Should You Discount? A No-Nonsense Guide to Sales

Every few weeks, somebody asks some version of: "should I put my products on sale?" The honest answer is: sometimes, on purpose, not as a panic button. Here's how to think about it without guessing.

Discounts are a tool, not a mood

A discount should be answering a real question: "how do I move this specific stock, by this date, to this kind of customer?" If you can't fill in that sentence, you're not running a sale - you're just quietly making less money on things that would've sold anyway.

Good reasons to discount:

• Slow-moving stock taking up space you need for new arrivals
• A specific date worth marking (Black Friday, your store's anniversary, a holiday)
• Rewarding an actual first-time-customer moment, not everyone forever

Bad reasons to discount:

• "Sales feel like they're not really happening" (fix the marketing, not the price)
• Copying a competitor's price cut without knowing their margins
• Discounting everything, permanently, until "sale price" quietly becomes just... the price

If it's been sitting since March, it's not "premium inventory," it's just sitting there. Move it on purpose.

Show the "was" price - people want the receipt, literally

A price that's just low doesn't feel like a deal. A price that's visibly lower than what it used to be does. When you set a "was" price higher than your actual selling price on a product, your storefront automatically shows it struck through next to the new price, with the percentage off - the same "was ₦15,000, now ₦9,500" moment that makes a discount feel like one instead of just... a price.

Don't let a discount train people to wait you out

If every product goes on sale eventually, customers learn the smart move is to never buy at full price - just wait. That's the opposite of what a discount is supposed to do. Keep sales occasional and specific (a product, a date, a reason), not a permanent background hum.

The math still has to work

A 40% discount on a product with a 35% margin isn't a promotion, it's a loss you're paying customers to take off your hands. Know your actual cost before you decide how deep a "sale" can go. A smaller discount you can afford beats a big one that quietly loses money on every unit.

"It's fine, we'll make it up on volume" has ended more small businesses than it has saved.

The short version

Discount specific products, for a specific reason, for a specific window of time. Show the "was" price so it actually reads as a deal. Know your margin before you decide how deep to go. Do that, and a sale does its actual job: moving the right stock, to the right customer, without quietly training everyone to never pay full price again.