As compared to....
Unless you think you have a great chance of selling the house after just one of the 3% price reductions, it's almost always better to make a faster, larger price reduction. This price change is more noticeable to buyers and more quickly gets you to a what will hopefully be a realistic selling point.
As a further example, I have seen sellers who have knocked off $5K every other month for an entire year. Oh, how I wish they had just knocked off $30K that first month. Each of the progressive $5K reductions had very little impact -- but a quick $30K reduction would have been much more news-worthy and may have inspired a buyer to act.
