Tips on how to increase your prices without losing business

How can you raise the prices of your products and services without losing business? Anybody can increase their prices. The important question is: Are you able to keep or raise your business once you raise prices?

There are three important steps to achieving this goal:

1) Know your market

The first step to achieving higher prices is to know your market. Call up your competitors and get quotes. Ask your clients what they're paying for products like yours. Learn your market and make an IMMEDIATE adjustment when you spot an opportunity.

I recently called our competitors to find out what they were charging for their products. Although pricing of our products was similar, I noticed that they were charging far more for transporting their products than us. Transportation is the second largest revenue stream at my company so this was big chance for me.

I immediately increased our transportation fees by 50% and do you know what? Our customers didn’t flinch. They kept ordering! In a month I added roughly 3% to the bottom line without doing anything different except quoting higher prices. Talk about return on investment! But first I had to get a greater knowledge of the market.

2) Raise your level of service

The second step to increasing your prices is to offer more and better SERVICE. Whenever you can find ways to raise your service offering, your clients will pay you more.

People will pay you based on how valuable you are to them. Price and value are two completely different things. Price is what you set, value is what the customer gets.

The good news is that you can influence your value. You do have a say in this! All you need to do is offer more and better service. If you're able to influence value, then you can influence price as price follows value.

3) Request higher prices

The last step to achieving higher prices is to ASK for them. After you gain a better knowledge of your market and increase your service offering, you are fully equipped to raise prices.

Have confidence when you ask for your higher prices. If you think you're worth it, so will your customers. Never sell yourself short.

Conclusion

There are small things that you can do right now to increase your service offering. For instance, I am sure you spend lots of time trying to get new customers, but how much time do you spend following up and thanking them for their business?

Following up and thanking a customer is one thing that you can do now to increase your level of service and lead you down the road to increased prices (and commissions, bonuses and profitability!).

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