My friend Gaylen has a phrase that I go to at least a couple times a week. He says, “pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.”
That is some good homespun wisdom.
If you want customers long term, you don’t want to overcharge them. Somebody gives you fifty percent of your business and if you overcharge them, what is going to happen if eventually they get a quote that is for comparable work but half the price? What if you convince a customer to print a big number of shirts and they get stuck with them? They may not come back to you for advice or business in the future.
Earlier today I had a customer wanting to do 500 to 1000 shirts to sell at a conference that will be attended by no more than 1500 people. I could just let them print the shirts, but I know they would be stuck with them and no way to sell them later. If you sell to 10% of a crowd that is pretty good. We finally came up with 125 shirts being a more reasonable figure for the total printing. I’ll make some money today and I’ll make some money next time he calls. We’ll get fed not slaughtered…
I love this… We always take care of our return customers. Sometimes I can’t compete with the guys slaughtering themselves. We charge a fair price comparatively to other shops. I even go out of my way to make sure we are delivering our best services at a great price. We don’t want them going elsewhere.