Price Increase

Hi, I'm Dave Kats for Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you. One of the things that we can do that's pure profit is increasing your prices. Now, if it's been some time since you increased your price, sometimes we're a little hesitant to increase our prices. I'm telling you, it makes a world of difference in your income and you have to do it to keep up with inflation and the rest of the movement of the world.

Here's how you increase your prices. Start about a month ahead of time and whenever patients check in, put just a little 3x5 card. This is effective and one month from now, the price for therapy will be, and then you give the price. If they have a discount or something like that, you can always explain it to them, but leave that up for about a month. That way everybody that comes in has a chance to see it and become accustomed to it before you actually do it.

When you raise your prices, we suggest that you raise them less frequently but more substantially when you do. If you're now at 150, you might want to go to 175, you're 175 you want go to 200. If you're at 100, you want to go to 125 or 135. Raise it more substantially when you do.

People will not ask any questions about it. There'll be 1 out of 100 that'll ask a question about it. When they do, I always say this, "Well, every so often, I raise my prices. I adjust them just according to inflation and the cost of doing business." They understand that and they'll go on. In fact, I had one person that went to a therapist. They said, "She only charged $85. I really wondered how good she was." Interesting concept, isn't it?

Make sure that if it's time for you to raise your prices, you do it now because it's going to make a huge difference. I had one therapist, I was watching his statistics. He was doing 13,000 a month, the client of ours. All of a sudden, he went up to 16,000 a month. When I called him, I said, "I better know what you did." He said, "What's that? I said, "You raised your prices." He said, "That's right." He's practicing full and would raise his prices. It made all the difference in the world.

Think about raising your price now. It might be the best thing to do at this time of the year. This is Dave Kats. Thanks for listening.