It's late October. The leaves are coming down, Halloween is next week, and your inbox is full of Black Friday ads. You start wondering whether you should knock 20% off your repairs to keep the phone ringing through Thanksgiving week. My answer is to hold your price. Run a deal only if it fills appointments that would otherwise sit empty, and only if the discounted job still clears what you need to earn. Here's how to check that before you decide.
Hold your price unless the deal solves a real problem
That's a business call based on your own costs and your own calendar. It isn't a rule that fits every trade. Black Friday is Friday, November 27 this year, the day after Thanksgiving, so you have about five weeks to decide.
Before you write any offer, look at three things:
- Your calendar. How many open appointments do you have between now and mid-December? If you're already booked, you don't have a problem a discount needs to solve.
- Your outstanding estimates. Those customers are already thinking about hiring you. If you put out a public discount, they'll wait for it.
- Your actual job costs. Use real numbers from recent invoices, not a guess.
The difference that matters is this: filling an empty Tuesday is one thing, and taking 20% off work a customer was already going to book is another. The first can make sense. The second just gives away money. The SBA and SCORE both tell owners to check costs and required profit before setting a price, and a sale price is still a price.
Work out what the discount takes from your pocket
Every job brings in revenue. Some of that money goes straight back out as job costs, and what's left has to cover your overhead (truck, insurance, phone, software) and then your profit.
Count every job cost:
- materials
- any paid help
- travel: fuel and drive time
- picking up materials
- card or payment fees
- an allowance for going back to fix something
Here's a made-up example to show the math. These aren't real repair prices. Say a job bills $300 and costs you $180, which leaves $120 toward overhead and profit. Now take 20% off. The customer pays $240, your costs are still $180, and you're left with $60.
You took 20% off the invoice and lost half of what you keep. To bring in the same money toward overhead and profit, you'd need twice as many identical jobs. That's how break-even math works: lowering the price without lowering costs cuts what each job contributes.
Then do it by the hour. Add up every hour the job takes: driving, the supply run, the work, the invoice, the follow-up text. Divide what's left by that total. If the discounted job takes the same hours, your hourly take drops by half too.
Don't count your own time as free. If you're not paying yourself in the math, the math is lying to you.
If you need an offer, make it narrow
Say your calendar really does have holes. Don't take a percentage off everything. Make a small, specific offer that has its own limits. Here are three options I'd consider. They're ideas, not proven winners:
- A defined punch-list visit. A set block of time for a written list of small repairs at one address.
- A fixed-dollar labor credit, applied only above a minimum job size you pick. A dollar credit is easier to check than a percentage. Tools like Jobber handle both kinds on quotes and invoices.
- A bundle of eligible repairs at one address, so you get one trip, one setup and one invoice.
Run each one through the cost math above before you post it. If it doesn't pass, drop it.
Then spell out:
- which work is eligible
- your service area
- how many appointments are available, and when
- how materials are handled (most owners leave materials out of the discount)
- what's excluded
Any repair you can't size up from a photo stays subject to inspection and a written quote.
Last, decide which promise you're making. "Book during the promotion" and "complete the work during the promotion" are two different promises. If you mean the first, say which dates the work can actually happen.
Keep the promise clear and the comparison honest
The FTC's advertising guide for small businesses says that when an ad needs qualifying information to be truthful, that information has to be clear and conspicuous. It also says fine print can't contradict the main message. If the headline says "$75 off repairs," the limits belong right next to it, not at the bottom of the page or behind a link.
The same truthfulness standards apply to sale claims. If you say "regularly $300," that should be what you've actually been charging. Keep the past quotes and invoices that back it up. A regular price you made up so the discount looks bigger is the kind of claim that gets businesses in trouble.
State rules matter too, and they're different from state to state. The FTC suggests checking with the attorney general's office in any state where you plan to advertise. I'm not going to hand you a nationwide checklist for contracts, deposits or cancellations. Repair work isn't all covered the same way, so check your own state.
Sell the repair clearly when you hold your price
If you hold your price, you don't need to apologize for it. When someone asks if you're running a Black Friday deal, you can say something like:
> "I'm holding my repair prices. Send a photo and your ZIP code, and I'll tell you the next step."
That's friendly, it moves the conversation forward, and it gets you what you need to quote the job.
A good quote then shows why the price is fair:
- Scope: what you'll do, and what you won't.
- Materials: what's included and who supplies it.
- Timing: when you can start and roughly how long it takes.
- Changes: how any extra work gets approved before you do it.
Haggling wears owners out. One handyman described on Reddit going through repeated discount negotiations and then a dispute over the price of a later job. Another described a customer who asked for more off a quote that already had bundle discounts built in. Those are two people's stories, not proof of how most customers act. Plenty of people asking about a deal are just being careful with their money. A clear quote makes that conversation shorter no matter who's asking.
Let the AI apprentice prepare the work; you approve it
You don't need a weekend for this. Here's a suggested plan: three evenings, fifteen to thirty minutes each.
- Evening one: calendar and costs. Give the AI your open dates and a handful of recent invoices. Have it lay out revenue, costs and total hours for each job, then run the discount math.
- Evening two: offer and replies. If an offer passes the math, have it draft the wording with the limits right beside the headline. Have it draft your "holding my prices" reply too.
- Evening three: quote template and tracking sheet. Build a quote with sections for scope, materials, timing and changes. Then build a sheet that tracks price and cost for every job, not just how many bookings came in.
The AI organizes what you give it and drafts the wording. You check every price, every scope line and every date before anything goes out. If you use a recurring job in your software, check the discount first. Jobber notes that a discount on a recurring job shows up on every invoice it generates.
In December, look back at what happened:
- the money you actually collected
- your job costs
- your total hours
- whether the promotion filled slots that would have been empty
Count the worthwhile work you finished. A pile of inquiries doesn't count.
Sources (9)
Photo by This_is_Engineering on Pixabay.
