A while back I sat down with a business owner we work with. Cracking little business, glowing reviews, the kind of local reputation most people would give their right arm for. And they were undercharging. Not by a bit, by a mile. When I gently suggested it might be time to think about putting your prices up, I got the reaction I get almost every single time. A slightly panicked look, and the words: “but what if everyone leaves?”
The fear has a name
We are brilliant at collecting five-star reviews and hopeless at doing anything with them. Tall poppy syndrome runs deep in this country. As the owner put it to me afterwards, we know we have great reviews in the community, but tall poppy syndrome always stops us from actually taking those reviews and doing something about them. And yet one grumpy comment? We will stew on that for days. Sound familiar?
The question that changes everything
So we flipped the question. Instead of “will I lose customers if I put my prices up”, we asked “how many customers could I afford to lose before I am actually worse off”. That is a completely different conversation, because the maths behind a price rise is far friendlier than your nerves suggest.
The dangers of discounting
To make it real, we built a simple calculator called The Dangers of Discounting. You pop in your price change and your margin, and it shows you the tipping point. Here is why it matters.
Put your prices up 10%, and on a healthy margin you could lose around one in six customers and still bank the same gross profit. Now flip it. Drop your prices 10%, and you would need roughly a quarter more customers just to stand still. Same size move, wildly different risk.
That gap is the whole point. A price rise hands you a cushion. A discount digs you a hole, and then asks you to sprint to climb back out. The stronger your margins, the more forgiving a price rise becomes, and the more brutal a discount is. Discounting feels generous. Mostly it just gives your profit away.
How they actually put their prices up
This is the part I loved. The new prices kicked in from 1 August. Anyone already booked kept the old price right through until 1 September, so nobody who had already budgeted got caught out. A few bookings over the busy Christmas stretch were shifted across gently, and across the whole year the increase was pretty modest. Firm on the price, generous on the timing. That combination takes almost all the sting out of it.
What actually happened
One grumble. One. A single “that is so expensive”, and it turned out to be from a customer back in 2024. Meanwhile about six emails came back the other way saying thanks for the heads up, you guys are great, no worries from us. Not one client was lost. And the kicker: their premium pick-up and drop-off service is now nearly two full days a week, and they are opening another day to keep up. Turns out people will happily pay for convenience too.
Final thoughts
Confidence in your pricing is not arrogance. It is survival. The owner summed it up better than I could when they said that, at the end of the day, whatever helps other businesses make payroll. If your prices have not budged in years and your reviews are glowing, that is not a coincidence. That is a signal that putting your prices up is overdue.
Every business is different and this is not financial advice, so run your own numbers before you make a call. That, funnily enough, is exactly what the calculator is for. Have a play with the Dangers of Discounting calculator and see how much room you have really got. Or send us the tricky question about your own pricing. We rather like those.
