Why your techs discount, and how to stop it
Techs don’t discount because they’re bad at sales. They discount because the pricebook hands them a number they can’t stand behind, and knocking a few hundred dollars off is the fastest way out of a silent kitchen. The discount is not generosity. It is friction. Fix the book that creates the friction and most of the discounting disappears, without a single sales seminar.
The discount is a symptom, not the disease
Walk into most shops with a discounting problem and the owner wants a sales trainer. That treats the tech as the broken part. He isn’t. Put a strong closer and a quiet tech in the same truck with the same broken book and they both discount, just at different speeds. The number they were handed has nothing behind it, so the only lever either of them has in the moment is price.
This is the part owners get wrong about their best people. The best techs are often the quiet ones. They are not working the customer, they are letting the options do the talking, and they close because what is on the tablet makes sense.
Revenue share rewards the closers, and good closers are real and worth keeping. But you do not want your margin riding on whether today’s tech happens to be one of them. You want the book to carry the price so the average tech presents the same way the best one does.
Where the friction actually comes from
A price becomes indefensible for specific, fixable reasons.
- It is one number with no alternative. When the only choice is yes or no, every objection lands on the full price, and the tech’s only counter is to lower it. Good, better, best moves the conversation from whether to which one, and the middle tier becomes the anchor that does the selling.
- It shows nothing. A single line that says “System Install: $14,200” invites the question “why so much?” and the tech has no answer on the tablet. A proposal that itemizes the equipment, the labor, the warranty, and the removal answers the question before it is asked.
- It was built backwards. When the book was assembled from a supplier catalog instead of from what the shop actually sells, the price reflects parts, not value, and the tech can feel that the number is arbitrary. That is the 400-services problem: a book loaded with everything and built to sell nothing.
- It is improvised. A price assembled in the driveway, line by line, in front of a waiting customer, is a price the tech is apologizing for before he says it. That is the 45-minute driveway problem, and the apology in his voice is what gets discounted.
The fix is a presentable price, not a braver tech
You stop discounting by removing the reason for it. That is a pricebook job, and it is the whole point of a pricebook that sells:
- Tiered options so there is always a next choice instead of a hard no.
- Line items so the value is visible.
- A loaded labor rate so the number is right instead of guessed.
- Proposal templates so the tech presents in two taps instead of building from scratch.
Do that and the discount stops being the tech’s escape hatch, because there is nothing to escape.
The price is defensible, so it gets presented instead of defended.
The quiet tech and the closer both hold the number, because the book is holding it for them.
Where to start
Before you book a sales trainer, look at what your techs are actually handed. The free Pricebook Health Audit reads your export and shows you the jobs with no options, the flat numbers with nothing behind them, and the places the book is forcing the discount.
When the answer is to rebuild the book so it presents, that is the work we do, and it is built on the Present-Don’t-Configure Method so the price is ready before the tech is in the driveway.