Last week, I was witness to some amazing creative entrepreneurs making big strides in their business at my annual Creative Freedom Live event (Super Early Bird tickets for next year go on sale in November. Make sure you're on my list to be the first to know!). One of the recurring themes was a conversation around pricing. In fact, one of the sessions was about resonant pricing - something I'm also covering in my new book, as well as my FREE growth planning workshop at the end of the month.
Pricing is both an important and sometimes scary concept - especially when it comes to raising prices. But there are three ways I've found to navigate changing your prices.
3 ways to confidently raise your rates
- Just do it. Grocery stores do it all the time. They typically only promote their pricing when they've got a sale or are lowering prices for a limited time - and they never tell you of a price increase in advance. My favorite brand of milk recently jumped thirty cents - a 10% price hike. Did I stop buying it? Nope.
- Make it an event. The end of the year is a great time to say good bye to old prices. Last fall, one of my Incubator clients was looking at doing a price increase, so she offered her existing clients the opportunity to stock up on private sessions at the 2016 rate. We often see this when someone's launching a new version of a product. The old version works just as well, so why not buy it now at the current rate before the new, higher priced version hits the market?
- Ease them into it. If you've got clients grandfathered in at an old rate, try looking for a logical place to "prep" them for a price increase. Another of my clients had a three-month contract coming to an end with one of her clients. She opened the conversation about changes to her rates and then sent a follow-up email outlining two different options that her client could choose from if she wanted to go forward: one was less time for the same rate, the other offered the same amount of time for the new, higher rate. By providing a choice, my client made it easier for her client to say yes and keep working together with a budget-friendly option that also honored the pricing increase.
I'll be sharing some more insights and examples in today's Facebook Live. Or you can watch the replay here.
