve their business problem (whatever that might be). When vendors offer steep discounts and they tell the client about it, it effectively cheapens the relationship all round. It makes the client WANT to bargain with us for “a better price”. It’s telling the client that “my price is not my price” when in fact we should be putting the right price on the table to start with and going forwards from there.
No – sorry – I don’t discount my price. I only offer alternatives that vary the price which may include reducing the services or products I supply as part of the solution. When vendors realise this and come to understand just how we work, then I suspect we will all will win, the clients, the resellers AND the vendor.
So vendors… we don’t really care what the “special of the month” is. Not unless we happen to need it right now to solve a clients business problems. We don’t care about YOUR sales targets. We care about providing the right solution for the client at the right price.
Have a think please. If you disagree with me then please tell me what you think about this. Is discounting at a vendor level a good thing or a bad thing?
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