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I guess that I hit a tender spot because the responses from my last newsletter article (which can be seen at www.ricksegel.com/blog) have overwhelmed me. We received almost 600 responses. So what I want to do is give you the results and then share some great insight from my readers. I also want to thank everyone who responded and I especially feel badly that I can’t share them all since space doesn’t allow it–they were just so good.

One other note—You will see that there are many different perspectives that were used since the responses came from such a variety of retailers. It was just so interesting!

Here are the results:

As you can see, the biggest category was “other”. So now, here are the others. I will be editing some of them down to get in as many as possible. There are 3 interesting points that come through on the survey.

Here are the comments:

When things are a little slow, we negotiate more and we negotiate less when things are fat.

Bundling is the best way to handle a bargain hunter. If you don’t want to cut the price, it is amazing how happy you can make a customer feel by throwing in a little freebie. We must remain cheerful. After all, it is a sport and both sides have to shake hands after the game.

We have a high-end gift and fashion jewellery shop in the UK. Our approach has always been, when pressed for a discount, to offer our own gift vouchers, to the value of around 5% of the value of the purchase, provided the purchase is no less than the equivalent of about $750.One can be flexible abut the qualifying value of the purchase and the value of the vouchers, of course, but in this way the customer feels they have won something and we bring them back to the shop to buy again. The actual discount over 2 purchases is also halved, on average.

Sometimes it depends on the value of the goods in question; I will discount goods which are valuable and have been in the store for months. However, when we get tourists in our shop requesting a discount on 12 postcards costing a few cents each, I have been known to up the price because my time is money. “If I have to negotiate on this one, the price goes up.” - always accompanied by a cheery smile. It usually frightens people into submission.

My favorite negotiator was the eight year old girl who came in with her grandmother to purchase a gift for her mother, who was ill. The child held her cash tightly in one hand and her grandmother reminded her she had only that amount to spend. She carefully looked at everything in her price range but kept going back to a coffee cup that cost $5 more than what she had. She picked it up (for about the fourth time), walked over to me, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Would you take 16 for this? It’s a get well gift for my mother and this is all I have (outstretched little hand, sweaty folded bills).” I gave it to her for $16 AND let her choose something from the $1 candy jar. Best deal I ever made.

I want to scream out “does this look like a flea market??” but I hold back… I had a second customer yesterday who commented “I never buy anything unless it’s on sale; if it’s not on sale I must not need it.” As she piled her things on the counter and spent $175 she did have one regular priced item for $30 and ended up taking alot of my clearance off my hands, which we have to be grateful for as well. We need those customers as well to get rid of the markdowns.

If I have had the piece for a while and if someone is interested in it, I welcome the chance to discount it and get it out of the gallery. If they are spending a lot of money, I will discount items. If they are a good customer, I would discount an item if they ask. If it is a slow day, week or month, I would discount it to make the sale and feel better. If they person yells for a discount from across the store or asks loudly in front of other customers, no discount. If a customer is rude or condescending, no discount.

The only time that I negotiate a price is if the item is either defective in some small way, has been there a long time or the customer makes an extremely large purchase and I have allowed her to take her loyalty program rebate of 5% upfront instead of waiting for the quarterly rebate… Most of the time, even when they say that my competitor has it for $5 or $10 less, they still end up buying it from me because I have the one that they really want, such as the color, size, etc.

We sell high end luxury items an mark them up an extra 10% because every customer who comes in wants to negotiate, we negotiate 10% off, win win in our opinion.

But here’s another option - tell the customer that you can do way better on price because this item is FREE today with their purchase of $X. (X= whatever works for you) The word FREE definitely gets the customer thinking…!

I ask the customer if their insurance has gone up, are they paying more for gas, how about your phone bill? Oh yes, and haven’t your utilities hit the ceiling? Was your rent (mortgage) just increased? Well so was mine–only twice because I have a storefront! “So as you can see, I’m afraid I’ll have to get full price on this item….”

I began a “Frequent Buyer” Program specifically to combat this issue. Each item that the customer purchased (over $25) was entered on the Frequent Buyer Card…. when 12 items were purchased—- I “averaged” the cost of the purchases…. and gave the customer that dollar amount toward the purchase of the 13th item.

When my customers ask for a better price, I let them know that we have certain days that we do special deals and give them our calendar. I also tell them we send out special coupons and promotions if they receive our email.

It all depends on the situation; on the customer relationship; and the wiggle room in the price.

Compliment the customer on trying with an upbeat manner, then support your answer with the fact that you are always available to provide support and service with any product that they purchase from you. If they are purchasing several items as a package, either throw in a small discount for the package or some additional product or service free of charge that is only available from you as a local retailer so that they find a value added benefit from buying from you.

To save our managers time we have adopted the following. The salesperson has the power to negotiate in the following manner. Ask the Customer how their paying for the product…if it’s Credit Card, we offer them a 2% for cash or debit card discount so we don’t have to pay the banks, then we offer them a package discount…let’s say they’re buying a Miele Vacuum for 800.00, we tell them that if they’d like to buy two units, we could knock another 5% off for a package deal or even if they’d like to buy another less expensive vacuum for one of their kids then they’d still receive the 5% discount off both the higher priced and lower priced units. Since we’ve implemented this stategy, we added approximately 200 extra unit sales per year and the best part is…we don’t have to keep bugging our managers.

Instead of giving a discount on the purchase offer the customer 10-20% back in the form of a gift card. Tell the customer it is only good on there next visit. This creates repeat business and makes the customer happy as well. Also suggest the customer give the gift card to perhaps a friend who has never been to your establishment.

It all depends on the age and sellability of the merchandise. We’ve also started increasing our original price just because we know the customer won’t pay sticker, so if we give them a little discount, they think they’ve won but in reality it’s now at the price we would have ticketed in the first place. Yes, it’s all a game but as long as the customer thinks they win so much the better.

Mostly I pull out the “Bless your heart for trying” approach but have been known to look at the age of the item and offer a discount on out of season product only.

It has been my experience that most people do not want to appear greedy. With this in mind, as I’m working on the sale, I consider what I think it will take to make a close and what I’m willing to give. So, when I present the final price to the customer, I include an item at no charge. When they see this, 99% of the time they do not ask for anything more. I find this works better than a percent discount since I’m giving something away at cost. On a $4,000 sale, I might give up $80. I’ll take that every time.

Here’s what my husband says to REALLY ANNOYING BARGAIN HUNTERS: “Do you have a job? Do they pay you to do that job? Then why do you expect me to work for free?”

I see negotiations as a combination of several of these. If there is latitude in the margin and the merchandise has been on the shelf for a while, why not do some negotiations. Everyone loves to get a good deal. If you let them feel like they got a good deal, they will share their success with others and also be back again. If there is no flexibility, be honest with them. If they really want it they will buy anyway. You can also explain that I can’t on this item but perhaps this alternative might meet your needs where you can give them a better deal.

I always tell them that when I get a “deal” or “price break” from my suppliers I always pass the savings onto them the customer. I try to keep my prices moderate so you can still afford to shop here in town. Always try to change the subject w/ something positive about your store. It will help get their mind off what they asked you, and probably won’t have the courage to ask you again.

The most important part of this question is really - how do you train your sales or floor staff to handle this “dreaded question”? This is the store policy and even the manager or owner should always follow this policy since there was good thought about it and likely a very good reason behind it when the policy was devised. I have found that everytime I deviated from my policy is when the transaction came around to “bite me”. Any one of the above decisions works if it works for your store’s market. My best finding and thus my best advise - figure that out and stick to it.

We’re in the jewelry business. So… We explain our prices are firm, fair and the best we can do, plus this is new merchandise. Then we explain we do have some other (older) items we can indeed reduce the price on, but we don’t reduce the price on new items. 90%+ of the time they understand, and don’t even want to see the other items, and buy their choice. And sometimes we get rid of old stock at about a 20-30% discount.

I would nicely say that the price is as marked, but when it does go on sale, I will be happy to call you if you would like to leave your name and number. I don’t negotiate my prices. I doubt that Nordstrom would barter with them and I don’t think that Walmart would either. And neither will I.

I am a firm believer that you have to train your customers. If you set the expectation on what a customer is to expect and are able to live up to your expectations then you never have to worry about price. Because in the end is it really about price anyway?

We have the cards for the game “Trivia Pursuit.” When a person asks for a discount, and we are open to the idea, we’ll make a game out of it by pulling out the trivia questions. We’ll offer more of a discount if they get the answer by themselves. If we have to give a hint, that knocks the discount down. We’ll give anywhere from 10%-25% discount. In the end, we always make it so they get the answer correctly. As a bonus, we let them take the card as a souvenir of the game.

In today’s economy, it pays to let the customer negotiate. I own a paint your own pottery shop in Chandler, AZ. Our objective is to move our inventory. It does us no good sitting on the shelf week after week. We are always willing to work with our customers, it is one of the many reasons they continue to come back to us! On the plus side, one happy negotiator will tell another, and for us, it may mean another happy customer!

In this day and age we as retailers can not be ingnorant about what is going on in society. Multiple generations have now grown up with the ‘never pay retail’ mentallity. When I have a customer that tries to negotiate the price I find out what they do for a living, last week I had a dentist that wanted a discount on some new merchandise. Knowing I wasn’t about to ‘do any better’ on the price I asked the dentist if I could have a discount on her services and she was so offended that I would ask that. So I asked why should I give a discount if you aren’t willing to? Truthfully I don’t want these cheap -sses in my store, that is what Walmart & Cosco is for. If an item is shop worn or has been sitting awhile we play good cop, bad cop amongst management and depending on how bad we want it gone we may go up to a 30% discount.

Once you get a reputation for negotiating price, you’ll never lose it. I sometimes tell my customers they all pay the same price, and ask if they can come up with a more fair way to operate. This morning, for example, I told a gentleman who wanted to wheel and deal that I just had a man buy two pair of shoes at regular price and he didn’t ask for a deal, so why should I make a deal for this man who was buying two pair on sale. Integrity is more important than making one sale.

Never, never do I want anyone to think they can come into my store and haggle prices. If that starts then I am saying that my prices are too high to begin with so you are free to negotiate. My store, my rules, my prices.

Tell them they are lucky they came in today since you have a trip planned to Tahiti and to help pay for it, everything is going up 20% tomorrow!

Bottom line — don’t let a policy or your attitude push you right past an opportunity. Honest conversation with your customers will lead you both to the place you want to be.

I hope you enjoyed these answers and that you get some new ideas on how to handle the negotiating situation. You know that you will be faced with it and it definitely helps to be prepared!