Discounts, Promotional and Preferred Prices

In my conversations with Sage Software's reselling partners, one common theme is discounting, specifically, the practice of permanent or semi-permanent offers for migrations and other up-sell, cross-sell, and add-on sell opportunities.

I believe that one chief cause of confusion is the language often used to describe these offers. In most cases, they are not really discounts, but promotional or preferred prices. However, in much of the communication the terms are used interchangeably. I believe this does everyone a disservice.

I postulate that a promotional price is the correct term to use when referring to a short-term offer. A preferred price should refer to a special on-going price to a current customer who would like to buy additional goods or services. A discount, on the other hand, denotes a transactional or one-time offer, usually used as a negotiation tactic. This is a key distinction and should not be taken lightly.

We need to stop using the term discount when we mean promotional or preferred pricing in any context.