New trade account wants a discount: give them a tier, or a bespoke price?
Short answer: give them a tier unless there is a specific, nameable reason they cannot fit one. Bespoke prices are not expensive on the day you agree them; they are expensive for the next six years.
What a bespoke price really costs
A one-off negotiated price is a permanent exception. It survives price rises unless someone remembers it. It does not appear in any list you send anyone. It exists in the head of whoever agreed it, and when that person leaves, it becomes folklore. Ten of them is an administrative burden; a hundred is a business that can no longer put its prices up.
The test to apply in the moment
Ask: is what this customer is asking for different in kind, or only in degree?
If they want a better price because they buy more — that is degree, and a tier handles it. If they want a better price on one product line because they are the only account that takes it by the pallet — that is also degree, and a tier with a per-product exception handles it. If they want a genuinely different commercial arrangement — consignment, rebate on annual volume, a price that depends on their own end-customer — that is different in kind, and it is a contract, not a price list entry.
When a bespoke price is the right call
Rarely, but honestly: a strategic account large enough that the relationship is a business risk in itself; a contract with a fixed price for a fixed term; a transitional price you have agreed for a named period while a customer migrates. In all three cases write down the end date at the moment you agree it.
If you already have too many
Pull the list. Sort by annual value. You will typically find a long tail of small accounts on bespoke prices for reasons nobody can now recall — those go onto the nearest tier at the next price review, with a letter that frames it as a simplification rather than an increase. The handful at the top stay bespoke and get reviewed on a date in the diary. See running a price rise without losing accounts for how to sequence that conversation.
Making tiers good enough that bespoke is rarely tempting
Most bespoke pricing exists because the tier structure is too coarse. Four or five well-spaced tiers, each with its own minimum order value, absorbs almost every negotiation — because there is always a genuine answer to “what would I have to do to get a better price?” See deciding which tier each customer belongs to.
B2B Price Tiers gives you unlimited named tiers with per-tier minimum order values, and assigns each customer to one — so the answer to a discount request is usually a tier, not an exception. Find out more →
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