When to give price breaks?

[Farmboy]

It's been a while since I've posted. I needs some input from the group. I use pricing software for all sign and decal orders. I have a customer who orders once every few months, they get decals that we have on file and the amounts vary. Some times they get half what they got on a previous order and are always surprised that they cost more, even though I explain that the cost is based on the current and not previous orders. I tell them this is industry standard, am I way off base here?

 

[ColorCrest]

I use pricing software for all sign and decal orders.

If your pricing software was using the power of the computer it's already running from (and good programming to begin with), you could offer your customer a price break on every individual item so they could be satisfied knowing they are, in fact, already receiving a discount for any quantity over 1 and at any quantity. Win / win for both the customer and yourself.

Maybe have the conversation with the software people.

 

[2B]

we also do the QTY breaks, they order 25 it is XXXXX per unit, they order 100 it is XXX per unit.

in addition, we try to explain that pricing is based on the amount of material used per order.
my preferred example is milk in the grocery store, you can buy a pint of milk and can buy it multiples to get a gallon BUT you get a better per unit price if you buy the gallon at once.

also, it helps to lists the QTY breaks so they can see the differences

 

[HulkSmash]

minimum order of decals should be 250

price break
at 500 and 1000

anything more is a custom quote

 

[jimbug72]

With this type of situation, especially on printed decals, I explain to them that they are paying more for labor than materials. I let them know that making one decal may take us 10 minutes to produce/finish. Then explain it would take us 15 minutes to finish 25 decals and 20 minutes to finish 100 decals. If we have a decal job in production at the time I will show them the process IF they are a customer worth taking the time to educate.

 

[shoresigns]

Keep it simple. I just explain that it's more efficient for us to print higher quantities at the same time. So more quantity = lower unit price and vice versa.

You don't need to explain why higher quantities are more efficient to most people. It's common sense. But if you do need to explain, I usually tell them if I print 1 decal or 100 decals, it takes the same amount of labour to load up the printer and get everything set up to print, and the same amount of extra material that gets wasted before and after the print run, so the unit price changes because the fixed setup costs get shared between either 1 or 100 decals.