The time is right now. Here’s why…
Welcome to the Business Numbers Podcast. I’m your host, Ben McAdam. I’m a profits coach, virtual CFO, and entrepreneur, and I’ve created this podcast to help you grow your business profits and understand your business numbers without judgment and without burying you in a whole bunch of jargon that you don’t need. Just actionable tips and case studies to help you grow your business. For show notes, go to the website, businessnumberspodcast.com.
This is going to be a short episode. The main purpose is to remind you to start planning your New Year price rise now. If you listened to episode 57, a handful of weeks ago, about how to raise your prices, remember one of the tips was to raise prices at the end of the year. And so if you decided that that’s a good idea, then now’s the time to start planning it.
I’m thinking through mine this month, and I recommend you do too, because you need some time to think about it, you need some time to give notice to your customers. And so really, the time’s now- I’m recording this in the second week of October, probably it’ll go live next week, and so in order to give your customers 30 to 45 days notice, you need to be putting it in place mid to end of November.
You need to know what you’re doing and have prepared all your communications. And if you want to allow time to talk to some of your customers about the price rise, you might want to actually give them notice at the beginning of November. Two months notice. Which means that you need October to think about it, to analyze your client and customer base, and decide who’s getting what price rise and what packages or negotiating options you’re going to have.
It takes us a bit of time to think about, and in the busy-ness of life and the busy-ness of business it can be easy for this to slip by the wayside and you might not allocate enough time.
And imagine you’re so busy that you go, “Oh no, it’s too late now. I can’t do that”, and you put it off by another year, think of all that money you could miss out on. So this is just a reminder to get started thinking about it now. If you have any questions, well, I’m here to help.
A couple of other points I want to leave you with: it doesn’t have to be a price rise, or just a price rise. You could also change your inclusions, packages, offer, so the “what you sell” rather than “how much you sell it for.”
- You could optimize for profitability by removing pieces of your offer and keeping the price the same.
- Or you could optimize for client or customer happiness by adding pieces to the offer along with the price rise.
- Or both. Or any other option. It doesn’t just have to be price, you can change your offer or the inclusions as well.
Another reminder: remember to use this price rise or inclusions change to get potential customers to buy if they’re on the fence. It could be past customers, not just potential future customers, you could reach out to them and let them know the prices are going up unless they buy beforehand.
It also could be your existing customers or clients who might buy again, who might buy more from you, or who might upgrade. Maybe for example, if you’re a service business and you have different levels of packages or different levels of your service, some of your existing customers on one level might take the opportunity to upgrade to the next level before the price rise.
Or if you’ve got a product based business, there might be a bulk discount they get if they buy more from you, and that becomes even more powerful this side of a price rise. That might be the thing that nudges them over the edge to buy a bit more than normal.
Do remember that if you do that, you will possibly have lower sales/revenue on the other side of the price rice. So mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for that. And financially prepare yourself for that, so don’t go nuts spending all that money you might earn from this.
Anyway, I didn’t want this episode to be particularly long, so I’ll just leave you with those pointers and the reminder to start thinking about your price rise, or your package changes, or your offer changes now, so that you can give your customers enough notice and you can do a bit of a sales push with it.
If you want to know a bit more about how to raise your prices and some of the other things you might want as the to keep in mind, have a listen to episode 57, conveniently titled “How to Raise Your Prices”.
Anyway, that’s it for today. I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your price rises or offer changes. I hope they bring you much profit and other benefits to your business.
Thank you for listening.
Before you go, two quick things:
- If this was useful, please give it a review and share it with a friend who it might help.
- If you want help from me to unlock growth and profits, and greater clarity around your numbers, book a call through ProfitsCollective.com and if we’re not a fit I’ll point you in the right direction.
