Never offer the customer anything they have not expressed a specific need for. It’s too easy to throw in items that will cause you to give up profit with little to show for it.
When the market gets soft and sales become a little harder to come by, it’s easy to start flinching at every hesitation you see from a prospect. The problem is that each time you acknowledge a flinch by the customer, you make another commitment and give them something extra. At the time you may think it’s critical to close the sale, but it rarely is, especially when what you end up offering the customer is something they really don’t need.
Think about this for a moment: if you’re offered something for free, would you turn it down? No, you’d accept what’s being offered, but you may not place much value in it. In fact, you may not even use what was given to you. In the same way, your customer will readily accept what you offer them, but they may not place any value on it. The end result? You cut into your profit and, in some situations, wind up making a sale with no profit at all because of the little extras that were offered up along the way.
