When is a good time to raise my cleaning prices?

After figuring out what to charge the customer the next question is usually: How long before I can raise the price?

The short answer is there is no generally agreed upon approach for increasing the prices for each of your cleaning accounts.

The most common approach is to simply use the “anniversary date”. So lets say you started cleaning January 1st to keep it simple. In this scenario you would just send out a letter in mid to late November indicating the one year anniversary is fast approaching and a nominal price increase will be in effect for the coming year.

What that increase is will be up to you. My suggestion (all things being equal) is to keep it reasonable. The more you try to increase it the more likely it is that customer will start looking at your invoice  with an “eagle eye”, not to mention that they may tend to be more critical of how well you clean. They may even balk at the change or worse case, cancel service.

And if you do decide to raise the prices, that doesn’t mean you have to do it on all your accounts. Maybe they all need it and maybe they don’t. Only you know that. Once again, there is no rule that says if you raise one you raise them all. Take your time to decide what is the best course of action. Every business is VERY DIFFERENT.

This may sound odd, but I really didn’t do much “raising of prices” on my accounts. I always tended to be on the HIGH SIDE when it came to pricing my services. So even after a few years my prices were still very profitable for me. I did always keep raising the bar on all new accounts however! My goal was to charge top dollar then LIVE UP TO THE HYPE.

I’ll wrap this up by saying “do whatever you think you need to do”. You are the CEO of your cleaning company, and only you know what is best for your given situation. Just think it through real carefully ahead of time. If raising prices is the way to go then take a deep breath and create a common sense plan to implement the changes. Don’t over-complicate it!