Working long hours for little reward?
Do you love what you do? I’m sure you have answered a yes to that, but I’m also sure that there are times when your business mojo wanes a bit and you wonder if it’s all worth it. Am I right? One classic cause of a decrease in business mojo is working long hours for not enough reward. Does that describe you?
It is incredibly common for business owners to find themselves in the trap of working long hours but not to be earning the amount they expected. The usual reason why this happens is because you simply are not charging enough. Don’t let that little voice in your head tell you that you can’t charge more because you’ll lose the business. Unless you regularly lose out on new business on price then there is room to charge more.
Before your clients will start to value your services more, you need to (it’s a bit like learning to love yourself before someone else will love you for who you are; if you don’t value your work, no one else will!). I’m sure you are very good at what you do so move your prices up. Before you start having a panic attack over the thought of doing this let me explain the best way of implementing a price increase.
For existing clients you have 3 options…
- Leave their pricing exactly as it is. This will hurt your pocket so it’s my least favourite option.
- Talk to them. Explain that you are revising your pricing but as they are valued clients you are not going to raise their price for X months. This is my preferred option.
- Increase it straight away. The impact of this one depends on how transparent your pricing is. If you tend to price as a whole project rather than exposing your price per hour, then this approach could work nicely as long as the hike in price isn’t too dramatic.
For new clients this becomes very easy as you just start with the new price straight away.
The only person you are hurting by not charging appropriately for your services is you! You are not doing yourself any favours by being too cheap. Ultimately you aren’t even helping your clients either as you’ll probably close the business in a few years as you have worked yourself into the ground for too little reward.
Go on, revise your pricing today!
[hcshort id=”8″]