That's easy: no volume, no discount.  Period.  No ifs, ands, buts or maybes.

When I was running mostly surface titles and a potential client approached me with all kind of pie-in-the-sky promises of volume in exchange for a discount, I simply said, "OK, fair enough.  When you start sending the volume, THEN you get the discount."  It was a strategy that I found has a way of filtering out the BS.

I always based our discounts on monthly dollar volume rather than the number of searches we did for a given company because of the many different types of search work we were called on to perform.  I will never understand why anyone in this business agrees to cut their price and then is shocked to discover that the other party had no intention of following through on their promise.  The analogy of Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football comes to mind.

You're right, Pat, it makes perfect sense to cut your losses and fire less-than-profitable clients, although many of mine said goodbye to me because they felt my pricing was too high.  It was at that point that I decided to shoot for the coffers of the energy industry, the well-capitalized companies who can actually afford to pay me what I believe I'm worth.

Just my two cents.

Regards,
Scott Perry