After being in business for a while, microbusiness owners everywhere begin thinking the same thought “Should I raise my prices now?
It can be a painful question. You wish to be paid an amount that feels comfortable and supports you well, but you also don’t want to alienate folks or shut down your business.
And it isn’t an idle question. You can raise your costs too much and see “die off” from your active customer list. By the same principle, you can continue to underprice yourself, and that keeps people away, also , and may keep the wolf at your door.
1 Or 2 Words About Pricing
First, raising your prices is inescapable. Maybe not every year, maybe not even every other year. Are you paying the same price for shoes that you did in 1984? Costs go up.
I am also making a guess that you may not be taking into consideration the true price of your offers. One customer noticed she was only accounting for her time in front of a customer, and not on the administrative time needed, the selling time needed, and prep time before and after the client, the continuing education of her very own self-development, etc. For every client hour there were 1-3 additional hours needed to actually care for that customer.
O.K, I suspect you are getting it. You almost certainly know whether your costs really need to inch up a bit or not.
And If It Is A New Offer?
A customer was about to launch a new offer, and we were talking about it yesterday. She was fighting with the right way to price it as it was significantly dissimilar than any other offer in her business.
I ordered her to 1) make it simple for new folks to buy and 2) make it serious enough of a price so that it felt good and she could keep offering it.
Comfort and stretch.
If it is a new offer you have never made before, find the price you're comfy offering and stretch a little bit. My experience has been that the price you are absolutely comfortable with in theory will generally feel too low after you essentially start engaging with paying clients.
So stretch a tiny bit to avoid needing to raise your prices two weeks later on.
A little A little Pricing Trick
There are pricing ranges, where one price feels very like another. For instance, whether I spend $16 or $19 on something won't actually affect my buying choice, but the extra $3 multiplied by 10,000 sales may help out the business fantastically.
In a similar way, a massage that is price at $80 or $95 is a very similar price to the buyer, but to the massage therapist, 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, for 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 do not fret about hard-and-fast lines, they don't exist. Just feel into it.
Mark Silver, founder behind Heart of Business, helps microbusiness owners build a more successful business without losing their heart. Get effective business practices thru his widely read and acclaimed newsletter. Please join at http://www.heartofbusiness.com/new-here