Most pricing advice for women business owners focuses on confidence. Believe in your worth. Stop undercharging. Raise your rates.
Fine, but confidence that isn’t backed by math is just optimism. The most reliable way to feel confident about your prices is to know exactly why they are what they are. When you can explain the numbers, you stop flinching when you say them.
Start with what it costs to run the business
Before you look at anyone else’s prices, look at your own numbers:
- What you need to pay yourself. A real salary, not whatever’s left over.
- Fixed costs. Software, insurance, rent, accounting, subscriptions you’ve forgotten about.
- Variable costs. Contractors, materials, transaction fees, anything that scales with the work.
- Taxes. Set aside what your accountant tells you to, and plan for it.
- Profit. Money the business keeps for reserves, investment, and bad months. Profit is not optional.
Add it up for a year. That’s the minimum the business has to bring in.
Then figure out your real capacity
Most service providers wildly overestimate how many hours they can bill. Between sales, admin, email, marketing, and the occasional day off, a lot of business owners realistically bill somewhere around half of their working hours, sometimes less. Track your own time for a couple of weeks to find your number.
Divide the annual minimum by your realistic billable hours (or by the number of clients or projects you can handle). That’s your floor. Price below it and you’re paying to work.
Now look at the market
Your floor tells you what you need. The market tells you what’s possible. Look at what comparable providers charge, with the same level of experience, for similar clients, in a similar market. If your floor is well below the market, you have room to raise prices. If it’s above, you need to change something: your costs, your offer, your target client, or how efficiently you deliver.
Price the value, not just the time
Hourly pricing caps your income and punishes you for getting faster. Where it makes sense, consider pricing by project, package, or outcome. Ask what the result is worth to the client. A website that brings in leads, a bookkeeping system that saves ten hours a month, a strategy that prevents an expensive mistake. Those are worth more than the hours it took you.
How to raise prices without drama
- New clients first. Quote new prices to new clients right away. It’s the easiest place to start.
- Give existing clients notice. Thirty to sixty days is common and respectful.
- Keep the message short. “Starting March 1, my rate for this service will be $X. Thank you for working with me.” You don’t need to apologize or justify it at length.
- Expect a few to leave. That’s normal, and often they’re the clients you were undercharging most.
Things that make prices hard to say
- Discounting by reflex. Decide your discount policy in advance, so you’re not inventing it on a sales call.
- Explaining too much. State the price and stop talking. Long justifications make it sound negotiable.
- Not knowing your numbers. It’s hard to defend a price you can’t explain to yourself.
Check your pricing with other business owners
Pricing is one of the most common topics at WEN Round Tables, and one of the most useful. Hearing how other women price, what they charge, and how they handled raising their rates is worth more than any pricing formula. They’re small, free, and on Zoom.
Related reading: Why Women Entrepreneurs Must Talk About Money and Managing Cash Flow as a Small Business Owner.
