Let’s talk about what’s happening in the market right now: tariffs, inflation, supply chain pressure, price. Customers are cautious. Decisions are slower. And suddenly everyone’s favorite strategy is discounting, because nothing says “premium solution” like dropping your price faster than your confidence. 

Inside the company, it usually sounds like this:

Sales says, “We’ve got to move.”
Finance says, “Protect margin.”
Operations says, “Don’t promise what we can’t deliver.”
And leadership says, “Can someone please make this quarter happen without setting the building on fire?”

Here’s the truth: your biggest competitor right now isn’t another company. It’s resistance — resistance in your customers’ decision-making and resistance inside your own organization. And when resistance goes up, most teams assume the problem is price. So they discount. They negotiate against themselves. They throw in extras like it’s the last day of a furniture liquidation sale.

Let me share a lesson I learned early in my career. Back in 1988, my office was in a rented executive suite in Bergen County, New Jersey. Next to me was a real estate developer who owned strip malls along Route 4. One day, an exotic fish store closed and moved to Florida, and he was stuck with an empty space. It stayed vacant for a year.

So I asked him, “Why don’t you just lower the rent?”

He said, “Because the second you lower your price, it’s hard to ever get it back, and you’ve taught the market you can’t maintain your own value.”

That hit me like a lightning bolt, because it’s the same thing in sales.

Now listen—sometimes you do need a discount. Maybe it’s strategic. Maybe it’s for the right reasons. But before you drop the price, always try to reposition the value. Because once you discount, it costs you margin, leverage, and credibility. And getting that price back up? That’s a whole different fight.

That’s why I teach the Velocity Mindset. Velocity is speed with direction. Moving fast without buy-in doesn’t create momentum, it creates chaos, discounting, and margin erosion.

If you want your leaders and sales team to gain buy-in faster, protect margin, and accelerate decisions—call me. Let’s talk.

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