Raising your prices can be a difficult decision to make. You probably worry how it will affect your business and the relationship you have with your current clients.

However, unless you adjust your mindset and raise prices, eventually you’ll have no profits. Raising prices will not only increase your profit, it will get you better clients who have more expensive problems – and who really value what you do.

Here are 10 ideas how to raise your prices, without losing clients:

1. Time it Right

The best time to raise prices is when your clients are happy with your product or service. If you’re planning a price increase, make sure to prove your worth in the months before you do so.

2. Change the Name and Description 

If you’re using the same names and terms for your products and services as your competitors you will have more issues with increasing your price. When you use a new description, it not only encourages conversation, with clients asking what it is, but also differentiates you from everyone else in your market.

3. Target a Different Customer Base

If you need to raise prices drastically, you may need to go after new, more wealthy clients. Even if your price increase is modest, expanding your target market to more upscale clients or businesses with bigger budgets is a smart way to offset the clients you may lose.

4. Charge Per Project, Not Per Hour

If you’d go for a surgery – you would happily pay more to a surgeon that this is her 10,000th operation, than to a surgeon that it’s his first operation. Wouldn’t you? And yet – it would take the first surgeon half the time to complete the operation. Be that surgeon in your business and charge for a successful completion of each project and not the hours it takes you to complete it.

5. Bundle Products or Services

Soften the pain of price increases by offering your clients new bundles of products or services. For instance, if you raise the price of two products/services by 20% each – offer a package deal of both products for just 10% increase.

6. Create Additional Value
Add value to your existing product or service to justify the price increase. Make sure that the perceived value you add is high but its actual costs to you are low.

7. Explain Why
Take the time to explain why you are raising your prices, with a focus on the benefits to the customer. For example, “To provide you better service by offering 24/7 live customer support, we will be raising our monthly subscription rates by 20% beginning in June.”

8. Introduce the Higher Price in Stages
If you’re worried about losing clients, try first raising prices for a small group of clients to see how they react.  If most of them accept it, you can expand the increase to your entire client base.

9. Raise Prices to New Customers First

It’s a good idea to raise prices to new clients before implementing higher prices to existing ones. Make sure to communicate to your existing clients that they’re getting preferential treatment: “Effective January 1, we will be raising our prices. However, because you are a valued longtime client, your price will remain the same for the next 12 months.”

10. Create a Downsell Option

Suppose your clients currently get a weekly 60-minute coaching session with you for €75 and you want to raise the price to €100. Create a lower-level service package (maybe a group coaching, or a shorter 40-minute session) for €75.

Now It’s YOUR Turn

For five minutes… come up with as many ideas as you can… what could YOU do to raise your prices without losing clients?