Leaving money on the table
December 2023
“Raise your rates.”
This is the advice I give most frequently to anyone who sells services. I figure it’s the thing most people most need to hear.
It’s meant to be encouraging, but it’s pretty lazy advice. Raise your rates … how much? For current clients or just future ones? Let me clarify:
Raise your rates a bit, as soon as you reasonably can, just to see how it goes.
That probably looks like asking for ~15% more the next time you pitch a new client. See how it feels to ask for more, see if they agree to the price. See what you learn from the experience and take it from there.
The goal is to get out of your comfort zone, and keep up with inflation. It’s not to maximize what you charge.
“Leaving money on the table” sounds like a dumb thing to do, but here’s something even dumber: letting hypothetical lost earnings trouble your mind.
Optimizing human interactions is a suckers’ game. Raise your rates (a bit), see what happens, and don’t give it much more thought than that.