Systemize Negotiable Pricing

Published: Jun 30, 2004

Application

Small businesses are viewed by consumers as having negotiable prices as opposed to the fixed prices of chain store operations. To preserve your sanity and a minimum profit margin, consider a control system for on-the-spot negotiating.

If you do all the calculating of price tags it's possible to keep your direct and indirect costs on a limited number of items. However, if you have a staff with reasonably good judgement and you happen to be pre-occupied or absent, there's one way to systemize the bargaining position and not lose sales. Code your bargaining position on every price tag.

Firstly, calculate the lowest acceptable price. Disguise and embed this price on the price tag for quick reference.

Samples of imbedding and reversing the lowest price of $635 on a tag.

[Inventory - DER536-22] The prefix, DER, and the suffix, 22, could be meaningful or meaningless.
[Re-order - 74253622]
[Item - 000053601]

Prefixes and suffixes can signal intentions or directions such as: unload at any price, call manager if lower price requested, regular customers only, without services or any number of possibilities.

You and a staff person can look at the code and still play, "Good Guy – Bad Guy" with the bargainer.

Discount marked up merchandise by reducing your preferred margin but, never discount your labor.

Stories

Stories from members will add great value to these maxims

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Outcomes

Negotiate prices while manager is absent.
Grant discretionary privileges to valued employees.
Make decisions based mainly on cost factors and business strategies.
Preserve a "poker-face" during emotionally charged bargaining.
Maintain consistent procedures with most customers.

Systemize Negotiable Pricing

Application

Stories

Outcomes

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