Hey guys, how do you go about raising your prices? I haven’t raised my prices in almost 2 years on my storefronts. I now have enough work that if I lose some or even all my storefronts I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. My question is, do you guys just raise your prices and not let your customers know ahead of time? Or do you let them know, in person or through email? Also, how do you word it? I was thinking of just adding a note on their invoices for the next two months letting them know that prices will be increased “x” amount of dollars beginning the first of the year. Do I give them a reason as to why I’m raising the prices? (rising fuel costs, expenses, etc?) Thanks!!
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This ^^^, if you want to let them know the reason you can just say something like ‘ unfortunately due to increase of doing business we must raise prices’ you don’t have to give a reason . It’s pretty standard that everything has gone up in price
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Lance!
I don’t feel I need to justify an in-line with inflation increase. I just let them know that starting Jan 1st prices are increasing.
I’ve never had much pushback and if I have, as you said, if I lose clients because of increases I was probably going to lose them anyways.
I routinely price myself out of low paying work to free up time to spend on more important things. Often I end up earning much more for doing less.
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Yah I started raising storefront prices too. I was pricing too low when I first got up and running.
I priced a bank today that was about 1.5 hrs of work and 20+ miles away at 299.
Client thought price was high but I just let them know after expenses, taxes, etc that is what the price needs to be. If I lose the bid I won’t lose any sleep over it…I need a break after working in 110F heat and 80% humidity all summer.
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Love it! Thanks for the feedback and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Getting too busy to keep up and need to let some of these low bids go.
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I recently dropped 2 dunkin donuts storefronts I hated doing and replaced them with 2 new well paying ones. A smoke shop and some medical place.
I could’ve told them price gotta go up but I hated doing them with all the people coming in & out all the time and all the grease that builds up.
I also underbid it a bit and would have to at least 2x my price which I doubt they would pay but oh well.
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Also, if you don’t think it’ll work when and if you raise that price…you said you don’t mind losing it.
What about selling the route? Might work out well for you and end up making a good friend in the process.
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I just raised my prices after not raising them the last couple years and am informing my customers that there will be an annual increase of 5% rounded up to the nearest dollar. I might change that in the future if necessary, but it’s better than waiting 2 years or more and then going up 10-20%.
5% doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you think about it, in 20 years the price would be more than double, that seems about right, at least based on how things have gone in the past.
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I pretty much dropped all my storefronts except 2.
One is $100 the other is $125 a month, about 1 hour of work for each.
I also have 4 daycare locations that are quarterly but I have to work evenings or Saturdays, for now I’ll do evenings but may drop it at some point.
Haven’t worked a Saturday this year so far at least 
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Inflation was atleast 20% so I raised my prices accordingly. I will be raising my prices annually to keep my head above water.
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That’s exactly what I ended up doing. Sold my storefronts to a friend of mine. Work out a contract that gives me 20% of the gross for one year. Thanks
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Cool. I’m glad it worked out for you man.
CPI Inflation Calculator (bls.gov)
have fun, quite the eye opener
car dealerships are charging $190 per hour out here, so are garage repair and spa repair guys. labor is all dialed in, check your local dealerships rates, getting 90%+ as an annual average of that will balance out running a sustainable labor based business, strange but true lol
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