The Practical Drucker

CHAPTER  |  TWENTY-SEVEN

Be Careful in Using a Bribe

Before you get too upset about the title of this chapter, please consider common definitions of the word bribe. These include:

1. Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person to influence that person's views or conduct
2. Something serving to influence or persuade

We talked about bribery in Chapter 1. This is bribery in a different context. Drucker identified several ways of bribing prospects, which he called “buying customers.” Despite their popularity, he did not recommend using any of these ways. He wrote that you could price a product so low that there was little, if any, profit. The idea behind this strategy was to persuade a prospect to make a current purchase in the ...