How to put your prices up without losing your best customers

Your cable has gone up. Your van insurance has gone up. Your fuel, your scheme fees, your phone contract, the lot. The one thing that has not moved is what you charge. Most electricians know they need to put their prices up and keep putting it off, because they are worried the customers they like most will walk. Done properly, they do not.

Why you have not put your prices up yet

It is nearly always fear. You picture Mrs Jones, who has used you for six years, reading the new price and ringing someone else. So you hold it for another year and quietly absorb the extra cost yourself.

Holding your prices still while your costs climb is a price cut. You are taking home less for the same work, every week, without deciding to. Nobody would offer a customer that discount, but it is what happens when you leave your prices alone.

I wrote that in my book years ago and I still believe it. If price is the only reason somebody uses you, the next electrician who undercuts you takes them anyway. Your best customers are not with you because you are the cheapest. They are with you because you turn up when you say, you leave the place clean and they trust you in their house.

Who you might lose, and why that is fine

Be honest about who actually leaves when you put your prices up. It is the customer who argued over every quote, rang you at nine at night for a fused spur and paid three weeks late. Losing a couple of those frees up the time to look after the ones who value you.

Your best customers buy on trust. A sensible rise, explained like a grown up, rarely changes that. What does upset them is a big jump out of nowhere with no warning, which is why how you do it matters more than how much.

Start with your minimum charge

Before you change anything, know the number underneath your prices. Your minimum charge has to cover what it costs to open the van each morning, before you have earned a penny: insurance, fuel, tools, scheme membership, the hours spent quoting and doing the paperwork. If you have not worked that out recently, put your real costs through the free Minimum Charge Calculator and see where you land. You use an hour figure in the back office to work your prices out, but the customer only ever hears a minimum charge and a job price.

Most electricians who do the sum find their minimum charge has been too low for a while. As a rough example only, moving a minimum charge from £75 to £85 is a small change for the customer having one light fitting swapped, but across a year of small jobs it adds up to real money for you.

If you want to go deeper on the back office side, the guide to working out your hourly rate as an electrician walks through it properly.

New customers pay the new price straight away

This is the easy bit. Anyone who has never used you has no idea what you charged last month. From today, every new enquiry gets the new minimum charge and every new quote is priced at the new rates. No announcement needed.

Any quote you have already sent stands at the price on it. That is not a discount, that is you keeping your word, and it matters more to your reputation than the extra you would get by changing it.

Give your regular customers notice

The people who use you again and again deserve to hear it from you before they see it on a quote. Give them a few weeks of notice and a date it starts. The new year is a natural point, so if you tell them in November or December, nobody is surprised in January.

Keep it short. A letter, an email, or a line in the newsletter you already send them works. Something like:

"Hi Mrs Jones, just a quick note to let you know my prices are going up from 1 January. My costs have gone up a fair bit this year and I would rather tell you now than have it come as a surprise. What does not change is how I work: I turn up when I say, I leave it clean, and if anything is not right I come back and sort it. Thank you for sticking with me. If there is anything you have been meaning to get done, just give me a ring."

No apology, no long explanation of your fuel bill, no begging. One reason, what stays the same, and a thank you. That last line often brings in a couple of jobs from people who had been putting something off.

Small and regular beats big and rare

The electricians who get the worst reaction are the ones who held their prices for five years and then had to put them up in one go. A small rise every year is easy to accept. A big one after a long gap feels like a shock, even when it is fair.

Put a date in your diary once a year to look at your costs and your prices together. Make it part of how you run the business, not something you do when you are already in trouble.

When a customer pushes back

Some will ask about it. Do not knock anything off to keep them happy. The moment you drop back to the old price, you have told them the new one was made up.

Thank them, explain in one sentence that your costs have gone up, and talk about what they get for it. If a particular job needs to cost less, change the job, not the price. If they want to compare you with a cheaper quote, the article on what to say when a customer says another electrician is cheaper covers that conversation.

Be worth the new price

People do not haggle with experts. They do not argue with the surgeon or the pilot about the fee, and they will pay more for the electrician they see as the expert in their area. Every small thing that makes you look like the professional helps your prices stick: a clean van, a proper written quote, turning up on time, a follow up call after the job, a card through the door once in a while so they remember you.

When your customers see you that way, a price rise is a footnote. When they see you as the cheap option, it is a reason to look around.

Working out the numbers, wording the letter and building the kind of reputation that lets your prices stick are the sort of things we work on together inside My Electricians ToolBox. Membership is £127, and it is currently £97 a month if you want to have a look.

So when did you last put your prices up, and what has it cost you to wait?