You've looked at your numbers and decided the price needs to move. Good. That was the hard part in your head.
Now comes the part owners actually lose sleep over, which is telling people.
One thing up front: whether to change your prices, and by how much, is your call and nobody else's. If you're still working that out, we wrote about it separately in The Quiet Signs Your Prices Are Too Low. This post is about what comes after the decision. It isn't a set of instructions, because your business isn't ours. It's the five decisions you still have to make, and what each one involves.
TL;DR: After the number, five decisions are left. When it starts and when people hear. What the message says and what it leaves out. What happens to work already booked. Who, if anyone, stays on the old rate. And when you'll judge how it went, against what. None of the five has a single right answer, and every one of them is easier to settle now than in front of the first person who asks.
First, a Word on the Number Itself
We're not going to hand you a percentage. What the work is worth depends on your costs, your skill, your local market and what similar businesses in your area charge, and none of those are things we can see from here.
One thing worth weighing while you settle on it. If your prices have been frozen for three years, the gap between your number and the market has had three years to widen. What your costs look like today, and what similar businesses charge today, are more useful reference points than what felt right back then.
Decision 1: When It Starts, and When People Hear
These are two dates rather than one, and they're worth thinking about separately.
Giving people notice gives them time to take the change in and plan around it. How much notice is useful depends on your business and how often your customers come back. A shop people visit weekly is a different case from one they use twice a year, and there's no standard gap that fits both.
Owners land in different places on the start date itself. A clean one, the first of a month or the start of a season, can be easier to explain and easier for people to remember than an arbitrary Tuesday. Some businesses have a natural point in the year and some don't.
One question some owners find useful when they're setting the gap: could anybody arrive at the register without having heard? Whether that matters, and how much, depends on the kind of relationship you have with your customers.
Decision 2: What the Message Says, and What It Leaves Out
This is the part owners agonize over, and it may turn on less than it feels like.
A simple message can be three things: the new price, the date it takes effect, and appreciation for the customer's business. How much context you add beyond that is up to you. Some owners include a line about costs having moved. Others keep it shorter, and others explain more.
Whether to apologize sits in the same place. An apology can frame the change as something that went wrong, which may be more than you mean to say, but that's a read on tone rather than a rule. It's your relationship and your call.
For a sense of the length rather than the wording, here's roughly one shape it can take. It's an example, not a script, and it should sound like you:
"Hi [name], quick note. From [date] our prices are going up a little, [old price] is becoming [new price]. It's the first change we've made in a while and it reflects how our costs have moved over the last [period]. We wanted to give you plenty of notice. Anything booked before [date] stays at the old rate. Thanks as always for being one of our regulars, we appreciate you."
There are three judgment calls hiding inside this one decision. Whether you apologize. How much of the why you include. And whether the people who have been with you longest hear something different from everybody else. Your answers won't be the same as the next owner's.
Decision 3: What Happens to Work Already Booked
One distinction that can matter to customers is between a new price going forward and a new price applied to something they had already agreed. Those can feel like different events, even when the money involved is the same.
So the decision is where the cut-off sits. The date somebody booked. The date they paid a deposit. The date you sent the quote. Any of those is defensible, and they produce noticeably different amounts of work for you.
Whichever you choose, deciding it in advance means the answer exists before the first person asks.
Decision 4: Who, if Anyone, Stays on the Old Price
Some owners hold a handful of people at the old rate for a while. The customer of ten years. The one who sends referrals without being asked. The one who has never once haggled.
The trade is straightforward to see and harder to price. Holding a few people costs you the difference on their next few visits. Not holding them costs you nothing at all, unless it costs you them.
There's no correct number, and plenty of businesses choose nobody. What can help focus the decision is looking at which relationships are particularly important to the business, whether that's because of history, volume, referrals or something else, and settling the list before anybody pushes. A choice made in advance is a decision. The same concession made under pressure can read as a discount instead.
Decision 5: When You'll Judge It, and Against What
The decision here is when you'll look, and at what.
Both are worth settling before the change lands, because the first few reactions arrive long before the picture does. A single pushback or one cancellation is a data point rather than a pattern.
How long it takes for a pattern to show up depends entirely on your business. Somewhere with daily footfall has a readable sample much sooner than a business people book twice a year. The useful questions are how long a meaningful sample takes for you, and which figures actually tell you something: bookings, cancellations, revenue per job, the mix of who is still coming through the door.
Deciding both in advance is the difference between reading a result and reacting to the first sign of one.
Five Things to Think Through Before You Announce
Whether to run a "last chance at the old price" offer. It can pull revenue forward, and it can also teach customers to wait for the next discount. Which of those matters more depends on your business and how often people buy.
How publicly you announce it. A price change is information for the people it affects. Posted publicly it also reaches people who aren't buying from you, and invites comment from them. Some businesses are comfortable with that. Many prefer to keep it to their own list.
Whether to bundle it with other changes. New prices, new packages, new booking rules and new signage in the same week can read as a different business rather than a new price. There's a case for doing everything at once and getting it over with, and a case for letting one thing land at a time.
How much weight to give the old price. You've charged $80 for three years, similar businesses are at $100, and the $20 gap feels like a 25% hike. The old number tells you what you used to charge. Whether it tells you anything about what the work is worth now is a separate question.
What you'll say if someone pushes back. "The new rate is the rate, but I'm happy to lock in your next booking at the old price before [date]" is one version. Having decided something in advance means the answer isn't being worked out in the moment.
Where Mighty Fits In
Your price decides what comes in. Your costs decide how much of it you keep.
That's the side Mighty works on, helping small businesses find ways to reduce their everyday business costs. Lower costs mean a price change has less work to do on its own. Talk to a Mighty Rep if you'd like a look at that side.
That's the whole of it. Five decisions, none with a single right answer, and every one of them easier to make now than in front of the first customer who asks.
And while you're working on what comes in, it's worth a look at what goes out, because the math gets friendlier when both halves of your margin are pulling the same way.