SERVICE PROVIDERS RAISING PRICES??? WHAT'S THEIR EXCUSE??

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but everything has been a lot more expensive lately … if you are a business owner who sells ‘goods’ where you have to purchase materials to design or create your ‘item for purchase’ (such as a florist, invitation designer, caterer, etc) then your prices are rising because your cost to get materials has increased … the math makes sense and while customers probably don’t love it, they understand it …

What is getting a lot of push back is when SERVICE PROVIDERS raise their prices … the thinking goes something like this:

YOU ARE THE SAME HUMAN YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN, OFFERING A SERVICE USING YOUR BODY AND TIME … NOTHING HAS CHANGED FOR YOU … SO WHY ARE YOU RAISING YOUR PRICES??

I obviously added a bit of snark for humor … but the gist is: we are all a lot less understanding of service providers raising prices … and, as a service provider myself, let me just say that:

SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE SCARED SH*TLESS TO RAISE THEIR PRICES BECAUSE WE ARE TERRIFIED WE WON’T GET HIRED ANYMORE

Something needs to change …

Here is something we all need to be a little more cautious of: business owners have bills … crazy, right? But seriously: as a business owner, do you ever get the feeling that people don’t understand that part? If you go into Nordstrom to buy shoes, you never negotiate price … the price is marked, you either buy the shoes or you don’t … simple. I feel like that goes away when you are dealing with a service provider / small business owner … when someone is offering a SERVICE (for instance, I offer website design) … which uses my time, talent, skill set, and knowledge … but little to no materials that I have to buy myself … pricing my services is near impossible and I haven’t raised my prices in YEARS … until recently when I found out what my competitors charge … the decision to finally raise my prices made my feel nauseous … and I actually reached out to each and every one of my clients to offer up my ‘soon to be old pricing’ because I felt so guilty … why do we do this?

If you are a florist, for instance, and you purchase flowers at wholesale to make your arrangements and bouquets, it’s automatic to raise your prices … the purchase of the flowers has gone up for you, therefore that price is passed along to your clients … prices increase … easy ish to explain …

Now, you’d think that math would work for a service provider too … but here’s the thing … to explain why OUR prices have increased, we have to get into personal life … and that’s awkward … here’s how that sounds:

THE REASON MY PRICES HAVE GONE UP IS BECAUSE WHEN I GO TO BUY FOOD, CLOTHING, ENTERTAINMENT, ETC FOR MY FAMILY, IT COSTS MORE … MY LIFE COSTS MORE … THEREFORE, I HAVE TO CHARGE MORE

Soooooo awkward!! And we shouldn’t have to explain that part … also, as service providers get better and more skilled and more in demand, their prices should be allowed to go up … In addition, some of the bigger service providing firms have employees to pay … and as costs drive up everywhere, the service providers need to pay their staff to make up for cost of living increases … these are the ‘bits’ of running a service providing business that a lot of people don’t consider … I think everyone is guilty of: wait, isn’t it YOU that I’m paying to do this? There is a pause when the person providing the service doesn’t have ‘obvious in your face’ costs that we can SEE … but they are there ;)

If you are a service provider who is on the fence about raising prices, but need to pull the trigger because you are in a place where you have earned that place to do so or simply because LIFE COSTS are so outrageous lately, then I understand why it’s scary … people are holding onto their money and you don’t want to lose business to the business owners who keep theirs low and just struggle on the other end … there is no easy answer.

THERE ISN’T A RULE BOOK FOR PRICING AS A SERVICE PROVIDING SMALL BUSINESS OWNER … WE BASICALLY JUST MAKE IT UP AS WE GO ALONG …

I’ve written a few blog posts on this subject … you can check out one of those posts here called: Charging What You’re Worth … you can also check out the tag for pricing << right there :)

XO~
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