Stop letting the field set your price

A discount is a decision about the P&L. It usually gets made by whoever is most tired at nine at night.

Reps test the fence. That is not a character flaw, it is the job. If a rep learns that a phone call to a manager produces a few hundred dollars, he will make that call. Eventually he stops making it, because he builds the number into the pitch and never mentions it to you at all.

That is the real cost. Not the individual concession. The fact that your price quietly becomes whatever the field expects to get approved.

I watched gross margin move a long way over a stretch where we were not doing anything clever on the buy side. Most of it came from two unglamorous things. Holding the number, and getting the people who sell it to believe in it.

The second one is the part companies skip. You can put out a policy that says no discounts without approval and the reps will comply and sell less, because a rep who does not believe the price is fair sells it apologetically, and homeowners hear that from across a kitchen table.

So the work is upstream. The rep has to be able to say out loud, without flinching, why the job costs what it costs. If he cannot, he is going to go get the discount, and honestly he is right to, because price is the only tool you gave him.

When a manager caves at nine at night he is not being generous. He is telling a rep the number was never real.