I know that this has been asked a few times now and I was wondering if anyone had come up with a nice solution.
I have seen the suggestion that duplicate products are created and one is wholesale and the other is retail, but this creates more work and could complicate stock control.
The other was using the current discount function, but this does not show until check out. Some of the popular systems use a per product discount that can be a fixed price rather than a discount and can be linked to a group. Some of these also incorporate tier pricing as well.
My ideal option would along the lines as the sale price function where the sale price could be linked to a group and show on the product when logged in. It would be even more flexible if multiple sale prices and groups could be added to each product.