What do you do when your client wants your trade discounts?

This came in from a member: Hey! I wondered if the community would help me 👌🙌🏼how do you handle a client who constantly mentions trade discounts that I receive – asking if some of the discounts could be passed onto them? It’s happening with every room- bathroom, bedroom etc. They want some form of discount on prices they see online if they buy everything through me…. Thanks in advance 🙏🏼😀

We have heard this before and I really like how @angelatoddstudios handles this one. She once told a client (and I am not quoting verbatim here but think she won’t mind my sharing with you) , “Look, there are some pieces I might make a little more and some I don’t make as much on- or even lose money on. Overall, I’m trying to make my business profitable but I like trust with my clients. I like repeat business. I’m not in the business of price gouging my clients. We can go over line by line on where we look at the percentages I’m making but you will pay for my time to do that and if I find I have undercharged my base profit fee, I’m going to want to change my mark-up- because you can’t have it both ways”

This is YOUR business. You choose your margins. You chose which products are lost leaders and which you make more on. How you make your profit is not really your client’s business.

We all know designers often lose money on time spent on the project. There are always text, phone calls, 5 min corrections that are not billed. Product is often how you can recoup some of those losses.

But I want to hear from you, what do you say when your client keeps pushing for your trade discount? #IDCDesigners

Check out the answers by clicking the link below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTDEY7lhraj/?utm_medium=copy_link

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