Fall Back on ‘The Company’

It can be easy to succumb to pressure from others when you are just a one-man or one-woman band. Because you can make any business decision you want it is tempting to give in to people who want favourable treatment of price discounts. 

Instead, I recommend you take a “company first” mentality. This mentality means you think of your business as a company that is much larger than you. It is no longer one-person tiny company that can do whatever it wants as your mood allows. 

A good example is if someone asks for a decent discount. You counter with something like “I’m sorry but we can’t do that”. An even better response, if you can, is to say “we can’t do that, but I can do fries with that”. In my case I have turned a requested $30 discount into a portable knife sharpener worth $25. That sharpener cost me $4 so I saved myself a loss of $26. If I had succumbed (which is easy to do in the moment) I would have lost $26 from my profit margin. 

Even though you are a sole trader you probably have people who are invested in your business e.g. your partner, or maybe even a financial backer. Even if you don’t have any of that going on in the background, pretend that you do. The customer doesn’t know that you might be single, have no dependents, and have no life. 

Document your terms, conditions and warranty on your website. This gives you guidelines to live by.