Your Next Client Is A Price Increase.

In the survey behind issue 31, 36.4% of consultants said pricing was one of their biggest problems. Only finding clients ranked higher. So this week I put the two side by side. I used the same made-up year from issue 31: $96,000 billed. Raise your price 10% on that same work and you earn $9,600 more. Same clients, same hours. To earn that $9,600 by selling more, you need a new client, a pipeline, and weeks of follow-up. One takes a conversation. The other takes three months.

WHAT WORKS

Put your numbers in two columns.

Column one: what you would earn if you raised your price and did the same amount of work.

Column two: how much more work you would need to earn the same at today's price.

Most consultants never do this sum. They judge their price by feel. Nobody has complained lately, invoices get paid, so the price must be fine.

The sum tells a different story.

At +10%, $96,000 becomes $105,600. Your week does not change. No extra calls, no extra proposals, no extra invoices to chase.

To reach $105,600 at today's price, you have to do 10% more work. More scoping, more revisions, more onboarding, more admin. And one more client who might go quiet in month four, like I wrote about in issue 30. The money is the same. The work is not.

Raising your price changes one number. Selling more changes every week of your year.

At +20% the gap gets bigger. A higher price gets you to $115,200 with one line on one proposal. Getting there at today's price means giving away a fifth of your year.

This will not tell you how much to raise. It shows you what avoiding that conversation costs, in money, so you stop guessing from a feeling.

ONE PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION

About twenty minutes. No spreadsheet formulas.

• →Export the last 12 months of invoices from your accounting tool as a CSV file. Delete the client name column first.
• →Paste it into the AI assistant you already use. Ask it to group the invoices by type of work and total each group.
• →Ask: what would each group earn at +10%, +20% and +30%, with the same amount of work?
• →Ask: at today's price, how much more work would I need to do to earn those same totals?
• →Look at the two answers side by side. Keep them open when you write your next proposal.

Raise the price on your biggest group only. Usually one type of work brings in most of the money, so changing that one price does most of the job.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

Using your invoices to decide if your price is right. Invoices only show the people who said yes. The quotes people turned down, and the ones you discounted before sending, are not in there.

Treating a quiet renewal as a yes to your price. Think of the subscriptions you keep paying only because cancelling is a hassle. A client can renew you for the same reason. That does not mean they think your price is fair.

Raising prices on work that is already running. That is a renegotiation with people who already agreed to your number. It costs more trust than it earns.

Waiting for a sign. No invoice ever arrives telling you that you are too cheap.

ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK

Quote your next job 15% higher than the last similar one. Change nothing else.

• →Find your last proposal for similar work.
• →Multiply the price by 1.15.
• →Send it with the same scope, timeline and wording. Do not add a paragraph explaining the increase.
• →Write down the date, the old price, the new price and what they said.

After three of these you will know, instead of guessing.

The price you are most scared to send is usually the easiest thing to change.

If you want to run this on your own invoices with me, book twenty minutes on my Calendly.