How do I know if I'm charging enough?
You're probably charging too little if you win almost every quote, nobody pushes back on price, you're busy but not profitable, or you haven't raised prices in years. Price follows the value people get. Raise it on new customers first, measure what happens, and make the value easy to see when you do.
What are the signs my prices are too low?
You close nearly everything you quote. Customers say yes without a single question about price. You're booked out and still not making what you should. Your costs went up and your prices didn't.
Any one of those is worth a look. Two or more and you're likely leaving real money on the table.
Will I lose customers if I raise prices?
Fewer than you'd think, if the value is there. At the field software company I ran, we hadn't raised prices in six to eight years, which I'd tell anyone not to do. When we finally did, we raised the price of the core product and launched our newer features as separate products people could add.
We didn't lose a single customer over the increase, and a lot of them added the new products.
What matters more than the price itself?
The value people get, and whether they know about it. We'd been adding features for years and folding them in for free. When we finally looked at how people used the software, almost nobody was using them. They didn't even know the features existed.
Packaging them, telling people about them and charging for them did more than giving them away ever had. We only caught it because we started measuring how people used the product.
How do I test a price increase without risking the business?
Start with new customers, since they've never seen the old price. Change one thing at a time. Watch your close rate and average job size for a month or two. If the close rate barely moves, you were underpriced. Then bring existing customers along with notice and a clear reason.
Should I switch to monthly or subscription pricing?
Sometimes. If the value you deliver keeps going, a recurring price can fit better than a one-time fee. I moved a custom software firm from project fees to a subscription product, and its deals became yearly subscriptions much larger than the projects they replaced. Here's that story.
What if competitors charge less than I do?
If customers can't tell why they'd pick you, price is the only thing left to compare. Fix that first. Know who you're for, say what you do in their words, and price gets a lot easier to hold. That's a big part of GTM strategy.
Talk it through with me.
Bring the problem, even if it's still fuzzy. We'll talk about what's going on, what might be behind it, and whether I'm the right person to help. If I'm not, I'll tell you.