Thinking of Discounting Post-COVID?

Some of y’all may have reopened already after the shut down and some of you, it’s still going to be quite some time. Regardless, one thing I keep seeing people talk about in their plans is the need to charge less, discounting and running specials and the like because of the financial hardship you’re assuming people have experienced. So let’s discuss this a bit…

Alright, so first, let’s talk about discounting or charging less in any way when you reopen. I’m just going to go ahead and say it…don’t. Please don’t. I understand why you want to, or why you think you should. You probably think that everyone is in the same position as you – they were put out of work and are financially hurting from this. But instead of making assumptions, let’s look at just a few numbers here. Y’all know I love me some data. You can’t make business decisions based on emotions or assumptions – they all have to be backed up by data, and this is no different.

According to Data Center, we have an adult population of 253 million people here in the US. 55 million of those are considered essential workers, which means they kept working through all this. Another 63 million according to Forbes, were able to transition to work from home and continue on getting a paycheck. Then 33 million have filed for unemployment – and according to MarketWatch, 2/3 of those people on unemployment are making MORE than they were when working full time.

So that means that roughly 140 million people ain’t hurting financially from this. That means more people are seeing their normal or even an increase in cash flow, than those who are seeing a decrease. Now obviously that’s not to discount all those who were put out of work and are hurting, by any means. But you have to stop projecting your own financial hardship and your own situation onto clients who may very well be doing just fine.

So take a look at your clientele specifically, were they continuing to do their job or were they put out of work? If they were shut down, were they employed before and able to easily get through the unemployment system to draw during the shutdown? I’m not saying people aren’t hurting, or even just concerned and watching spending with all this, what I am saying is that most are doing just fine financially – and that’s the part you have to pay attention to. You can’t make your business suffer because you feel bad about what someone else may or may not be going through.

Add onto all this, the new regulations that are more than likely increasing your expenses and decreasing the number of clients you can take in a day. How the heck are you supposed to keep making money when your expenses are going up and your revenue is going down? And please don’t tack on a PPE fee or surcharge specifically. Just raise your rates across the board as you would if any other business expense increased. You don’t charge a “rent hike” fee or a “my electric bill went up this month” fee, so don’t charge a PPE fee. Just raise your rates if you need to.