If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
Shannon Stone:
H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast.
Shannon Stone:
Super excited to jump into this episode today. Today we are talking about making more sales by increasing your prices. Now everyone right talks about the fact that you should be increasing your prices. I know it can be a little bit iffy these days around the cost of living and all that type of thing, so almost like a whole different conversation around being sensitive and approaching it properly, but I do want to talk about you know everyone does say go ahead, increase your prices, but they don't tell you what you can do strategically when you increase your prices. So we are coming up to the new financial year in Australia, so July 1st, but you can increase your prices anytime, but always a new financial year seems to be one of those topical times that people do increase their prices. So if you are listening to this live, we are a couple of weeks or several weeks out from the actual new financial year, which is a perfect lead time. But you can rinse and repeat the same ideas and strategies at any point in time that you want to increase your prices.
Shannon Stone:
So say, in a month's time you plan to increase your prices. What do you do? Here's like two things. You can just wait until that month comes by and then, from that day forward, that new price is in place, and then any new leads and then clients that come on. They're paying that new price. Or you've got a month out from when you're planning to increase your prices and I want to use this word in the right light. But you can actually capitalize on this month window and tell people that you are increasing your prices in a month's time If they would like to secure the current prices with you. Now is the time to do that. So you can do this at any point in time, but I always find the new financial year is an excellent time to do this or that, lead into the new financial year, so say you are listening to this in real time. You can put out some messaging and put all of this together for your business and you can say on July 1st our prices will be increasing. If you've wanted to work with me or if you've wanted to work with us, now's the time to secure our current prices. So you're giving people an opportunity to buy from you at the I wouldn't call it a discounted rate, but at the current rate, because after July 1st the price is going to be going up Now.
Shannon Stone:
Side note to this I love this strategy because it is just so transparent and authentic to what is already going on in your business. So when I said I want to use the word capitalize correctly or lightly, it's for you to understand when you've got things happening in the back end in your business, could that be an authentic way for you to put some marketing messaging around it and to communicate that to your audience or to your community or in your marketing, and I always think that's a great way to go about your marketing. You'll see this in retail a lot. For example, they might have excess stock, so they're doing a big sale. Whether they do or not is another story, but using legitimate things that are happening within the business and bringing that to the front line of your marketing, I always think is a great way to lead with your marketing.
Shannon Stone:
So what will happen when you kind of do this campaign? So if there's people in your network, in your audience, in your community right now who've wanted to work with you, but maybe they've expressed interest, maybe they haven't, they're just sitting there quietly, but they do know they really want to work with you at some point in time, these people are just sitting on the fence and when you put out messaging and marketing to say your prices are going up, if you want to work with me and secure the current prices, now's the time to do that those are the people who are going to jump at it. So it can be people who are sitting on the fence and it can also be people who those regular or semi-regular purchases of your business who are likely to buy this service from you or buy from you before those prices go up. So it's a great way to get people moving who've just kind of just been sitting there for whatever reason. Now a couple of things I do want to share with this. So say, in a month's time, july 1st, your prices increase. But right now you've got this window where you can do some marketing to say people can secure the current prices now, before the price goes up.
Shannon Stone:
Now there's two ways you can do this. So one is that the client or the new person comes to you and they start working with you straight away. So that just kind of you know I don't know your service, but maybe you are a website designer, for example, and you're selling websites. So a couple of people come in, they purchase that website from you at the current price and you just get underway with that project. That's cool. Another way to do it is that you can sign people up for, say, your website design service, but that work can start in July, august, september, whenever you decide you want that work to start. So you might say you can secure that project or secure the package or the service with me now, but we can start that within the next six months, so you can decide how long you extend that start period to. So just so you know and people can be a bit wary of, am I going to get an influx of people and am I going to be able to handle that Great problem to have? Hopefully that happens, but it does. All the work doesn't have to start straight away. You can timeline it, you can separate it so that you don't have that influx if it's beyond your capacity or whatever the reasons are. So just know that the work can start straight away when people sign up to your current prices, before the price increase. But also people can commence later and that's completely up to you to make that call. Maybe you say the work has to start within the next six months, but you do have to secure the project now.
Shannon Stone:
On that note, if you were to do something like that, this is something for you to decide. Do they pay in full? Do they do a deposit? Do they put a 50% down? These are the variables that you want to think about. Typically, when it comes to an end of financial year timeline, generally people want the payment made before the end of financial year. You know tax reasons and all that type of thing. So that's completely up to you. So you can decide, depending when you're doing this and what makes sense for you or your business, whether you want them to pay for the whole thing before the price rise, or are they paying a payment plan, or are they putting a deposit down, or are they doing 50% now, 50% later, but it's all good, because they are signing up under the current pricing, not the future pricing. So these are the little logistics you need to work out first, and then you can put all of that into your marketing.
Shannon Stone:
The other thing I want to mention around this so say, you've got your prices going up in a month's time or in the new financial year, whenever it might be. You can also run this messaging past your current clients, and even your past clients as well, so that they can secure whatever package or service they're buying from you at the moment If it's something they would continuously buy from you. Maybe you are a coach or a consultant or you've got some type of continual work that you do with your clients. Maybe it's something that you run past them. Hey, my prices will be increasing, and this is there's so many tangents on this. But this also brings up what happens to your current clients. When your prices go up, do you increase the prices for your current clients as well, or is it only for new clients? That'll be something for you to decide.
Shannon Stone:
But if you decide that prices are going up for everyone, you need to think about, well, my past clients and my current clients. If the price is going up, I might as well let them know that from this date, my prices will be going up. But I do want to extend the invitation to you that you can secure the same package at the same price now, before those prices go up, and you can work out what that looks like with them. So what this does it gives people the opportunity to buy from you at your current prices. You also get to capitalize on the fact that you'll be increasing your prices and, like I said, capitalize in a nice way, in a great and strategic way and in a way that's a win for you and it's a win-win for everyone. To be honest, it's like if you just wanted to increase your prices from today and that's it. That's perfectly fine as well. But if you are planning on doing it in a month's time or very soon, I think why not give people the opportunity to buy from you now at the current prices? It's a great marketing strategy, but again, it's got to be authentic to what you're doing in your business. So I think it's a win for you now, because you'll probably get a few more clients through the door, but it's also a win for you later, because later, after a month time or July 1st or whenever it might be, your prices will have increased, so your margins have increased. So that's a win for you down the line as well, which will probably bring with it a whole other. I don't want to say set of problems, but making sure you're marketing yourself in a way where you're still generating leads and clients for your new prices. So that is what I wanted to share with you around making more sales by increasing your prices.
Shannon Stone:
Let's jump into the action steps. There are four of them. The first is that you decide you're going to increase your prices Very, very simple. Are you doing it or are you not? The second is to make an announcement four weeks out from when you are doing that announcement. Typically for service-based businesses, that's when I would recommend. It's a nice window of time, Give people plenty of notice. So that's number two. Number three I would love for you to do two pieces of marketing per week in the lead up to when that price increase is. So that could be an email, that can be a post, that can be your stories, that can be any kind of communication that you have with your audience, your network, your community.
Shannon Stone:
And then the fourth and final action step is to create a leads list. So a leads list where you add whether it's clients to this list, past clients, people who've been in your radar about working with you. Maybe if you use a booking platform like Calendly, search up everyone who's booked a call with you and all these names go onto this lead list. And I want you to reach out to these people personally and say, hey, prices are going up from this date. Would love to extend an invitation to you to see if you'd like to secure my current prices. You know something nice, a little bit more fluffy, if you wish totally. Invitation to you to see if you'd like to secure my current prices. You know something nice, a little bit more fluffy if you wish, totally up to you, but something to that effect.
Shannon Stone:
So there your action steps decide that you're going to increase your prices. Two make an announcement four weeks out. Three every week until the lead up to it. I want two pieces of marketing going out per week minimum. You can always do more. Two pieces of marketing going out per week minimum. You can always do more. And fourth is to create a leads list and reach out to those people personally.
Shannon Stone:
Alrighty, well, that's what I have for you today. If you have any questions, do let me know. If you plan to increase your prices, feel free to send me a message. I remember sharing this strategy Well, definitely last year, definitely the year before. It's almost becoming a tradition at this point, but I love following along people's campaigns as they roll these types of things out. So if you want me to kind of follow along, send me your plans and what you're planning to do.
Shannon Stone:
But if you increase your prices, I'm wishing you all the best and I hope you have an amazing campaign and all the bits and pieces that come with it, and I can't wait to hear the results and what happens in the coming months as well. So I will leave it at that. I hope you have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon.
