Two issues ago, we helped you find your Floor. Last issue, we focused on pricing in the value you deliver to your clients.

I've watched a lot of owners get to this point, and then nothing. The price never changes.

See, the hardest part about price increases is never the math or analysis; it's saying a bigger number out loud to somebody - especially when that somebody is used to a lower number.

Telling someone your price can feel like you're placing a value on your own self-worth. And if they say no, it can ultimately feel like they're telling you you're not worth it. For most business owners, that can be enough to ruin a day, or a week.

But as Dan Ariely points out in “Predictably Irrational,” people have no real internal sense of what things should cost, so they judge price by comparison rather than against an absolute standard. So, when someone says “no,” it isn't a comment about you. It's a reflection of what they've paid (or haven't paid) for things like this before.

Part of what makes this so hard is that it feels like more of the same work. You did the math, so now you have to defend the math. But those are two different jobs.

Determining your price is a finance decision, but communicating it is a customer service one.

That distinction matters more than anything else in this issue. It means the way you communicate a price change has to be consistent with the way your company already approaches customer service. If you're normally personal and responsive, a form email will read as off-putting. If you're normally efficient and low-touch, a sudden round of phone calls will read as a warning. Your customers know how you operate, and a change in how you talk to them tells them something before your number does.

With that in mind, here’s what’s worked best for my clients when it comes to implementing.

Start with the people who never knew your old price. The next quote you send to someone new is the easiest way to try this because the lack of history means less to defend. You just use the new number, and if it lands, the new price isn't theoretical anymore since somebody paid it. That matters more than it sounds, because most of the fear about repricing is fear of a conversation, and this route skips the conversation entirely.

Then, move to existing clients, and start by sorting them. Not into profiles, and not by tenure or service type. Sort every client by one thing: how far they are from the new price. That's the only variable that determines whether someone needs an increase at all, and it tells you where to focus. Some clients are already close enough that they need nothing, like the one who came on last quarter at a higher rate.

When you get to communicating, focus on the new number and when it will take effect.

What's best to leave out is the overexplaining. Your costs may be what made you look at your prices, but they were never the reason for the number, and the moment you make them the subject you're negotiating about your overhead. That said, how much you say beyond the number and the date is its own customer service decision, and if your clients are used to hearing from you directly, going quiet on the why will read as a change.

If asked, the honest answer is usually the simplest one: You've gotten better at what you do.

Now, the hardest version of this. Sometimes you can't close the gap in one move. If a client is 40% below where they should be, taking them all the way there at once may cost you the relationship outright, and not every business is in a position to lose that client to make a point. A smaller increase now, with another to follow, is a legitimate call.

What makes it a trap is doing it without a plan. If you land on a number that's still below your Floor, you need to know that's what you've done, and you need a date for the next one. Otherwise, you've just set new legacy pricing that's a little higher than the old legacy pricing, and you'll be having this same conversation in three years.

And if it turns out you can't get that client above the Floor at all, that isn't a pricing problem anymore. That's a decision about whether the work is worth doing.

You have a Floor and you have a range. Pick a real number inside it, pick a date, and have the first communication. The only thing left to decide is who to talk to first.

I’m rooting for you.

~ Nolan

PS - If this one made you think of someone, send it their way