The Pro's and Con's of Discounting Treatments

I'm often asked if discounting treatments is a good way to build a practice.

Like everything involved in running a small business, there are pro's and con's to everything.

Lets start with the logic of discounting.

Before you rush out and send out a discount voucher to current clients (people you have already trained to pay your full price), maybe consider what you are building first.

I encourage people to get the foundations right in their business first, then build on top of it.

So if you are considering discounting, you need to go back to your Decide Dream Believe statements and look at what you were dreaming of creating in the first place.

Are You Samey or Are you Different?

You need to ask yourself how you are going to position yourself in the marketplace.

Do I want to build a K-Mart type operation or do I want to build something more boutique like and specialised.


So many therapists think that if the price is cheap enough, then people will book a treatment with them.  However, there is much more to why people book a treatment than the price.

If you want a K-Mart type solution, you are setting yourself up to work long hours and people will expect the cheapest prices from you.  They will also expect that discounted price as they consume the purchase - so they expect to walk in at all hours, get what they need and pay a cheap price for it.  Not exactly a great recipe for success in a small service based industry.

However, with a more boutique style operation, the owners encourage a more specialised and attentive service, you need to book early and you can expect to pay for that higher level of service.  Bed and Breakfast type operations are a good example of this.  They often have fewer rooms for sale, but you pay more for them and you get more personalised attention, like the owner greeting you and a personally cooked breakfast.  In a cheaper hotel chain situation, you will be presented with a bain marie full of eggs cooked hours ago and some crispy fat soaked bacon which was also usually cooked by the least qualified cook in the kitchen, because its the easiest meal to prepare on that mass level.

So your very first step in considering discounting for your practice is to consider - are you offering a fully personalised service that offers a lot of personalised attention and deserves to be well rewarded, or are you just happy to churn people through quickly at a lower rate.

On a "personalised and different" level, you need to see less people at a higher rate, and at the "samey" end of the business you need to see more people to meet your financial targets.

I find most people have never even considered the "Dream" aspect of their practice, so you might like to go to my Easy Solutions for YOUR Success website and download the Two Hours of Complimentary Audio and a Workbook on this topic.

If you don't have the basic foundations discussed in this workbook and a clear understanding of what you are trying to create in place, you will simply be chasing your tail trying to lure people in with K-Mart style offers each week.  Once you differentiate on price, you will be constantly competing to have the lowest price in your marketplace.  That gets tiring and expensive because it requires a massive advertising budget to keep the masses aware of your constantly downward spiralling prices.

You end up with an un-abundant practice, simply because people who buy at discount generally shop around and do not stay loyal.  If you go the K-Mart route, you will be constantly trying to rope new people in to cover the ones who are buzzing off to the person around the corner undercutting you by $5.

You will have figured I prefer the hi end, hi price, hi service end of the market, simply because that is the recipe for a fully abundant practice.

But its up to you how you go about setting up your practice, but please get the plan set out first, then go and decide how you discount your services.