What do you think of NHS discount?

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JemmaB

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In the salon I work at we offer a 10% NHS discount on all treatments.
Now, this may be quite controversial but Im afraid I hate it!
It lowers the already cheap treatments and I personally believe everyone has a job to do in this world and no one is better than anyone else.
Im sure nurses work extremely hard, but so do other people in other sectors of work.
Should we start giving RAF/Army discount? Mc Donalds discount??? (Ok i was joking on that last one!)

I've been thinking about this alot recently and would be interested in all you lovely peoples views :)
 
I seen this before, when i worked in ASDA superstore, we was aloud 20% off in peacocks store and somewhere else. I have also seen the NHS discount not sure where too, but i think they get that in a lot of places :/
I don't know what to think of it if i a honest.
 
Nurses and hospital staff deal daily with peoples body fluids, sickness, some of which is contagious, and death. You can argue people know what career they are going into but I don't see any harm in giving a tiny reward to the people in are society who are willing to do the jobs that deal with the more nitty gritty side of life.

A few places round here give discount to forces folk.

It's also a way for businesses to entice more customers through the door.
 
I don't think salons give NHS discount because they love Nurses, it's more to do with the fact that there are a heck of a lot of us, so if one goes and enjoys a treatment she/he will tell all her/his colleagues who will in turn get the discount and make the salon owner money.
 
Where I work offer it, has a little sticker in the window... & not once has anyone asked for a discount! Xx
 
I think this is the problem when our prices are low - any further reduction makes us feel like we're working for very little. One of my clients who is in advertising told me some of my treatments were too cheap - it sends out the wrong message - so I am currently in the process of putting my prices up. Not by a huge amount, but enough to reflect the quality of treatments on offer. I would then be happier offering a 10% discount. As you have stated - they are already cheap treatments. Put your prices up, and offer discounts/reductions/special offers etc with a smile!
 
The average nurse earns far more than the average beauty therapist, and the average doctor in the nhs earns more than 100k. Sorry, but why the discount? Might be a so so marketing tool, but ultimately you earn less profit, so there's very little point.
 
The average nurse earns far more than the average beauty therapist, and the average doctor in the nhs earns more than 100k. Sorry, but why the discount? Might be a so so marketing tool, but ultimately you earn less profit, so there's very little point.

I agree with yourself. Its a hard job but I think in 80% of people their pay reflects this

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I won't offer discount for anyone!
I'd feel like I then have to offer it doctors, dentists, nurses, policeman, soldiers, teachers and lots of other jobs that someway offer a service to society!x
 
The average nurse earns far more than the average beauty therapist, and the average doctor in the nhs earns more than 100k. Sorry, but why the discount? Might be a so so marketing tool, but ultimately you earn less profit, so there's very little point.


It is to increase business. Pure & Simple. I think the NHS is the largest employer in the UK so unless your booked 99%-100% of the time it does benefit your business. The potential gain in profit & clientele certainly makes it worth it.

Think the best thing in business is to keep your personal feelings to one side.
 
It is to increase business. Pure & Simple. I think the NHS is the largest employer in the UK so unless your booked 99%-100% of the time it does benefit your business.

Thats true, if your just starting out it could help bring clients in.
But at our salon a lot of people do try and take advantage by asking why cant they have it off sunbeds and retail products etc

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Thats true, if your just starting out it could help bring clients in.
But at our salon a lot of people do try and take advantage by asking why cant they have it off sunbeds and retail products etc

Sent from my GT-I9100 using SalonGeek

If you don't ask you don't get. Your salon owner obviously seen the benefit of it.
 
It's their career choice at the end of the day, it's not as if they're being forced to deal with death/body fluids/sickness etc. I work damn hard at my job & have to deal with ****ty customers day in day out, get spoken to horrendously & sometimes leave work upset/crying from what I have to deal with, where's my discount?

If the tables were turned, would beauty therapists be offered discount on private healthcare? I think not.
 
It's their career choice at the end of the day, it's not as if they're being forced to deal with death/body fluids/sickness etc. I work damn hard at my job & have to deal with ****ty customers day in day out, get spoken to horrendously & sometimes leave work upset/crying from what I have to deal with, where's my discount?

If the tables were turned, would beauty therapists be offered discount on private healthcare? I think not

Well said Xxx
 
There was a thread/article posted on here once called the hidden cost of discounting. If someone can find it and post a link, it would be really helpful for some of the people reading or participating in this thread.
Discounting doesn't build a business. I don't discount my work and never have, yet I am 95% booked, and work 6 days a week. It's doable.
 
Is this the one?

I've had to copy and paste as cant do the link on I-pad. I read it first time around, think I need to re-read it.

"Discounting can kill your business. Few business leaders or entrepreneurs realise that the biggest cost in their business can be something that doesn’t even show up in their accounts, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom. It’s the cost of giving discounts.
When you’re doing a lot less business than you should be doing, or you’re failing to hit your targets, or you’re under-utilising your potential or your capacity or you’re failing to fully exploit your investment in products, services, stock, equipment, facilities etc. it’s all too easy to push the panic button and offer discounts just to get more people through the door.
In most cases these discounts make no difference to the number of people who come through the door. But even if they do, these, or any other form of discounting, can turn into a serious and very expensive mistake. Let’s examine the dynamics …
If you have a 20% gross margin now, and you’re tempted to discount by 10%, you’ll have to DOUBLE your sales just to stand still. If you have a 30% margin and you discount by 10% you’ll have to increase your sales by 50%. If you discount by 20%, you’ll have to TRIPLE your sales.
Yet a lot of businesses throw discounts around as if they were confetti. By doing so they jeopardise their very existence because discounts are a significant business cost in just the same way as the rent, rates, payroll and other overheads which DO show up in their accounts.
A while ago I came across a business that was having a hard time. They had already done everything they could think of to reduce costs, yet they were still struggling to make £50K profit.
The key to transforming their results lay quite simply in a number that appeared nowhere in their accounts. Their invoiced sales of £2.3 million were actually made up of £3.8 million at list price, less an average discount of 40%.
These discounts were just “given away” by their sales people, without any control or authorisation procedures, and were costing the company £1.5 million a year. To make matters worse, much of this uncontrolled hand-out was completely unnecessary.
They soon established that they could reduce their average discount by one quarter to 30% with no significant loss of customers. The considerable sum they saved in discounts gave them an immediate profit boost … and by controlling their discounts they went from profits of £50K to a much more respectable profit of nearly £450K—an instant nine-fold increase.
Do you give away unnecessary discounts in your business? If so, how much higher would your profits be if you started controlling your discounts right now?
If people come for your price, they’ll leave for someone else’s
There are certain times and situations when discounts are appropriate and can make a dramatic difference to results. But discounts are also frequently offered by rote when there is no real need for them at all. Some people just seem unable to sell their product or service without offering an enticing discount … and if that happens in your business, it’s costing you a small fortune and also cheapening your image.
By offering or giving discounts for no good reason you not only make a rod for your own back, but you can suffer many other knock on effects. Unnecessary discounts are wasteful, indiscriminate and inefficient because they reward all customers, even those who end up buying less than before.
Once a discount has been given unnecessarily, customers often expect to continue getting it for years. They will then fight tooth and nail to preserve their current discount rates, and for many of them it becomes a crusade of pride and principle.
Perhaps worse, by discounting you educate your customers to become price shoppers. And price shoppers show no loyalty. By definition, price shoppers simply don’t come for the price, then stay for your product or service. They come for the price. And when a competitor offers them a better price (bear in mind that someone somewhere will always be able to undercut you), they leave you for the price … and often never return.
Discount customers don’t buy you, or the quality of your product or service. They merely buy your price tag. They’re not loyal to people and companies; they’re loyal to price tags.
Discount customers don’t refer people to you. For one thing they rarely stay around long enough to form a proper impression of you or your product or service. For another they are not likely to be good judges of quality. If they were good judges of quality they would know that most economies are false ones, and that few people discount their product or service by choice.
It’s also hard to build a satisfying business with discount customers. They don’t value you or your product or service, and by continually trying to get you to charge less, they’re communicating that your product or service is not worth to them what it is to you. You really don’t need customers like that, but businesses take them on by the millions every day. Then they wonder why their work and their income are not more satisfying.
For every company like Wal*Mart, Costco, Dell and easyJet that succeeds with a discount strategy (aided of course by their scale of operations), a hundred others fail. Companies who discount when they shouldn’t are usually the first to die. Don’t be one of them.
For all these reasons and many more, your business should never be built on discount customers.
So what’s the answer? Charge what you’re really worth, and stick to your guns! Easy to say, but harder to do … or is it?
As long as you’re not selling a commoditised product or service, it shouldn’t be hard to charge what you’re really worth.
The key is to appreciate is that your marketplace probably doesn’t understand the value and benefits you’re offering, at the level that you do. There’s a good chance they don’t understand the implications or the impact of your product or service on their lives. Discounting for the sake of it won’t help them to understand what makes you better or different.
But educating them better than anyone else does to appreciate, value and desire your product or service, and the benefits it offers can not only entirely eliminate the need to discount, but will also allow you to charge what you’re really worth. The effect on your gross profit of putting your prices up (or reducing your discounts) can be phenomenal:
If your present margin is 30% and you raise your prices by 10%, which many of your customers probably wouldn’t even notice. You could afford to lose 25% of your business before it impacted negatively on your profits and bottom line.
This post is brought to you by Robert Clay

with thanks from marketing wisdom[/QUOTE]
 
Well I'm a health carer in a home , dementia and mental health I deal with all bodily fluids throughout my days , work 12 hr shifts ect , it's hard work , we get shouted at hit slapped ect ... I don't work for the nhs I work in a private home no discounts for me and I wouldn't expect it either just because of my job , like someone said I chose it ! Xxx
 
Wow some harsh attitudes on here. I am liking this modern world we live in less and less, and this forum less and less!

Not going to argue about it though. Just feel sad.
 
Im just so glad this thread hasnt been closed and everyone has been nice :)

Interesting to see everyone's opinions on the matter x

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Wow some harsh attitudes on here. I am liking this modern world we live in less and less, and this forum less and less!

Not going to argue about it though. Just feel sad.

I don't mean this as a direct confrontation Papillion, but why should you be sad? Everyone has different opinions, what if we had no opinions & just shrugged everything off? Nobody would ever get anywhere. It's interesting to hear everyones different views, it allows me personally to see things from a different point/s of view, a very valuable skill in life. If you're respectful of them in turn people will be respectful of yours. When people start being disrespectful to others opinions, that's when the trouble arises. I have opinions, so does everyone else, doesn't mean it's a fact.

Also just a thought, but NHS nurses/doctors/carers in the media that are directly responsible for peoples deaths/mistreatment in hospitals/caring homes...I'd feel sick at the thought of giving these people a special discount. Just because they work for the NHS doesn't make them a saint or any more eligible for a discount than anyone else.
 
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