From: How to Price Your Accountancy Services for Maximum Profit (by Mark Wickersham)
Part 4 of 14
Although at this point you may be feeling skeptical, keep reading as you’ll learn why your clients will stay with you rather than stray.
Now, we’re going to look at a series of interesting questions I call the 1% effect.
Consider for a second about fifty things that you continuously buy that you feel are really useful things to your life. Would you give up purchasing them if they were to increase the price by one percent?
For example, would you give up your favourite beer if they raised the price by 4 cents from $3.80 to $3.84? Or your favourite bottle of wine if it went up from $7.80 to $7.88? Or how about your favourite magazine if the price was to jump from $9 to $9.09?
If you answered “NO” to these, then as a customer you’d be saying that if the product is good, you’d be willing to pay for it even with a small increase in price.
Are your services good?
If you can say “yes”, then following logic, it means you could increase your prices by an average of 1% and keep the majority, if not all of your clients, right?
I’m not asking whether you could increase every price by exactly 1% for every customer. I’m asking whether you could increase some prices for some customers by a little more than 1%, and some prices by a little less than 1%, without losing a significant number of customers.
That’s not so hard, right?
So, how come you don’t do it….today?
If a UK firm making an average of £245,720 were to increase its fees with the 1% effect, that would buy them perhaps a vacation for a family, £2,457 more per year.
That price increase wouldn’t have much of an impact at all on your clients, but would give you more pocket money.
Your clients will stick with you through the increase in fees and you’ll be happy you did it.
