Lowering Price Without Discounting

Today I had lunch with the owner of a successful catering company. One of the things we discussed was how his company is accepting smaller jobs than he would have considered taking on less than 12 months ago. While he certainly does not make the same profit as he does with larger jobs, at least he is still making a profit. More importantly, he looks at each engagement as an opportunity to drum up new business - either repeat business from the people who hired him who may give him bigger jobs in the future or from the event's attendees. I think many of us are in similar positions where we might be taking on smaller projects that we would have turned down last year. That's ok. When it comes to driving revenue in a tough economy, in many cases taking smaller jobs is a better alternative to discounting.