How to raise your prices without losing clients

It’s time to raise prices when your bookings are full far ahead, you have to turn clients away for lack of time and your costs have gone up. It’s better to start with a small step of 5–10% and warn regular clients two to four weeks ahead. Below: how to tell that the time has come, how many clients you can lose without losing revenue and what words to use to give the news.

First, work out the price of your hour

Before changing your price list, it helps to understand what your price is made of. A simple formula:

price of an hour = (monthly costs + the income you want) ÷ hours with clients per month.

Costs include everything you can’t work without: rent or the fee for your workplace, materials, taxes, phone and internet, training. Count only the hours when a client is in your chair, not the whole working day: cleaning, messaging and travel don’t count.

An example. Costs are 30,000 ₽ a month, you want to take home 60,000 ₽ and you spend 80 hours with clients. That gives (30,000 + 60,000) ÷ 80 = 1,125 ₽ an hour. If a haircut takes an hour and a half, it should cost at least 1,690 ₽. If you charge 1,400 ₽ now, you under-earn almost 300 ₽ on every haircut, and over a month it adds up.

These figures are yours, not the market’s: plug in your own. The formula shows what price you need to set for the work to pay off, not what is “customary” to charge. How much a technician gets in a salon and how much is left when working for yourself — in the article how much a nail technician earns.

Signs it’s time to raise prices

• Bookings are full two weeks ahead or more. There are no free slots, clients have to wait: demand is higher than you can serve.
• You turn people away. If you have to say “there’s no room soon”, you’re already losing money: some of those clients were ready to pay more.
• Clients don’t object. You name the price and hear “fine, book me in”, not “can I have a discount?”.
• Costs have gone up. Materials and rent have risen and the price list has stayed the same: every month you get a bit less.
• You’ve grown as a pro. New skills, training, complex work: the price should reflect that.
• The price list hasn’t changed in a long time. If you last reviewed prices more than a year ago, they have probably fallen behind.

How many clients you can lose and not lose out

The fear of raising a price is a fear of losing clients. Look at the arithmetic. Say you see 40 clients a month at 2,000 ₽: revenue 80,000 ₽. After a 10% increase the service costs 2,200 ₽.

• If 3 clients out of 40 leave, 37 × 2,200 = 81,400 ₽ remain. You earn more than before and save three visits.
• If 4 clients leave, 36 × 2,200 = 79,200 ₽ remain. Revenue is slightly lower, but you work four visits fewer, and the freed time can go to new clients.

The share of clients you can lose without a loss is calculated like this: price increase ÷ (1 + price increase). With a 5% increase that is 4.8%, with 10% it is 9.1% and with 15% it is 13%. The smaller the step, the less you need to hold on to, but also the less you gain.

A caveat: the calculation is simplified. It doesn’t account for the fact that those who leave may not be random clients but your most profitable ones, or that you still have to fill the freed time. But as a guide it works.

By how much to raise

A small step, and no round “a third at once”. For regular clients 5–10% is enough; for new clients you can set the new price straight away: they have nothing to compare it with. Round to clear amounts: 2,200 ₽ is easier to take in than 2,187 ₽.

If you raise prices rarely, two small steps a year are better than one big one. And if a service has become more complex or longer, review not the price but the service itself: split it into two variants with different durations.

How to tell clients

The rules are simple: in advance, personally, briefly and without excuses. Two to four weeks before the date, with the exact price and date, in the same channel where you usually talk. Don’t start with “sorry”, and don’t explain how everything has got more expensive: it sounds like asking for permission.

To a regular client:

Anna, hello! From 1 December my prices change: a haircut will cost 2,200 ₽. Until that date I book at the old price. If you like, you can choose a time right now: [link]

With a soft transition:

Maria, you’ve been with me for a long time, so from 1 December your price stays the same until the end of January. The new price list for everyone else is 2,200 ₽.

If they ask “why did it go up”:

My costs for materials and rent went up, and I invested in training. The quality stays the same, and you can book through the same link.

Don’t justify yourself at length and don’t compare yourself with other pros: it makes the client compare too.

How to soften the transition

If you don’t want to lose your most reliable clients, give them a transition period. For this Talenza has a personal discount: it is attached to the client and put into the booking automatically, both when you book the client in the cabinet and when they book online through your link. You can set the discount as a percentage or an amount, enter a date in the “Valid until” field and make it “One-time”. A client can have only one personal discount. We described how it works in the articles “How to offer a client a personal discount and what to write” and “A discount you don’t have to remember”.

Such a discount doesn’t cancel the increase: the new price list stays new for everyone else, while regular clients get time to get used to it.

How to change a price in Talenza

1. Open “Settings” → “Services and discounts” → “Services”.
2. Tap the service in the list, change the “Price, ₽” field and save.
3. Tap “Share price list”: the app prepares an image with your services and prices, handy to send to clients and post. More in the article “A price list in one image”.

One important detail: the price of a service is fixed in the booking at the moment it is created. If you change the price today, clients booked earlier will come at the old price, and new bookings will be created at the new one. So it makes sense to line up the dates with your booking calendar: those booked for 20 November keep the old price even if the new price list applies from 1 November.

What not to do

• Raise prices without warning. A client who learns about the new price at the till feels deceived.
• Justify and apologise. The price is the pro’s decision, not a reason to ask for permission.
• Change prices a little every month. Regular clients notice that faster than a single increase.
• Bargain on the spot. Either you give a discount by a clear rule or you don’t: a concession once becomes an expectation.
• Raise prices quietly by removing services from the list. It looks like an attempt to hide the change.

If you’re just starting out

For a beginner it’s easier not to underprice but to set a first working price and give clients a reason to try: a discount on the first visit or a trial procedure. Look at the price lists of five to ten pros in your line of work in your city and work out the price of your hour using the formula above, so you don’t start below your own costs. How to find your first clients is covered in the article “How a beauty pro can find clients: 9 ways for beginners”.

FAQ

How do I know it’s time to raise prices? If your bookings are full two weeks ahead or more, you increasingly have to turn people away for lack of time, clients don’t object when they hear the price, and materials and rent have gone up while your price list hasn’t changed for a long time, it’s a reason to review your prices.

By how much can I raise prices? For regular clients a small step of 5–10% is usually enough. The bigger the step, the higher the risk of losing some clients, but even with a 10% step you can lose almost one client in eleven and not lose revenue: 2,000 ₽ per service against 2,200 ₽ covers the loss of up to 9% of clients.

How do I tell clients about the increase? Personally and in advance: two to four weeks ahead, briefly, without excuses, with the exact date and the new price. Write to regular clients yourself instead of waiting for them to see the new price list. A soft measure works well: a personal discount for the transition period.

What happens to clients already booked at the old price? In Talenza the price is fixed in the booking at the moment it is created: if you change the price of a service, bookings already created keep the old price, and new ones are created at the new price.

Summary

A price is neither a sentence nor a gift: it can and should be reviewed. Work out your hour, wait until your bookings are full far ahead, raise prices in a small step, warn regular clients in advance and soften the transition with a personal discount. Then the increase goes quietly, and your revenue stops depending on how many clients you are willing to keep at a price you no longer match.