A while back, I wrote about a customer who wasn’t sure whether he should offer a discount to a prospect. He ended up following my advice and not offering any preemptive, arbitrary discounts, but he did offer 2 conditional discounts, one for early payment, and one for a case study. Crucially, the pricing and discounting terms were right next to each other in the proposal terms and conditions. Happy, the prospect agreed that they could move forward, once he got legal approval. Legal through out the reference discount (and apparently turned approval around much faster than usual so the company could still take advantage of the early payment discount). At the end of the day, the seller made several extra thousand dollars (but lost out on the reference), and got paid promptly.
Without attaching conditions to the discounts, he would have been out the money and the reference. A happy ending.
(Here’s a guide to how to handle discounting in 3 steps.)