Planning for a Year-End Price Increase
While planning a year-end price increase is great, tending to your pricing shouldn’t be a once-a-year activity if you’re a professional services provider.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.
TRANSCRIPT
John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello again. I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Planning for a year-end price increase. As I record this episode, we’re a couple of weeks into the fourth quarter of the year, and it’s time a lot of folks plan for pricing increases and adjustments that you need to make in your practice starting in the new year, right?
John Ray: [00:00:25] Well, wrong. Well, actually, more precisely, there’s a mixed answer. Yes, you need to plan a price increase. Don’t be that business owner who delays a price increase for so long that the frustration builds to a boil, and then one day, you snap and jack up prices with no forethought.
John Ray: [00:00:47] At the same time, pricing should always be a regular part of the diagnostics and fine tuning you perform on your business throughout the year. That’s particularly true for professional services providers who’ve accepted a wide variety of clients over time, often at various price points and terms. In those cases, it’s easy to lose track of relationships where it’s noticeably clear you need to put their pricing in line, both with the value those clients recognize in your work as well as the current reality of your practice.
John Ray: [00:01:24] Now, there are only three ways to increase revenue in your business. You can sell more of your services to existing clients, you can add new clients, or you can raise your prices. You’re constantly evaluating your success at the first two, selling more services to existing clients or adding clients. That’s business development, sales, and marketing. But how much regular attention are you giving to your pricing?
John Ray: [00:01:54] For most solo and small professional services practitioners I’ve encountered, they spend 90 percent or more of their time on business development, sales, and marketing. And pricing is a can they keep kicking on down the road.
John Ray: [00:02:10] Here’s just one of the problems with that way of managing a practice. The most immediate way to change the trajectory of your practice profitability is to adjust your pricing. This statement isn’t up for debate. It’s an accounting fact. Adjusting your pricing has a much more immediate impact than any changes you can make in your business development, sales, or marketing. The effect of those pricing changes is also more predictable. So, what changes do you need to make in the regular diagnostics you perform on your business to better incorporate pricing in that mix?
John Ray: [00:02:51] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Past episodes of this series can be found at pricevaluejourney.com. I’d be honored if you’d subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And if you’d like to connect with me directly, you can send me a note, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.
About The Price and Value Journey
The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on: building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.
If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.
The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.
John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,500 podcast episodes.
