I went out for a few drinks with my mate, Julian, last night. We went down to our local watering-hole in the town and spent a few hours chewing the fat by the fire in the yard.

And as we walked back to the car along the dark, rainwashed streets of Clonakilty, I was struck once more by the pathos and sheer lack of imagination of business owners up and down the high street.

There we had the usual mixture of bricks ’n’ mortar businesses all making the same grave and potentially fatal error in their efforts to bring in sales by offering discount, upon discount, upon discount.

It seemed like every window I passed either had signs proclaiming outrageous price-cuts and “January sales”, or was clearly presenting their wares in a way suggesting low-price was a great reason to get you walking through the door.

The thing is, nobody wins a price war.

Why?

Because if you cut your prices, your competitors simply follow suit (in the same way you follow them if they cut their prices).

And people, being the creatures of habit they are, simply go on buying from the same people they’ve always bought from, so when the dust settles everyone has pretty much the same amount of business they had before.

But now you’re all making less money, are less able to give good service, and everyone’s pissed off about it (especially when the business folds).

Everyone suffers from low prices, including the buyer.

But it’s worse than that: because even if your price-cut means you do get more business and get it consistently the chances are you will not be able to service the volume adequately.

In fact, without going into the details here, it’s often the case you cut prices, get an increase in volume you can’t deal with, and still make less profit than you were making previously from fewer sales.

Madness.

The tragedy?

Avoiding all this nonsense, selling at higher prices, and making a decent profit is often as simple as just asking for the higher price and not offering discounts.

Sure, you’re gonna feel some resistance to that and are gonna want to knuckle under to the (largely imaginary) pressure when you see everyone else selling more cheaply than you are, and maybe attracting the odd snide comment or two.

I get that.

But you can’t run a successful business and be everyone’s best friend. The man (or woman) who never made a few enemies never made anything.

And that’s why it’ll pay you to jump on the blower with me so I can take you through the five step process we use at The Operation to make this shit a fait accompli.

P.S. Just to give you some idea how ridiculous selling on price is, if you’re selling at a 35% markup (which is perfectly reasonable for most businesses in most industries), and you cut your prices by a mere 10%, it will slash your profits by nearly 40% (you can do the maths yourself or I can show you, but for now, take it from me the calculation is correct).

On the other hand, if you increase prices by 10% on the same markup (which no one will notice let alone complain about), you will increases your profits by the same nearly 40%.

So here’s what to do next:

1. Increase your prices by 10% across the board right now.
2. When you see the effect it has over the next few sales, jump off that haemorrhoid-inducing fence you’re sitting on and arrange a call with me and let me show you what else I can do to help you grow your business (clue: there’s lots).