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By now, you already know this: Discounts kill businesses. I made the case in “Why We Don’t Have Sales.” But there are two parts to change: The first is making the decision to change, and the second is actually making the change. In other words, knowing what to do is half the battle (or less). Taking action is really all that matters. To help you act, I’ll supply the easiest ways to say “no” when someone asks for a discount. 1. “We don’t have discounts.” This is my go-to. Because I don’t have discounts for anyone, it’s simplest for me to say that discounts don’t exist. This has solved our “discount” problem for over six years. 2. When someone else is giving discounts “We don’t play those games.” Because the nature of discounts is subjective (it requires a human “decision” instead of an automated process), it’s always easy to cast a shadow of doubt on the intent on the discounter. I saw this in action when I was selling high-end fitness equipment. We were always in a losing price battle against Sears and other department stores that ran frequent “sales” on treadmills. So when someone asked us to match a price or when we’d have a 40 percent off sale, we’d say, “We don’t play those games.” It worked: You could see a visible shift in the purchaser as he or she became suspicious of the chains offering the discount. It helped that one of the department stores was sued for advertising a regular price on tires that it never actually charged—they were always on sale. I occasionally brought that up. 3. When someone asks for a specific discount Members of some service groups receive discounts from other businesses, so they’re inclined to ask for them everywhere. Here’s your response: “We treat all our service professionals equally well because we know our service is critical for your safety.” The service ...

 A few months ago, I was speaking in Montreal, Quebec. It was a split seminar: other speakers took Saturday’s presentation, and I followed on Sunday. We have very different ideas on business, so I was glad to go second. During the first day, one attendee volunteered that he wanted to earn $100,000 per year (net). He shared his rates (which were low, but not grievously so). The speaker did some quick math and told him, “You need 374 members. Go get them.” Never mind additional revenue streams. Forget about hiring other coaches to help with the workload. For 374 members, this guy could buy himself a job. 374 recurring memberships is a high number to reach (where will they all fit? How many bars will you need? How will you coach that many people?) There are a handful of gyms doing it, but next to none have a decent profit margin (33% or above). I’ve written about all of these problems at length. The simple number “374” hides a deadly trap, though. What the speaker meant was that the owner needed to get and keep 374 members, averaging that number forever, to make a good living as a gym owner. We track retention data through surveys, monthly accountability calls and our Gym Checkup. I first wrote about retention data in the CrossFit Journal in 2009. This is the number we watch most closely, because in the service industry, client acquisition is very time-expensive. Let’s say you have a 95% monthly retention rate. If you have a small gym of 50 members, you’re probably slightly higher. But as your gym grows, you have weaker connections to each member. That’s one reason retention rates tend to drop in larger gyms. 95% monthly retention in gyms over 300 members is very, very rare. People quit because they don’t like it; they quit because they don’t like you; they quit because they move. Even at a 95% retention rate, a gym with ...