Raising Your Fees Without That Sick Feeling

After being in business for a while, microbusiness owners everywhere start to think the same thought “Should I raise my prices now?

It can be an agonizing question. You would like to be paid an amount that feels comfortable and supports you well, but you also don’t really want to alienate people or shut down your business.

And it is not an idle question. You can raise your costs too much and see “die off” from your active client list. By the same principle, you can continue to underprice yourself, and that keeps folks away, as well , and may keep the wolf at your door.

1 Or 2 Words About Pricing

First, raising your costs is inescapable. Perhaps not every year, maybe not even each other year. Are you paying the same price for shoes that you probably did in 1984? Prices go up.

I’m also guessing that you may not be taking into consideration the actual price of your offers. One client noticed she was only accounting for her time in front of a client, and not on the executive time required, the promoting time required, and prep time before and after the customer, the continued education of her very own self-development, for example. For each client hour there were 1-3 additional hours needed to truly care for that client.

Okay, I suspect you're getting it. You probably know whether your costs actually need to in. up a bit or not.

And If It Is A New Offer?

A client was about to launch a new offer, and we were talking about it the other day. She was fighting with the easiest way to price it as it was radically different than any other offer in her business.

I told her to 1) make it easy for new folk to buy and 2) make it heavy enough of a price so it felt good and she could keep offering it.

Comfort and stretch.

If it's a new offer you've never made before, find the price you're comfy offering and stretch a little bit. My experience has been the price you are absolutely comfortable with in theory will probably feel too low after you essentially start engaging with paying clients.

So stretch a little bit to avoid having to raise your prices 2 weeks later on.

A Little A Little Pricing Trick

There are pricing ranges, where one price feels very like another. For example, whether I spend $16 or $19 on something won't actually affect my buying decision, but the additional $3 multiplied by 10,000 sales may help out the business fantastically.

In a similar way, a massage that's price at $80 or $95 is a particularly similar price to the purchaser, but to the massage specialist, that $15 per customer, times 30 sessions in a month, times 12 months means an extra $5400/year.

You can jump from one price bracket to another, as an example from a $65 massage to a $110 massage, but that would require a step up in your promoting and how you describe your service.

As you sense into your next price, see how far you can go in your own heart while staying in the “price range.” It’s all a little subjective, so don’t worry about hard-and-fast lines, they do not exist. Just feel into it.

Mark Silver, founder behind Heart of Business, helps microbusiness owners build a larger business without losing their heart. Get effective business practices through his widely read and commended newsletter. Please join at http://www.heartofbusiness.com/new-here