Katie McManus argues service businesses shouldn't run Black Friday sales. Discounts train clients to wait for deals, signal low quality, and get buried among competitors. Build your audience with content instead.
Three reasons why I think it's a bad idea to do a Black Friday sale for your services. Hi, I'm Katie McManus. I'm your practical business coach. And here's reason one. You train everyone that you have sales, and that doesn't sound like a terrible thing when you think of like, well, they're buying for me, right? But let me tell you a little story. So we all remember 2008 and the financial crisis that ensued. And I don't know about you, but I was a big fan of Banana Republic back in the day. Loved their clothes, bought half of my wardrobe there. The other half was J. Crew. After the financial crisis, though, they went on like a fire sale. Everything was on sale all the time. And basically they'd have a full price thing and then immediately, a few weeks later, drop it down to a sale price. So I learned really quickly to not buy things full price. I would just wait for the sale to roll around, right. Reasonable. And eventually their quality started going down, right? Cause the margins weren't great. And so it became a very cheap brand. And I'll still occasionally pop in and buy the occasional. But quality is not great. And I really like, I will never buy something full price there because I know it's going to be on sale immediately. When you do sales, you start training your clients to wait for a sale. So that means they're going to hold off on buying from you until the next sale comes around. Reason two, I want you to think of the undertones of what a sale means. So retail stores, it makes sense for them to do a sale, right? Because they have inventory that they have to move out. But if you're providing a service, service, why do you need to do a sale? Do you not have many clients? And why don't you have many clients? Is it because you're not that good? I want you to be really, really honest with yourself. What like discounting your services will communicate to the outside world because people associate price with quality. And if you're cutting your prices for any reason, that tells me that your business is not full right now. And if your business is not full, why is it not full? I'm going to start question like how good you are at your work. Because if your business isn't full, then maybe I should be going to someone better. And reason three, if you were to do a Black Friday sale, you'd have to email a bunch and you have to post a bunch. Well, guess what? So is everyone else. Okay? So your emails and your posts, they're Just getting lost in a sea of other people's junk. And who wants that? Okay? I'd rather you spend the time just relaxing and enjoying the holiday and your family than going out and undercutting all the incredible work you've done to build your business up to this point. Okay? You do not need to discount yourself. Okay? And you do not need to fight tooth and nail to compete against all the other things that everyone's trying to sell these poor people, all right? Let them buy the junk that they need to buy for other people for Christmas and for Hanukkah and for all the other gift giving holidays that are coming up. What you can focus on is building out all the content that you're going to be rolling out in December, framing them up to start in January, or to frame up it to start in December. Okay? But you don't need to pick this one day where everyone else is vying for attention to just throw your hat in the ring, because guess what? It's going to get lost. And I know it's hard. When you see everyone else doing something, you're like, oh my God, I should be doing that too. Just because everyone's doing it is not a good enough reason to do it yourself. Okay? So take a deep breath. Know that your business is going to be successful. You're going to continue working hard at it. You offer an incredible service, and you just need a better strategy that's going to help you build your client list outside of these major selling holidays. And if you want help with that, I share practical tips every single day to help you build your client list and make more money in your business. So go ahead and follow.
