1104 – Do Discounts The Right Way: Tom talks Discounts Can Kill

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

🔑 Core Message
Constant discounting damages your business long-term. Instead of lowering prices, increase perceived value.
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⚠️ Why Discounts Are Dangerous
• Trains customers to wait for sales instead of buying now
• Attracts low-quality, price-sensitive buyers
• Makes your regular price look fake or inflated
• Leads to lower profit margins
• Devalues your brand over time
👉 If everything is always “on sale,” nothing feels special.
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✅ When Discounts ARE OK
• Expected seasonal sales (e.g., holidays)
• Occasional promotions—not constant price cutting
• Bundles with slight discounts to increase total spend
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💡 Better Strategy: Add Value Instead
Instead of lowering price, increase what customers get:
1. Bonuses (Highly Recommended)
• Add your own or partner bonuses
• Others may contribute bonuses for exposure
• Can include affiliate links → extra backend revenue
2. Product Bundling
• Combine multiple products
• Offer a small discount for higher total purchase
• Encourages larger transactions without cheapening brand
3. Consultations (High-Impact Tactic)
• Offer consultations as a bonus
• Adds massive perceived value
• Most people won’t actually redeem them
• Those who do are:
o More likely to become high-paying clients
o More likely to refer others
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🚀 Key Business Insight
Providing real value (like consultations and support):
• Builds trust and loyalty
• Generates referrals—even from non-buyers
• Leads to higher lifetime customer value
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⚖️ Bottom Line
• Avoid habitual discounting
• Use discounts sparingly and strategically
• Focus on value stacking instead of price slashing
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🧠 Practical Takeaway (Your Action Plan)
• Replace your next “sale” with:
o A bonus stack
o A bundle offer
o A limited consultation offer
• Keep your price integrity intact

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Episode 1104 – Discounts Can Kill
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1104 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about how discounts can kill you. Discounts CAN kill you, as in your business. Don't let this happen to you. This is 1104. Hope you didn't miss episode 1103. That was people think they're too salesy and it kills their financial future. So we go into details on that, how to overcome that problem. All right, let's see. Get a copy of my automation book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the latest, but there is a little update I need to tell you about when I talk about short keys. This program that has saved me 10 million keystrokes, literally. We did an estimate is now a browser extension. So if you see me talking about short keys, go look for it as a browser extension instead of a program. Let's see. Check out my mentor program at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. One other thing you probably want to download is screwthecommute.com/aihacks. It's my finished off notes of all the cool things you can do without being a techie to make artificial intelligence work for you. So definitely get a copy of that. Screwthecommute.com/aihacks.
[00:01:57] All right. Discounts can kill. Well, first of all, I totally believe in discounting strategically. And I also have preached for years that people love a sale.
[00:02:10] What happens is, is when people run constant sales or they just drop their price tremendously to get some quick cash. It's that you're training people to wait to buy from you. You're also attracting bargain hunters, and you're making people think that your regular prices are fake. So when you're always discounting sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, what's the difference? Why should I buy today when I can wait? And by tomorrow or by the next day? Or forget about you altogether, right? Another thing is that if you never sell at the regular price, people think, how could that price be real? I'll just wait. And I'm not talking about once a year sales, and I'm not talking about when everybody is expecting a sale like 4th of July or President's Day, Memorial Day, all those awesome. Perfect time to have a sale. What I'm talking about is constant price dropping. So what you end up with is lower profit margins and poor quality customers. Who wants that? All right. To get away from this, I'm talking about adding value and not dropping your price. And that typically means adding bonuses yours and other people's bonuses. See, a lot of people would be loved to be in front of your audience, and they give you a high quality bonus that you can include with your, your deals. And you got something for free to help sell your main product, but also to encourage people.
[00:04:02] You can have them have a bonus with your affiliate link in it. So if somebody buys something from them, you get extra money. See, that's extra back end sales where you didn't do anything for it. Say you can also bundle multiple products and discount slightly. And so what you're trading off there is a fair deal. You're getting people to spend more money. So you're giving them a little discount. That's perfectly fine. That's not going to attract the the the pitiful people, the or not. They're not pitiful as people. They're just bargain hunters. All right. I'm a bargain hunter, so I guess I'm pitiful. So you can add value in all kinds of ways. Bonuses are one. One of them that I do all the time. That's crazy is consultations with almost everything I sell that are reasonably priced. Not the little tiny ebooks and stuff. I offer consultations. And you know what, folks? As I sit here, if I had to deliver all the consultations that I owe people, I'd have to leave town, hide out in Mexico or somewhere. All right, what's funny now, if somebody calls to collect one, absolutely, they get it. But what's funny about consultations is that it adds a tons of value to your product. But most people don't collect it. It's just a funny thing that they because they must feel that they're going to get high pressured into upselling something else and whatever.
[00:05:41] But adding it is great because it adds value, but you don't normally have to deliver all of them. And, and then here's the other thing that a lot of the lazy people in my field think, they think they're too good to do this and so forth. But, but the ones that do call for the consultation are the most likely people to spend more money with you and to refer you to others because you took care of them to a high degree. Say where a lot of these divas, you know, I speak with them all the time. I'm on a program, they roll in at the last minute. They have no idea what any other speaker said. They look like assholes on stage, and then they try to tell you, you need to buy myself right now because I'm so important. I got to fly out, you know? So that's not what I'm talking about. Uh, the consultations I give is I, I talk to them like regular people and they can't believe that I'll do it at my level. But when I do, I get. And even if they can't afford my bigger stuff, guess what happens? They refer me as if they were in my bigger stuff. They say, oh, he's great. This guy is great. Oh, wonderful. I get calls all the time from people that were referred by people that couldn't afford my services.
[00:06:59] This is a way, way better than discounting all the time in the long run. Now I get it. If you're really tight on cash flow, sometimes you got to do it. I totally understand that. I'm just saying, don't make it a habit and work your way out of it by adding value rather than discounting. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my school IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country. Probably the world. And it'll save you a couple hundred thousand bucks by going to a four year indoctrination camp and learning how to protest, which is the main skill you get out of nowadays. You get out of those schools nowadays and then, hey, but you can there's lots of openings at Starbucks when you take your your MBA down there and tell them you can really sell that coffee, right? So, so and I'm laughing, but it's really sad that this is happening to people and then they're stuck with student debt till I mean, this one comedian, he's a 90 year old comedian, really funny. And one of his jokes was, hey, I just paid off my student debt. Now I'm laughing again when it's really a sad thing. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.