Do you feel guilty at the thought of increasing your prices? Does it fill you with dread or maybe you resent charging the low prices you do, but don’t know how to go about increasing your prices so that you feel happy and comfortable with your rates.

It is safe for you to value yourself

First of all you’re allowed to value yourself and what you do. Tell yourself, every day if you have to, ‘it’s safe for me to value myself,’ ‘it’s safe for me to value what I do.’ If we don’t value ourselves, how can we expect others to?

Low prices can lead to resentment

If you set your prices too low for your work it will not only lead to you running at a loss or low level of profit but ultimately it will lead to resentment. The love you have for doing what you’ve spent time, effort and money training in, will fade away, and it’s possible you could end up hating what you do, and no one wants that! 

You deserve to be valued, and you deserve to be paid a decent amount for what you do. We’re not talking about overcharging customers, or out pricing yourself, we’re talking about placing a value on yourself that, not only, makes you feel good about what you do, but has customers coming back for more and that enables you to make a comfortable living for your work.

Experience and qualifications come with a price tag

When setting your prices you need to think about all the experience and qualifications you have undertaken to reach this point. When in a mainstream job, people often get pay rises every time they pass a qualification, look at hairdressers in salons for example. 

A cut from a junior hairdresser is cheaper than a cut from a more qualified or experienced hairdresser. The same time is allocated to each hairdresser, but the customer pays more for the experienced person doing their hair. 

Their wages also reflect that, sp more experienced means more money.

And it’s 100% ok for you to do the same thing. Maybe you’ve been in your business for 3 years and you’ve never raised your prices.  But you now have 3 years more experience than you had when you first started out, so you deserve a raise, as your work is more experienced than it was, so charge according to your experience. 

Remember, it’s safe for you to charge what you are worth.

Talent is worth money

Talent is another reason for increasing your prices. Experience and qualifications count for a lot, they really do, but so does raw talent. You may have only been in business for a year but maybe you have this exceptional talent for what you do that makes your results, or your services, much better than your peers in your industry. 

You can increase your prices to reflect that. People pay more for better results and better talent. We can look at hairdressing again for a great example, as people will pay thousands, and go on a waiting list for Nicky Clarke, the famous London hair stylist. His talent for hair styling has given him the opportunity to charge astronomical amounts for his time, and people are prepared to pay for it!

There is someone for every budget

Which leads us onto the next part, which is that there is someone for every budget. 

Don’t worry about the people that can’t afford your prices. There is someone that will provide the service they want within their budget. 

Low prices keep you in the mindset of making it a race for the bottom.  You do not want to be part of that race.

Don’t keep yourself small for fear of out pricing people. As you begin to value yourself more, you will begin to attract the clients who can afford your prices.  This is a mindset issue.

We’re not suggesting to start charging ‘Nicky Clarke’ prices, as that would likely be way too much and you would certainly lose you clients and leave a fair few gaps in your week! However,  small increases once a year will keep the income flowing and the client base full. 

If your next increase suddenly makes your services too much for someone, don’t overly stress and don’t let the fear keep you stuck. There is someone that can work with them at their budget. Keep the faith and value yourself, you deserve to earn a good wage for your time, talent, experience, and qualifications so don’t undervalue yourself. 

Can you create passive income?

If you lose a couple of clients, you can step up your marketing game every time you raise your prices. For example, you can email your current client base advising them that your prices will increase within a month, tell them to book in now to get their next appointment at the lower rate, because after May 31st the rates will increase. At least you’ll be busy while you’re marketing to new clients that will pay your higher rate, if you find that one or two have dropped away.

Offer a VIP or premium option

You can also increase your prices for certain aspects of your services.  For example, you could add a VIP option. If people are desperate to get their nails / hair / personal training session / therapy session / their kids a math tutor / or whatever it is you do, then offer a ‘skip the queue’ VIP option, which will cost them slightly more, but people expect to pay more to skip queues - just look at Alton Towers and the price of their queue jumper tickets - people always pay it without questioning it! 

You could block out a Tuesday afternoon for your VIP queue skippers appointment, then you’ll always have somewhere to place them.

Alternatively you could charge a slight premium for your evening or weekend slots and also if you were to choose to work on a bank holiday.  Accessing you at popular times can always give an opportunity for premium pricing - think of it like Peak and Off-peak travel pricing!

There are lots of things to get excited about, so why not grab a notebook, pop the kettle on, and spend some time jotting down a few ideas on how you can increase your prices. When did you last increase them? How often do you want to increase them? How much will you increase them by? 

Write out all of your thoughts, your prices now, and then your planned for increases. Then leave your notes for a couple of days, sleep on them and then go back to see how you feel. 

Remember your new mantras - ‘It’s safe for me to value myself.’ ‘It’s safe for me to raise my prices.’ 

Let us know how you get on as we’d love to hear your stories. Find us on instagram @pocketpa.gb or Facebook @pocketpa.gb as our DM’s are always open.