Notes

How to raise your rates with a client you actually like

Raising rates on a bad client is easy. You half want them to leave.

The hard one is the client you like. They pay on time, they do not message at weekends, and the rate you agreed eighteen months ago has quietly become the worst-paid work on your desk. So you say nothing, for another year, and start resenting the best client you have.

Send it as a notice, not a request

The most common mistake is phrasing it as a question. “I was wondering if it might be possible to look at my rate?” invites a negotiation you did not need to have, and signals you expect resistance.

It is a notice. You are telling them what your rate is from a date. That is not arrogance. It is how every supplier they have ever used operates, including their accountant and their landlord.

Give a date

Thirty days minimum, sixty is generous. A date gives them time to plan, and time to plan is almost always what a client actually needs. It also stops the conversation being about right now.

From 1 November my rate for this work is $95 an hour.

One sentence. Notice what is not in it: no apology, no inflation, no “as I'm sure you can appreciate”, no long paragraph about how much you have grown. Every word of justification you add invites a word of negotiation back.

Do not explain unless asked

This is the discipline. The urge to justify is enormous, and it is the thing that loses you the increase. A rate is a fact about your business, not a case you are arguing.

If they ask why, then answer, once, briefly, and in terms of them:

The work has changed a fair bit since we set that rate. I'd rather adjust it than quietly start cutting corners on the time.

Say what stays the same

The client's actual fear is not the money. It is that the relationship is changing, or that you are on your way out. Answer that directly.

Everything else stays as it is: same turnaround, same availability, same way of working.

That sentence does more to keep the client than the number does to lose them.

If they push back

Some will. You have three honest responses, and only three.

I understand. The new rate starts on the first, and I'd like to keep working with you.

We can go to $85 in November and $95 in February if that's easier to budget.

We could keep the current rate and drop it to two days a month instead of four.

Hold. Phase it. Or reduce the work and keep the current rate. What you do not do is fold entirely and go back to the old number, because you have now taught them that your prices are an opening position, and the next increase will be twice as hard.

Expect to lose one, occasionally

If nobody ever leaves over a rate increase, your rate is too low. One client leaving out of eight, while the other seven pay twenty percent more, is a straightforwardly good trade. Do that arithmetic before you send it and the sentence gets much easier to write.

The finished version is the rate note, $14.