054: Make More Sales By Increasing Your Prices

You’ll be guaranteed to make sales from listening to this episode, even though you’re increasing your prices! 

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

• How to incentivise people to buy from you even though you’re increasing your prices
• How to get people who have been thinking about working with you to actually buying
• Step by step instructions of run a campaign that helps you to increase your prices.

Enjoy!

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Transcript

Shannon Stone 0:05

H ey guys . Welcome to the podcast .

Shannon Stone 0:42

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 1:51

So

Increase your prices

Shannon Stone 1:52

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 3:14

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 4:08

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 5:18

Now there's two ways you can do this .

When work starts

Shannon Stone 5:20

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 6:50

On that note , if you were to do something like that , this is something for you to decide

Payment options

Shannon Stone 6:55

. 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 7:44

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 .

Past clients and leads

Shannon Stone 7:54

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 8:37

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 10:18

Let's

Action steps

Shannon Stone 10:19

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 11:04

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 11:45

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 12:05

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 12:33

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 .