August 21, 2023
Do you want to know how to charge more for your services without adding loads more to the packages you currently offer? I got you.
As service providers, we all hit a wall in business where our capacity is maxed and our choices are to either magically find an extra few hours at the end of each day, clone ourselves by hiring help, or increase our prices.
And the truth is, it can feel icky to start charging more for your services, especially if it doesn’t feel like you’re offering your clients extra value. But…
You can actually justify increasing your prices in your service-based business without adding hundreds more deliverables to your scope of work or gaining ten years of experience overnight. The key to charging more is making sure the true value of what working with your business is like, is communicated with your audience and shows up in the experience you deliver.
You’re great at what you do, you just need to show it! Keep reading for our top four tips for how to charge more for your services (and feel good about increasing your prices).
If you want to know how to charge more for your services, the very first tip is to actually start charging more. Because the truth is, if you receive amazing feedback from your clients, have evolved in your business, are always upskilling, learning and outdoing yourself – your prices should reflect your growth and knowledge.
In fact, if your prices are too low, you might be repelling the clients you want to work with who are looking for someone who is more experienced. And if those clients see ridiculously low rates, they’ll likely think you’re new to your industry.
If you’re you’re nervous to charge more for your services, you can always start slowly, raising the price by a little for one client and the raising it again for the next.
Fine-dining restaurants don’t have absurdly large menus, but places like diners absolutely do. And that’s because fine-dining restaurants don’t claim to do it all, they claim to do a few things extremely well.
And so can you.
Niching down is basically working out what you like offering plus what you’re bloody good at, and staying in the lane of offering that. Which can look like specific services or working with a very specific group of people (for example: a website designer who only works with photographers).
By niching down, not only do you become highly skilled at what you offer, but you establish yourself as an expert at that handful of things, making it easy to justifiably charge more for your expertise.
And while niching down takes a bit of time to gain momentum (because you’re telling the world you’re an expert at one thing which takes some time to catch on), over time it is one the best ways to help you increase your prices as you become more skilled and niched down at what you do.
Remember that fine-dining restaurant we were chatting about just a few points above? Well, imagine if you walked into a restaurant that charged £75 for a burger, but the lighting was horrible, the chairs were plastic, and they served you drinks in chipped glassware…
You’d be rather alarmed (and also feel like you had been scammed).
While your online business might not have a physical space like a restaurant does, it does have a digital space (like your website and social media) and if you want to charge more for your services, the space you invite clients into needs to match the prices you charge.
That might mean buying some stunning social media templates to upgrade your social media presence or it might mean investing in getting your website set up or redone so it actually matches the quality of work you deliver.
No matter what, if you want to know how to charge more for your services, investing in your business’s online presence definitely plays a big part.
My last tip for anyone curious about how to charge more for your services is to ensure you’re delivering a 5-star client experience. Because, if you’re charging premium prices but your backend process is all over the place and has your clients constantly feeling like they’ve been left in the dark…
Your high-ticket prices aren’t matching your processes.
To have a seamless client experience, you should:
That means that from the first time a potential client reaches out to the gift you send at the end of your project, the entire process isn’t only easy for them, but makes them feel like they’re getting the royal treatment.
And the best way to go about that is to invest in setting up a CRM that can help you automate so many parts of that process so you can deliver a 5-star client experience without having to spend the time manually handling it yourself. (My CRM rec for creative business owners? Dubsado, it’s the best in my opinion.)
Plus, a luxury client experience helps show your clients from the moment they interact with your business that the prices they’ll be paying are well-justified for the level of service they receive – without you needing to change the scope of work you offer.
They don’t call me the Dubsado queen for nothing! I can get your Dubsado set up for you in a day (it’s literally called Dubsado in a day for a reason) and have your backend processes working in your favour.
More of a DIY-er? Saving time and having a stellar client experience is something every business owner should prioritise, that’s why I’ve created a handy dandy The Ultimate Dubsado Guidebook. With video tutorials as well, it’s like having me right there with you while you set your Dubsado up.