I’m going to show you 10 ways that you can increase your prices significantly, but without losing all your good clients, and keeping the good ones.
No. 1.
I have already prepared the whiteboard. The market, a lot of people talk to me, ah, Rob, it’s a saturated market. I don’t know, if I can get into this. Everyone is doing it. Oh, the competition. I actually believe, a lot of that is in your own mind. It’s your own myopia, a cognitive bias.
Sure, there’s going to be demand. The first thing is demand. There has got to be demand in the marketplace. But let’s be honest, most businesses right now, unless they’re completely dying, there is some kind of demand. There is 68 million-70 million people in the UK alone. There are 350 million people in America. There are 7 billion people in the world. You don’t need that many of them for your product or service. So, the demand is probably there.
If you want to guarantee that you have a marketplace, then you go in and disrupt. You did what Uber did for taxis. You go and do what Netflix did for video rentals. There’s always room for the most disruptive. It could be technology. It could be service. It could be reach and scale. It could be apps. It could be global reach, and social media, and whatever else.
Then there’s domination. I like to think that dominating is about being the best. It’s not about power. It’s not about scale, it’s about being the best. There’s a saying, there’s always room for the best. The cream of the milk rises to the top. I don’t think it matters what the market is. there’s always room for the best.
Then of course, finally, you’ve got to deliver a great product, a great service, the next version, the new iteration.
So, for a marketplace, you need demand, probably a tick, go in and disrupt. Probably, it’s easier now. It’s something you probably want to do, anyway. Dominate by being the best, and then deliver on your promise.
No.2.
Competition. Again, this is one is often in people’s heads, their cognitive bias. They’re in a Facebook Group. There are 7 people doing what they do. And they think, ah, everyone is doing it. And that’s rarely the case.
In some areas, you want to copy the best parts of your competitors. Don’t copy your competitors, copy the best bits that they do. Sam Walton was obsessive about going around all the shops, and picking up the best bits. And that ultimately, created the best of the best. The power house, that is Walmart. Smart entrepreneurs will copy the best bits inside their industry, and then outside of their industry.
So, create, is, what can you bring in outside of your industry. What outside influences do you have? What uniqueness is there about you that you can bring to your market, that your competitors cannot copy? Anyone can copy what you do. No one can copy who you are!
I bring influences of art, of music, of architecture, of film into my companies, which are not related to those niches. And that really helps me create something unique, and progressive, and innovative, and disruptive.
And then there’s collaboration mindset. Generally, people who from 2 camps. Competition: hate you, screw you, going to beat you, and then collaboration, which is forming partnerships like Virgin. It’s lots of companies, which are, really the Virgin brand collaborating with an existing business model. And I’m very much into it as a property investor, an entrepreneur myself, collaborations and partnerships.
No.3.
Tip 3, is, your position or positioning in the marketplace. Are you high volume-low price, low volume-high price? Are you, commodity, product, service or luxury? It’s really important for you to know. You could end up being a brand, that covers many of those. But you’ve probably end up having sub-brands within each like Louis Vuitton ownn loads of different, well, it’s actually Louis Vuitton-Moët Hennessy, the company, but they own loads of brands. Unilever own loads of brands.
You’ve got think about your price. Are you low price-high volume? If you’re a service-based price, you’re higher. And then if you’re a luxury-based price, you’re even higher with great margin, but lower volume. nd you make it special and exclusive, and then purpose.
For me, purpose is the great driver of business. I think Steve Jobs didn’t really think about devices and software. I think he thought about changing the world. And to quote him, ‘making a dent in the universe’. So, if you have a purpose way bigger than you, maybe going national, or intercontinental, or global, or like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, intergalactic, then that drags your price and your positioning up.
No.4.
A lot of people say to me, Rob, I can’t put my prices up in my market. Oh, it’s a commodity place market. Everyone charges the same. I don’t agree with that. I think, if you come in and disrupt, if your service is vastly better, then you can increase your prices without losing all your clients.
This is the thing, though. A lot of people are scared about losing their clients, when they up their prices. But you probably would want to lose some of your clients, the clients that cost you a lot of money, draining a lot of your time, complain a lot. You tend to refund the very resource-heavy. Sometimes, upping your prices incrementally, is, a good way to lose your worst clients that kind of hang on and drain your costs and your resources.
Experience. It goes without saying, doesn’t it, if you have two decades worth of experience in your niche, then you can up your price. Footballer who’s been playing for 20 years, and he’s at the top of his game, he’s going to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. And if you’re just starting out, and you don’t have experience, you want to think about this. You’ve just got a freaking start. Start now, get perfect later. If you don’t have any experience yet, fine. But if you never start, you’d never get any experience.
But you could transmute experience from another industry, from the Degree that you’ve got, from the experience in life that you’ve had, that you could then put into your story and your brand. So, the story, is, how unique? What do you do better? What have you done in your life that creates loyalty for your brand? And the story can compensate for the lack of experience.
Skills. Of course, if you are the best, you’re going to beat the rest. But developing skills is a constant and never-ending improvement cycle. Don’t worry, if you haven’t got all the skills that you need yet, start now, get perfect later. But develop your skills, ongoing business and personal development, get mentors, and then you can in and out source skills.
You can have outsourcers, researchers, team members who are already skilled in that area. I use great solicitors, accountants, brokers, lenders for my property-based business. I have 85 staff who are great at sales and marketing, administration, finance, management so that I don’t necessarily have to develop all those skills myself.
Then there’s strategy. Netflix has a far better strategy than Blockbuster. Blockbuster strategy was good in the 1980s. But then it, kind of, outdated itself. If you think about Uber, they often have a better strategy in many cities than say, the Black Cabs of London, although hats been disrupted, and then reversed disrupted again.
But great strategy, great skills, a great story and starting now builds experience as much as you can before you go and develops it on the go.
No.5.
Point 5 of 10 ways to increase your prices, keep your good clients, lose your bad clients, increase your profit margin, is, your reputation. Of course, your reputation is everything guarded with your life. Do the right thing, even when someone isn’t looking. Don’t take any drastic shortcuts. Manage your online reputation. There’s credibility, care and consistency.
Credibility is doing the right thing. Doing it consistently. It is managing your online, and your business and brand reputation. It is having a good story. Speaking the truth. Standing up for something that you believe in. It is also being seen. Visibility is also credibility.
Then it’s the care to actually care to give a shit. And I think, in this modern world, where we’re all overwhelmed, interrupted, because there’s now massive transparency of information, which has exposed a lot of schemes and scams, I think trust is quite low. And so, if you care, and look after your clients, and manage yourself and your service well, you are going to win big.
Then, of course, you’ve got to keep doing that. You’ve got to do that consistently every year for many years, or care about the details. Then you’ll build a bulletproof reputation, and that will have good will in your brand. That will bring you multiple streams of leads and multiple streams of income.
No.6.
Point 6 of 10 top tips to increase your fees, without losing your best clients, I think this is probably the biggest one. I believe your self-worth equals your net worth. A lot of people say your network equals your net worth. But if you don’t believe in yourself, then why should anyone else.
And I believe, the limit, the ceiling of your prices, it’s not just the market. It’s not your experience. It’s what you believe you’re worth. How can someone get paid £50 for a speech, or go and do a speech for free? I know some people who get paid more than a million pounds for a 90-minute speech.
You have to believe in yourself, and project that belief out. We’re going to come on to case studies and experience. All those things do add to your self-worth. If anyone else can do it, why can’t you? Believe that you’ll give great service, that you’ll constantly and neverendingly improve. Continue to increase your self-worth with your own self-image and your mindset as well as your skillset, and you’ll be able to bump your prices up, and up, and up.
I remember 2008, mentoring with me, was, £2,000 plus VAT for the year, full access to me. Now, it’s minimum £25,000 for 8 months. I’m about to launch a Millionaire’s Mastermind, which will probably be doubled that. It might be £50,000. It might be more. And I can say that, with no lack of volition and believe in myself. Whereas of course, that would have been so scary 10 years ago.
No.7.
Point 7 is social proof. You’re probably a pretty good seller of your own products and services. You believe in your product and service and yourself. That’s going to help you scale. But even better than you, are your happy customers consumers and the people you serve.
If take good exposure on credible media, websites, maybe there are articles about you, maybe there are recommendations, reviews, awards, accreditations, et cetera, and then you mix that with glowing case studies, and testimonials of your products and services and you: how you care, how you serve, how you solve, how you help your clients, make their life easier, better, wealthier, happier and healthier, then you get a shared load of incoming referrals.
No.8.
8 of 10 ways to increase your fees, your prices, is, the scale of the problem you solve. If you solve a small problem for one person, you make a very small amount of money. But if you solve a big problem for the planet, you could become a billionaire.
You might not want to. But one of the 3 commonalities of the biggest titans of wealth that have ever lived, the pound for pound biggest billionaires, is that, they both have a desire, and in reality, they did serve vast numbers of people. They probably had a huge problem, or at least a meaningful problem, or a small problem, but they served millions or billions of people.
Remember, serve to as many people as you can. Solve for as many people as you can. Then scale from locally to nationally, to intercontinentally, to globally, to intergalactic. Like, Elon Musk and Richard Branson.
No.9.
9 penultimate way to increase your fees, your prices, is, the scale of your business itself. So, I believe that reach equals revenue, and impact equals income. Are you, local, national or global? Are you serving a few people or vast numbers of people? Are you making a small difference or a vast impact? Are you making a dent in your community, or a dent in the universe?
No.10.
The final way that you can increase your prices, is, to always remember about value. It’s not about being successful, a person of success. It’s about being a person of value. Success comes when you give value. The world always offers reward to those who offer and give value. We are interconnected species. We need to serve each other, there’s the producer and the consumer.
I have my own formula for this, which is, Wealth = Value + Fair Exchange x Leverage
If you want to be wealthy, increase your prices, increase your own net worth, then increase the value that you give. That could be extra services on top of what you already give. That could be getting feedback from your clients, and being more specific to giving them the products and services that they specifically want. That could be offering discounts. That could be when you increase the price, you also increase what you offer.
Then fair exchange is the sweet spot, between your profit and their value. Maximum profit to you. Maximum value and gratitude to the client. The sweet spot is in the middle.
And times that you leverage, your reach and your impact, and you’ll have vast and lasting wealth.
And the way to continue to increase your value, is, to continually seek feedback from your clients, from your non-buyers, from your competitors, from your complainers, from your critics, from the people you’ve refunded, from your staff. Always collate the feedback from any person that you can who’s got an opinion on product and service. Then you can constantly and neverendingly improve.
