You have been working for your company for a while now. You have been excited about the company and what it represents. Proudly you have been representing your firm to your clients, friends and family stating your company is the “best” in your marketplace/industry. Now it has all come crashing down around you. Why?
Your manager just informed you that the pricing for the products or services you have so proudly been promoting are increasing. A jumble of emotions set in – anger, concern, fear.
“Why wasn’t I informed and involved in this decision?”
“What will my clients say and think about me?”
“Am I going to be able to succeed now?”
Although the emotions tied to these questions are valid, do the questions themselves have value. And more importantly, why do you care?
Don’t minimize people’s emotions; but in reality, what has changed? Has the company you were so proud of representing last week changed? Has the product or service dropped in quality since the last client told you what a great job you and your team did?
If the answer is no, should you be worrying about it? I would argue no.
The last time you bought gas was the price at the pump the same as last month or last year? How about other things you buy? Have all your personal expenses stayed the same for the last five years? I would argue no. In fact prices increase all the time. Your company should be no different nor should they be held to some unattainable status of never having the opportunity to stay up with inflation.
Most of the time, a lot of logical thought has been put into price increases. The fact remains, if you were proud of what you sold yesterday, a price increase should not diminish your support of your company today. The only thing that should ever diminish that would be a significant drop in quality.
If that didn’t happen, then quit worrying about the few individual clients who will question the pricing. Go back and sell the value to your clients again and remind them why they use your products/services. Unless they only bought from you because you were the cheapest, you would eventually have lost them anyway. There is always a lower cost provider out there, just like there is always a bigger bully.
But not everybody can be an upper end service/product provider.