Customer buys product. A sale is offered a week later. Said customer asks for a reduced price on the already-bought product — essentially, a partial refund (even though they are delighted with the product).

Because we are caring people, we are torn. On the one hand, you sympathize with the customer; you may also not want to alienate them as a future customer. On the other hand, dammit, that product is worth what was paid and a sale is a sale because it is only offered for a defined, limited time.

My theory: there are a significant number of “want-to-be-solo-entrepreneurs” who are always looking for something for cheap or nothing. It’s why hype-overload sales pages work — because there are always people out there who think they can work 4 hours a week and make $10,000 a month — the first month. And they expect to learn how to do it for free.

(This also explains the people who unsubscribe from a newsletter because there are offers that actually cost money in there amongst the voluminous free info offered — to quote one of my own recent unsubscribers, “The -emails seem to be just an advertising vehicle.” Well, duh. It’s not a public service announcement! Do they also stop watching tv because there are commercials??)

So what to do? Spend as LITTLE time as possible dealing with these type of folks. If you have a written policy, point them toward it. Or have your VA reply for you, maybe with a pre-written template for such situations. Whatever will make them go away with the least guilt and angst for you. Because they aren’t worth it — they aren’t, and will never be, ideal customers (or in most cases, customers at all).

I think it’s enough to Just Say NO!

Last 5 posts by Terri Zwierzynski

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Solo Entrepreneur Lifestyle, Sales, Pricing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.