Every business has met the customer for whom the quoted price is merely an opening position. They ask for a discount on everything, as a reflex, regardless of the job or the relationship. Sometimes it is charm, sometimes it is persistence, sometimes it is simply how they have always done business. Whatever the style, it puts the person quoting in an uncomfortable spot: hold firm and risk seeming inflexible, or give way and quietly erode a margin that was not large to begin with. Handled by feel, it usually ends with more given away than intended.
The useful shift is to stop thinking of a discount as a gesture and start thinking of it as a cost, because that is what it is. A ten per cent discount on a job with a thirty per cent margin is not a tenth off; it is a third of the profit, given away in a moment to avoid an awkward pause. Once that arithmetic is clear, the reflexive discount looks very different, and it becomes possible to decide in advance what, if anything, you are actually willing to concede — and to hold that line not out of stubbornness but because you know precisely what crossing it does to the job.
It also helps to separate the two things a discount is really being asked to do. Sometimes the customer genuinely cannot or will not pay the full figure, in which case the honest move is to reduce what is included rather than the price for the same work — a smaller job for less money keeps the value honest. Other times they simply want to feel they have won something, in which case a small, named concession that costs little — a minor extra thrown in, a slightly extended payment term — satisfies the instinct without touching the core price. Confusing the two is what leads to giving away margin to someone who would have been happy with a gesture.
The firmest ground, though, is knowing which customers are worth the effort at all. A habitual discounter who pays promptly, gives repeat work and is easy to deal with may be worth a small standing allowance built quietly into the price. One who grinds the price down, then pays late and complains, is not a bargain at any level, and the right answer is a polite, unbudging figure that lets them go elsewhere. The skill is not resisting every discount; it is knowing what each one costs and which customers are worth it — and pricing, from the start, with the knowledge that some of it will be asked back.