There is a guaranteed way to increase your profits and this theory applies to nearly all businesses, not just law firms.
A friend of mine is a self-employed electrician, he has work coming out of his ears, yet for some reason he never has much money, has a 10 year old car and lives in a small house, I never understood why, until he did some work for me…
When he was carrying out the work there were a few extras that weren’t covered by his quote, things like a new plug socket here and a new light switch there etc’.
He told me that because these bits and pieces only cost him a few pounds from the wholesaler he wouldn’t charge me for them and stuck to the original quote.
A few weeks later I asked him if he did that for all his customers and he said he did! He also revealed that he charged a lot less per hour than his competition to make sure he always had plenty of work.
I suggested to him that instead of living in fear of the competition, he got himself some belief in what he did and started charging a bit more and also charging for any extras, even if it was just £5 extra on every quote.
But despite my best efforts he wouldn’t change his ways and is still plodding on today.
I have learned from this episode that many of us live in unrealistic fear of the competition, often charging to little for the hard work, fantastic services and products we provide.
Don’t undervalue yourself, if you have say 1000 customers a year, charging them all an extra £10 would increase your income by £10000! Even if you were to lose a handful as a result of the increased price (which is unlikely) you would still be making more money for less work.
Please take this article on board, have confidence in yourself and your service or product and next time you give someone a price or quotation, charge a little bit more, you will be very surprised at the results!
