Raising Your Prices

Emily Thompson 0:02
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Kathleen Shannon 1:20
All right, Caitlin, what do you have for us today?

Caitlin Brehm 1:23
This question comes from Caitlin in the Facebook group. Not me, but just someone else was a great names.

Emily Thompson 1:29
Sure.

Caitlin Brehm 1:31
She says All right, guys, I need your advice. Since starting my web and graphic design business last March, I've upscaled like crazy. That's an all caps. Right now. I'm booked through September for web design. And throughout the entire year for other services. I also offer like social media consulting and management. So with that being said, I feel like it's time to raise my prices. But I want to go about it the right way. Why am I wanting to raise my prices? Because my skills have tremendously increased my schedule has higher demands these days. So do I announce that I'll be increasing my prices in 2018? Do I allow people to lock in 2017 prices in by booking now, even if it's for 2018, I would love your solid input.

Kathleen Shannon 2:17
This is all you Emily,

Emily Thompson 2:18
see you making my faces over here. face has to process all of my thoughts for me. So I would say find the cutoff date, I think 2018 would be a really great cut off date where you can offer to have people look at current prices through the rest of the year. But anything booked after the end of the year, especially since you are so booked out if you weren't booked out quite as far I could say you could let them get old prices, you know, as long as they're booking now, even if it's through 2018, but you're already booked up. So I would say send them all email, let them know your prices are going up, encourage them to book out the rest of your year, high five yourself all day long for having a booked up year already. And then in 2018 have higher prices and just send them an email. One of the great things that are, let's just lay out a price increase email, where you tell everyone Hello, you thank them so much for being a part of your business, you give even more gratitude for being a part of your growth and being where you are now. And then let them know that due to your booked calendar, your demand for your services that you're going to be raising your prices to whatever it is whether in you can do like per package or even hourly rate however you do it. And then give them whatever their incentive is, in terms of if they need to be booking by the end of the year, or whatever it is you're doing. The key here is gratitude. Making sure you let them know that that you that you are grateful for their involvement in your business thus far, we'll keep them encouraged that you are still around even if you're getting too fancy for your pants, and that you'll be here to support them as you grow. But that part of that growth does involve raising your prices occasionally, which everyone should be doing anyway.

Kathleen Shannon 4:15
I have a couple other ideas, go for it. Okay, so over at braid creative. If we raise our prices, nobody really knows because we do one off engagements. So if we're raising our price from one project to the next, we have new customers all the time. So none of them really necessarily know what we were charging or that we've raised our prices or even lowered our prices. So to me raising your prices is something that happens whenever you have a lot of retainer work whenever you're working with the same clients over and over again. So one of my thoughts is what if instead of necessarily raising your prices on your existing customers, you started hiring help and growing your team. That way you could offer new things at higher rates for new Customers while you now have a team servicing your old customers at that locked in original rate, that's just an idea. It could be a great way to grow. You said that your skills have tremendously increased and that your schedule has a higher demand. So what is it that you want to be doing with those skills? And what is it that you could be offering at a higher rate? Now? What could you be doing to get in new customers? That would be you're paying those higher rates? And then how can you still be serving the old customers that are paying those bills and love you, and you love them for believing you in you in those early days. So that's just an idea is you could also hire a team to service people at that lower rate, while you are now charging a premium for your specific time and services. Um, that was my main idea. I also believe in kind of giving Oh, one thing that I love that you do, Emily, whenever you were still doing web design is giving people that hourly or the big Christmas rate, like you had your holiday hours that you would sell at a lower rate, and you only offer this to your existing customers? So can you share a little bit more about that?

Emily Thompson 6:12
For sure. So yeah, and to go back to that email, I would definitely only send an email like that to current clients who would be affected by working with you in the future. And anyone new, like you're already booked out so far in advance, don't tell people that haven't hired you yet that you are raising your prices, unless you want to use that as a marketing ploy, which you're booked out so far in advance, you don't need to do that at the moment. Um, so yes, my holiday, our sprays, and my big thing is not having sales. I hate it. When people have sales, it drives me nuts. I would rather see people use cells or discounts to nurture relationships with current customers or clients. So what I did in my business of offering discounts on my web services, or whatever, every year, at the beginning of December, I did this for probably five or six years, I would have what we call the holiday hour spree, or I would allow current or old clients to buy hours. So maintenance hours or, or just like by the hour, things that they needed me to do for them at a significantly discounted rate. And I would have some little rules like they had to buy a minimum of 10 hours, they had to be used the next calendar year, those sorts of thing. Those sorts of things as a way for me to nurture those relationships with past clients, let them know that I'm still here to service them, even though our initial project is done. And it would allow me to dive back into their website to keep it up to date for them and for my portfolio needs. So that for me was a really great way to do at the end of every year, have a nice income boost for my December, get some projects on my calendar for the next year. And also just make sure my clients knew that I love them. And I wanted to continue servicing them throughout the year. So that is a fun little thing where you can just you can find fun things in your business like that, to to nurture your relationships with your clients. And also as even added little incentive for sometimes whenever clients need that extra push to work with you for the first time. Be like bt dubs, we do this yearly annual, our spray thing that allows you to work with me more economically long term. So nice little things that you can do in your business. Basically, you make the rules, raise your prices how you want, but definitely do it to making some adjustments in your prices. Whenever you start getting booked out that far in advance. It's just a red flag that you should be charging more.

Kathleen Shannon 8:46
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Emily Thompson 10:07
Did you like this minisode Be sure to check us out on our website at beingboss.club. There you can find more from being boss including our full episodes minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing list so that you can get access to behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself to help you be more boss in your work and life. Do the work be boss