How to Raise Your Salon Prices Without Losing Clients (And Why March Is Your Last Chance)

Here's the thing nobody tells you about raising your prices, the clients that you're most afraid of losing are normally the ones that you can't really afford to keep. This episode is going to make you feel a whole lot better about putting your prices up. Hello, hello, hello my salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the internet with a big dose of my Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, as we keep marching through March. Thanks for sticking around, I have my roots done specially. So how's March looking for you? Unfortunately, a few of my clients are having a little bit of a bumpy start to March. After a promising end to February, March is feeling a little bit ropey, which is unusual. Normally as we get towards Easter, things start to pick up in the salon business, but a few of my guys are feeling a little bit anxious, so I'm being soothing Uncle Phil and helping people to stay on track, keep their goals in mind. The good thing with some of them though is they had a really strong January, really strong February, and if you're looking at three months of targets, which I hope you are, I hope you're looking at a quarterly target, that actually takes some of the pressure off for March anyway. So if we don't have such storming results, hopefully that's been taken into account with the goal setting. But part of what's going to help us this month is a price increase, and I understand that you're worried about increasing your prices. I get that you're concerned about losing customers. The fear is real, but your logic is wrong. The research on this is consistent. Most clients will accept a well-communicated price rise without complaining. You might lose a small number of price-sensitive clients. Honestly, that's a good thing. They were the ones that were going to go by the wayside at some stage anyway. And also, the nice little analogy that I use is you might well be getting your prices to the stage where you need to break through another big number, and I get that they're uncomfortable. When we have to go up by a 10 or when we have to go up by a 100, that's when people get a bit shifty. So once we finally break that £100 mark for a haircut, or once we break a £100 mark for a particular type of facial, that feels very anxious to us. And there are some of your clients on your email list right now who will say something like, I would never pay £100 for a haircut. Quite right. Everyone's free. That's why we live in a free market economy.

Everyone can make their choices and go where they want for their services, and you get to choose who you target your services to as well. The thing is, every time you turn someone away with your pricing, you also buy someone back into the market. What do I mean? Explain yourself, Uncle Phil, please. What I mean is, there are people out there who are going, Oh, I don't actually believe you can get a decent haircut for less than £100. And suddenly, you're on their radar. Stronger profits, better clients, and they tend to be really pleased to see you as well, especially if you're a bit more local than where they've been going previously. I also understand that you're concerned that you're going to look a bit greedy. You're not being greedy. Your costs have risen. Your skills have grown. And I know that my Build Your Salon listeners are the best people in the world for investing in their skill set. That price ride is around sustainability. An underpriced salon is a salon that's not going to be able to afford to look after its clients properly. It's not going to be able to afford to look after its team properly. It's not going to be able to afford to upskill, level up, reinvest in the future either. It has no long-term prospects. So we've got to get these prices up. And you also worry sometimes that now is not the right time. And perhaps you're looking at March and it's looking a little bit ropey and you've got some white space in there and you're thinking, my God, I can't afford to drive any clients away. There is never going to be a perfect time. The thing is, if you chose a month when you're absolutely packed out, well, the chances are that you're going to get more of those price-sensitive clients through the door in that four weeks anyway. So there's no good time to be doing this. Let's just get on with it. The reason I want you to look at it now is March tends to be when we start getting booked up through April, May, June and into the summer. April's also when lots of us have to start thinking about our tax bills, remember. And then July is when the summer rush starts. Before you know it, if we don't do it in March or particularly this part of March, ideally middle of March towards the end of March, if you get into April, you're going to end up putting it off until September. And then we've basically lost six months of more profitable business. So I want you to look at this now. We don't want to do it when we get to September, October before Christmas, because honestly, I want you to be looking at your second price increase more on that later. So you're not raising your prices. Think about it as correcting them.

Now, how much are we going to raise them by? Well, it depends on what your goals actually set out to achieve. Give people an actual number. Don't give people a vague range of numbers. Don't say, oh, our prices are going up in April. And, you know, next time you jump on board for your online bookings, it'll be a nice surprise for you. Have a really clear criteria in mind. So say, you know, we're going to increase our prices by 10% or whatever. If you've not raised your prices in 12 months, you are already behind. Because over the past few years, we've had very strong inflation. A 10% rise typically will cover inflation, wage increases and also the rises in your product costs. It's also small enough that most clients will accept it without question. So the test question really is, would a 10% price rise mean a big change to your weekly income? It probably would, to be honest with you. If your average bill is 60 quid and you do 30 clients a week, that's £18 per client more. £540 a week, that's £28,000 a year. My goodness. Thank goodness for calculators. So from a decision that you're currently too scared to make, you're actually making a really big difference to your bottom line. Now, I also appreciate if we're going to lose some clients, we might take a slight hit on that. But remember, we're pricing new, more profitable clients in. Don't do it in tiny increments. I don't want to see you doing a 2% or 3% price increase and then another one when we get to May and then another one in July. Two price increases a year. Do it properly. Communicate it really well. Now, how are we going to communicate it? Three rules. I'm working in threes today. Three. I think it's because March is the third month of the year. So rule number one. We're going to be direct about it. We're not going to be apologising. We're not saying, I'm so sorry. Unfortunately, due to rising costs, we've had to make the difficult decision. No. We own this. So from 1st of April, our prices will be increasing by 10%. Check our price list online to see what that means for your next appointment. Bear in mind, there's not many of your clients that are going to get horrible surprises because if they're booking online, they're going to see the new prices at the point of booking anyway. If you're apologising, it signals that you think the price rise is wrong. That means you need to get a new page on your journal. You need to write a strong letter to yourself. You don't think this is wrong. There's no need to apologise for it. Rule number two. Give people notice. Not a huge explanation. Four weeks is plenty. Six weeks is very generous, to be honest with you.

Any more than that, you're just giving people more time to object or to find alternatives or to have a little whinge about it. You don't owe anyone a line-by-line breakdown of your overheads. We just say prices are increasing because we want to keep investing in our team and our salon. That's plenty. Now, we want people to hear about this personally, not necessarily publicly. So, brief your team. This is rule number three, by the way. Brief your team so they're not caught off guard when your clients ask questions about the pricing. Step two. Get a notice on reception before the prices go up. They should be hearing it from you first, not on Instagram. Just a card on reception saying from 1st of April, new prices will apply. That's it. You can put a QR code to your new price list if you want to. And step three of rule three. Don't post this on social media. For God's sake, update your price list. Get your online booking sorted. Notice on reception. Job done. We want our regulars finding out from you, not from a bloody social media post. And social media is supposed to be for good news. It's supposed to make people feel better. We don't want to be talking about price increases. What do we do if clients push back? Most of them won't. But do prepare yourself for the odd one that does. And honestly, my response would be, yeah, I completely understand. You know, perhaps your clients are struggling with money, too. But our prices haven't increased for so many months. This brings us in line with where we need to be to make sure we're profitable for the future as well. If they threaten to leave, let them. And just make sure that they know that the door is always open should they choose to change their mind and come back. We will fill that chair. We will fill that room with someone else who values your work. As long as you're marketing strong, you'll be absolutely fine. The clients you lose over a price increase are always replaced by better clients, usually very quickly. It's a little bit of discomfort in the short term, but definitely worth it in the long term. So my call to arms is March is your window. Mid March is when the spring rebooking starts. We need to get this done. Stop putting it off. If you promised yourself you were going to do this in January, you're already behind. Let's get the job done. And if you want to do it properly with a full pricing strategy that covers every service, every tier, every team member and make sure that you're pricing your profit in. Check out my program. Get paid properly at get paid properly dot com. I would love to see you signing up and getting your getting yourselves on the right foot for a profitable 2026. So there we have it. My take on why you should be increasing your profits. Now, what do you think?

When did you increase your profits last? Well, argue with me. I don't mind. Or if you've got a question, then please feel free to reach out. Next week's episode is going to be next Monday's episode. Rather is going to be a response to a question that I've had. My email address is scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Phil at build your salon dot com. Don't forget to subscribe. If you want to leave me a tip, you don't even need to send me any money. Just give me a review, particularly if you're on Apple podcast. But if you're on Spotify as well, please feel free to leave me a five star review. Honestly, it's the best way of making sure that more people to get to get to hear about our little podcast. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of my wise hour wisdom. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, whatever you're up to. And until next time, take care. Take care.