Customers Won't Discount Your Dishonesty

A recent coach­ing ses­sion touched upon the grow­ing trend that some mar­keters have adopted to squeeze out sales from exit­ing traffic.

In other words, you visit a web­site and read the saleslet­ter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or sim­ply hover your mouse out­side of it), the web­site attempts to make a last-​​ditch offer.

The com­mon prac­tice is to offer a dis­count, and a recent trend is to make it through vir­tual sales assis­tant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.

(Vir­tual assis­tant or not, it is no dif­fer­ent than a one-​​time offer appear­ing in an exit pop-​​up or spawned browser win­dow once the vis­i­tor leaves.)

Not only is the prac­tice annoy­ing, it can be detri­men­tal to your sales efforts.

Specif­i­cally, straight dis­count­ing as an exit offer is a los­ing strat­egy that can have a neg­a­tive impact on your business.

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the phrase “per­cep­tion is every­thing”. This is cer­tainly the case in this sce­nario. You reduce your per­ceived value in the mar­ket­place when you uti­lize this sort of tactic.

You may get a few sales, but they cer­tainly won’t be from the cus­tomers most likely to lead to busi­ness growth.

First, there is the per­cep­tion of dishonesty.

No mat­ter how new your prospects are to your busi­ness, they will make the con­nec­tion and real­ize that if they had clicked on the buy but­ton they would’ve paid a higher price.

Look at it from the per­spec­tive of a buyer: for exam­ple, you visit a car deal­er­ship and the sales­per­son makes an offer. You decline and start to walk away. Then just as you’re about to leave the sales­per­son cuts the price.

Your cus­tomers will feel ripped off, even though you haven’t tech­ni­cally done so. (At the very least, you will give the impres­sion that you’re desperate.)

That’s cer­tainly not an impres­sion you want to cultivate.

When this hap­pens, there are five stick­ing points:

1. Since you give no “rea­sons why” to mak­ing the last-​​ditch dis­count, cus­tomers will think to them­selves, “If they cut the price just because I’m leav­ing, then why didn’t they do it earlier?”
2. If you drop the price so read­ily and so eas­ily, they might also think, “What else am I miss­ing? What are they hid­ing? How much more can they really discount?“
3. Price may not be the issue. (In fact, it never really is. It has more to do with the lack of value, and that’s only if the vis­i­tor is tar­geted for your offer in the first place.) It may be another objec­tion or a bot­tle­neck in the order­ing process.
4. Your cus­tomers will auto­mat­i­cally assume every­thing is over­priced and there­fore they won’t believe any­thing else you say (or any other offer you make in the future). While it may appear as a “good deal,” they will feel a cer­tain hos­til­ity or resent­ment toward your busi­ness — if just unconsciously.
5. If they do go ahead and feel good about their pur­chase, you have just edu­cated your cus­tomers to never buy at reg­u­lar prices. Your chances of sell­ing any­thing else in the future has con­sid­er­ably diminished.

The last one is impor­tant, so let’s take a closer look.

A par­tic­u­larly risky aspect of a dis­count offer like this is the qual­ity of the cus­tomer you’ll be attract­ing. Those who do sign on with the last-​​ditch effort are more likely to be bar­gain hunters.

They won’t be the qual­i­fied can­di­dates you need for your back­end sales efforts to be effec­tive. Instead, you will be more likely attract­ing prob­lem clients — those that demand refunds, require more sup­port, and who will try to get a dis­count on every­thing else you offer.

There are bet­ter ways to develop an exit offer that will likely be more con­sis­tent with your busi­ness goals.

It’s not that the idea of an exit offer itself is flawed, it’s the way it’s most com­monly done that causes the problem.

One way to retain the integrity of an offer is to use the exit offer to make an alter­nate offer or, even bet­ter, a downsell. Instead of offer­ing the same prod­uct with a lower price tag, present a sim­i­lar prod­uct with fewer bells and whistles.

By pre­sent­ing a lesser pack­age at a lesser price, you main­tain the per­ceived value of the orig­i­nal offer while pre­sent­ing your com­pany as sen­si­tive to the needs of those with lower budgets.

With this method you are not dis­count­ing, but offer­ing them choices.

If you are set on offer­ing a dis­count on the orig­i­nal prod­uct, there are still ways to save your­self the agony of a mis­matched cus­tomer base.

The key to doing this is to offer a trade-​​off in exchange for the dis­count rather than offer­ing the dis­count just because they tried to exit with­out buying.

For exam­ple, you can ask them to refer other peo­ple to your prod­uct in return for a dis­count. You could have them com­plete a sur­vey or par­tic­i­pate in a case study. You can even ask them to add another prod­uct to their order (or more of the same) and apply a bulk dis­count instead.

The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, but the point of them all is to require action in return for the discount.

Either of these meth­ods rep­re­sents a bet­ter option than the dis­count exit offer.

Instead of poten­tially offend­ing prospec­tive buy­ers, you are offer­ing them choice and oppor­tu­nity. These will be much bet­ter per­ceived and will ele­vate your orig­i­nal offer rather than devalu­ing it.

About the Author

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