This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

Do you believe in discounts?

I don’t.

Many businesses offer discounts as psychological manipulation to make more sales happen. People in India are really a sucker for discounts.

But I don’t trust discounts. Discounts, most of the time, are fake, and you can see it. Someone is basically jacking up prices and then giving discounts on that jacked up price. It is inauthentic. At other times they are forced to give discounts because the price is too high. It is risky for me as a customer because the house always wins. Discount is a kind of cheating where you charge differential prices to different people. Why?

So when I built my own company, I refused to offer any discounts. My colleagues in sales often requested me to offer some package or the other to increase sales as our competitors gave discounts on top of discounts, but I said no – we would have to learn to sell without giving discounts.

I want people to buy our courses because of the value intrinsic in them, not because they are available for cheap.

It is harder no doubt, but it is a long term strategy. It forced us to get better and better at what we do. When our competitors relied on shortcuts and gimmicks, we just kept our head down and took the long road to success.

It is not that I haven’t felt worried or tensed when I saw our competitors offering insane discounts. It is not that I never wondered if I should give in to the pressure. I did many times.

But we resisted that temptation.

The truth is that it is hard to provide great value and a lot of discounts at the same time. Usually, those two things pull you in different directions.

You can either be very cheap. Or you can be premium and give a lot of value.

We educated our community and our users instead.

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Almost in every sales call people to ask us about discounts. Is there any discount available?

Here is what we say:

In our 8 year history, we have never offered a discount and never will. We will charge the same price to everyone. We believe giving discounts to some and not to others is cheating. Our prices will be the same round the year until we need to increase it. It will go up and never come down because we charge a reasonable amount with a very thin margin and there is no scope to reduce prices.

After hearing this, most people get where we are coming from, and do not insist on a discount.

The conversation always shifts to what value we can generate for them.

I would rather build trust with my buyers that they will always get tremendous value from my offerings, and discounts then become unnecessary.

When I am buying things as well, I have a strong view on discounts. I want value, but when people offer too low a price, I am a bit suspicious. I know that things of real value rarely come with a lot of discounts.

If a lawyer charges you a very discounted price, you need to worry. How will he give enough time and attention to your matter? I will rather go to a lawyer who charges me enough.

If someone tells you that they are going to sell you the Kohinoor, or a Rolls Royce at a discount, should you not be suspicious? It is very dicey. What is the need to sell such valuable things at a discount?

What is the need to give a discount if the product or services are good, anyway?

I am sure all of us have burned our fingers a few times by trying to buy the cheapest thing in the market.

Sometimes it is easy to ascertain the value of what you are buying. Like a t-shirt. Or a coffee mug. You know what you are buying.

How about a car on a discount? I may try to find the cheapest deal, but if someone is selling something too cheap I will be worried, especially because it is so hard to understand for me if that car is actually in a good condition.

I have once taken a lease of a property on discount when it was in a dilapidated state and rumours of ghosts haunting the property were abound. It worked nicely, I got a super cheap deal.

When a discount is clearly understandable, and the value is obvious, I have no qualms about taking that up.

On the other hand, when it comes to buying a phone or a laptop, I go for trusted brands that I know will last me a long time. My Apple Macbook, although more expensive than any other laptop I ever bought, has given me tremendous more value as it is 4 years old and still almost brand new. My Oneplus phone is 2 years old, and still very robust and I cannot find any rational reason to replace it!

When I compare this to all the cheap laptops and phones I have bought, which broke easily or started developing problems after a few months, I see that those cheap gadgets were in many ways very expensive for me.

I am a sucker for value for money. I would rather buy a 2nd hand vehicle because I will get a much better deal and there will be hardly any difference in performance. I recently bought our technology team a 2nd hand MacBook pro for one third the original price, which works just like any brand new one!

I love buying stocks on a discount. That is a different kind of discount though. Sometimes the mood of the market is very pensive, and people sell perfectly well-performing stocks in irrational fear. Then you can get stocks for a discount, i.e. at a lower value than what it is actually worth.

I love that kind of discount.

That kind of discount usually becomes available due to unfavourable market conditions, although an asset is perfectly viable. Like the property that people thought is infested by ghosts. Or stocks that are available for cheap because people got scared and left share market in a stampede.

I want to save every penny I can. But discounts? I am always wary of them. That is primarily because they do not give as much value since discounts are a psychological trick in the hand of marketers to sell things that should otherwise not even exist in the market

What is your view on discounts? What kind of discounts do you look out for and what kind of discounts do you always avoid?

Meanwhile, check out the following courses on which we do not offer discounts rather we focus on giving 10x value so that your career does not get discounted in any way. You are meant to generate value and shine in your career. So make the right choices and don’t compromise by choosing discounts.

Diploma:

Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution

Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance and Investment Laws (PE and VC transactions)

Diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws

Executive Certificate Courses:

Certificate course in Advanced Corporate Taxation

Certificate course in Advanced Civil Litigation: Practice, Procedure and Drafting