268 - 5-Minute Mentoring: Should I Ever Give a Discount?

Some people just love to haggle.  They enjoy the thrill of the hunt for a great deal.  They LOVE getting a discount.  They’ll ask for discounts on everything - just in case the answer is yes!

A lot of artists think that they have to offer a discount to get someone to buy their art - but it’s not true, and it’s not good for your business!  Remember, a discount takes money right out of your pocket - and that makes your job as a business owner even harder!

If you’ve been tempted to discount your work in order to sell it, it’s time to change your mindset on discounts!  I’ll tell you how in this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast!

How to Price Your Art: Pricing with Confidence for Sales & Profit (Book Just Released!)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097XBP733

How To Price Your Art:  The 2021 Definitive Guide to Pricing Your Art for Visual Artists
https://www.matttommeymentoring.com/how-to-price-your-art.html

Connect with me online:
https://www.matttommeymentoring.com
Instagram and Facebook: @thethrivingchristianartist
Watch this podcast on YouTube!  https://www.youtube.com/mjtommey 

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Transcript

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Have you ever felt pressured to give discounts to your art clients in order to make the sale? I'm going to tell you why that's probably not always the best idea and give you a great alternative today here on 5-Minute Mentoring.

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Have you ever wanted to have someone in your life who you could ask real questions about your art, your business, and even your walk with the Lord? Well, that's exactly what we do every Friday here on 5-Minute Mentoring, where I answer one question from one of my awesome podcast listeners in order to help you start really thriving as the artist you know God created you to be. Well, hey, my friends. So glad that you are here with me today on 5-Minute Mentoring. You know, when I had my marketing business back in Atlanta years ago, I'd never been in sales before. And I always felt this pressure to discount the price just out of hand in order to get people to buy my art or buy my marketing work back then, my graphic design, website design, all that sort of thing. Then when I started my artwork, you know, I started feeling the same thing. And I I remember I was working with a business coach back then and Tanya was working in our business as well, my wife. And they made me this. This was Tanya's idea, I think. She made me a little picture and put it on, literally put it on my computer. And it was a picture of a shredder, like a shredding machine, a shredder with money going through it. And it had a big red X across it and it said, no discounts. Because you know, when you always discount, when you go to discounts immediately, it's literally shredding money and taking money, taking profit out of your business, which and out of your pocket, which is what fuels your business profit. And so I started thinking about that more and more. And over the years, as I went from a hobbyist to being a part-time and then full-time artist, I really started shying away from using discounts and even teaching people to do discounts at all. Now, I know there are a lot of art websites nowadays and a lot of people that are like, oh, you got a discount to get people's attention and that sort of thing. And honestly, I never felt that way when, you know, as an artist selling my work full-time, I saw I've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own original artwork over the years, and discounts has never been a part of my sales strategy. The interesting thing that I learned about people that do discount, and you can think about this yourself, like if you are a Walmart shopper or a Target shopper or wherever you're shopping at, people that do discounts all the time. What it does is it trains your buyers to look for discounts before they buy. Now, obviously, that's not what I want to do. I don't want them to look for a discount every time they come to me. What I'm trying to do is build value. What I'm trying to do is build relationship with them so that they know, like and trust me and feel good about the investment that they're making in my art so that relationship and connection is built so that they tell their friends about the great experience that they had. And so they feel special, you know, about the piece that they bought and feel really great about having it in their home. So one of the things that I always go to instead of discounts is what I call bonuses. That is, is there an experience or an item or an additional thing that you can throw in that is unexpected that's going to be something that would really give them a wow experience? For example, one of the things that I've done over the years is I created a retrospective book of my work after making for a lot of years. I just had tons and tons and tons of great pictures I also had poetic reflections that I had written over the years. And just kind of, again, a retrospective of my journey as an artist. I put all that together in a book called Every Basket Begins with a Walk in the Woods. You can actually grab it on Amazon if you're curious about what it looks like. But this book, for me, I would sell it for$25 in the studio. I think it's about that cost on Amazon. But it only cost me like$6 to make as far as, you know, to have it produced. Every person that bought a piece of my work in my studio or at a show, they all got an autographed copy of that book. Now, I can't tell you how many times somebody paid a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars for a basket or a woven sculpture, and they were more excited about the book than they were about the piece that they bought. Why? Because it was special. It was unexpected. It was a, wow, man, that's so awesome. I'm so honored. We'll put this out on our coffee table and that sort of thing. Listen, that thing got me so much business over the years because people were excited about it. They shared it with friends. They kept it on their coffee table and it kept me from having to do a discount. So if there's anything like that, any kind of bonus, additional experience, additional item that you can give to enhance the experience, that's going to go a lot further in building that know, like, and trust factor with your clients and it leaves the money on the table. for you to collect and build profit into your business. Now, that being said, people ask me, well, Matt, are you saying never ever do discounts? Listen, a discount for me is always the last option. If I've got a client, for example, that's buying a bunch of pieces at one time, then yeah, I may consider free shipping or I may consider a 10% discount, something like that. Or again, I may say, instead of that, I may say, hey, what about free installation? I'll deliver it all to your house and install it for you myself. So again, that's a benefit or a bonus rather than a discount. So I'm always always, always going to go toward bonuses before discounts. I encourage you to think about that the same as you're considering how to price your work and build profit into your art business so that you can grow and really create the business that serves your life and that serves the lifestyle that you want to live as an artist. Listen, if you're wanting to find out more about how to do that, I've got a great book called How to Price Your Art, Pricing with Confidence for Sales and Profit. It's available on Amazon right now. You can click the link right here to grab it I've also got about a 90 minute to two hour training that I did on how to price your art that I think you'd find really, really valuable as well. There's also a link to that here in the show notes. Listen, if either one of those is a benefit to you, I pray it'll be an encouragement to you, give you the information you need to start pricing with profit and really creating an art business that will help you live the life that you know that God's created you to live. All right. Until next time, my friend, I love you very much. So glad you're with me every week. And remember, You were created to thrive. All right, bye.