price-rise-letter

---
name: price-rise-letter
description: Works out who to tell about a price rise and when, then writes the letter that explains it without apologising, plus a version for customers who push back.
---

# Put your prices up and keep the customers

You give your current prices, the new ones, and a list of who is on what. You get back the order to tell people in, the dates, the letter, and a second letter for the ones who argue.

## What it does

1. **Put a number on the gap before writing a word:** list every customer, what they pay now, what they would pay at the new price, and the yearly difference. Corey Haines's marketing skills library makes the case with arithmetic: a customer paying $50 a month who should be at $250 is a $2,400 a year gap, subsidised indefinitely. If the total gap across the base is smaller than the revenue you would risk losing, say so and stop. That is a real answer.
2. **Read the contract before deciding anything, because it sets what you are allowed to do:** Schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 lists terms that may be unfair. Paragraph 11 covers a term "enabling the trader to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract". Paragraph 15 covers a term "permitting a trader to increase the price of goods, digital content or services without giving the consumer the right to cancel the contract". So check two things: does the contract state a reason the price can change, and does the customer get a way out. If the answer to either is no, the rise waits for renewal for those customers, and that goes in the plan.
3. **Raise it on new customers first and watch what happens:** put the new price on the website and on new quotes only, and leave every existing account alone for one full sales cycle. New buyers have no anchor and no relationship at stake, so they give a clean read on whether the market takes the number before you touch a single existing customer. If new sales stall at the new price, the plan stops here.
4. **Sort the customers into three named groups, because they do not all get told the same thing on the same day:** group A is the first wave, 5 to 10 per cent of existing customers, chosen as the ones paying furthest below the new price with the lowest support burden. Group B is everyone else on a rolling arrangement, told in staggered waves after group A has been through a full billing cycle without a rush of cancellations. Group C is anyone inside a fixed term with no valid reason clause, who is told at renewal and not before. Name the customers in each group. Do not describe the groups in the abstract.
5. **Set the date, then count backwards from it:** announce a rise 3 to 6 months before it takes effect, which is the delayed increase approach in the marketing skills pricing skill. Business Companion, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute service, is blunter about the direction of travel: a fair variation term must "require you to give plenty of notice" and give "the right to exit the contract without being left worse off". Whatever notice period the contract itself states is a floor, never the target. Write the announcement date, the effective date, and the date of the first invoice at the new price as three separate dates in the plan.
6. **Write the letter in this exact order, and no other:** one line saying the price is changing and when. The old figure and the new figure side by side, for that customer, in pounds and pence, not a percentage. The date of their first invoice at the new price. Two or three specific things that have improved since the last price was set, named, not "continued investment". What they need to do, which is usually nothing. Who to reply to. No apology, no "unfortunately", no rising costs as the only reason given, and no burying the figure under three paragraphs of gratitude.
7. **Write a second, different letter for the ones who push back, and decide the concession before anyone asks:** pick one, and only one, of these to offer: lock the old price in exchange for switching to annual payment, an extended grace period at the old rate, or a one-off credit. The offers skill in the same library frames what the argument is really about: value is the dream outcome and the likelihood of reaching it, divided by the time and the effort it costs them, and "price is the comparison, not the value". So the reply argues the outcome they get, not the cost you carry. Then set a floor: the price below which you let the customer leave, written down before the first phone call.
8. **Give the next rise a rule, so this is the last time it is a drama:** Business Companion notes that fairness "is more likely to be achieved if you use an external index to set the new price", giving the Consumer Price Index as its example. Draft index linked wording plus an annual review date for new contracts, and hand it to the owner as a draft clause for their solicitor, not as a finished term.

## Then it checks

1. Every customer on the list appears in exactly one of group A, group B or group C, and group A is between 5 and 10 per cent of the existing base. Count them, do not estimate.
2. The letter names the actual old figure and the actual new figure for that customer, and the actual date, with no placeholder text and no percentage standing in for a number.
3. The words "sorry", "unfortunately", "apologise" and "we have had no choice" appear nowhere in the letter, and the new price appears within the first three sentences.
4. Every improvement claimed in the letter is one the owner confirmed, and each one is specific enough that a customer could check it.
5. No customer inside a fixed term is raised earlier than the contract allows, and every group has an announcement date, an effective date, and a gap between them of at least the contract's own stated notice period.
6. The pushback letter offers exactly one concession and states a walk away price, and the two letters are genuinely different documents, not the same text with a softer opening.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules

- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never invent a customer's current price, contract end date or notice period. If one is missing, name the customer, say what is missing, and leave that customer out of the plan rather than guessing.
- Never backdate a rise or apply it to an invoice already issued. The new price starts on the date in the letter and not before.
- Never send anything. This produces drafts for the owner to read, approve and send themselves.
- This prepares a commercial document. It is not legal advice. Any variation clause, index linked term or cancellation wording must be checked by a solicitor before it goes into a contract, and a subscription business should also ask its adviser about the subscription contract rules in Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which had not yet come into force when this skill was written.

## Built from

- coreyhaines31/marketingskills, pricing skill, https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/pricing/SKILL.md, 47,986 stars: its "Rollout Methodology" section supplies the test on new customers first sequence in step 3, the $50 versus $250 gap arithmetic in step 1, the 5 to 10 per cent first wave in step 4, the announce 3 to 6 months out timing in step 5, and the point that grandfathering should be a transition and not a permanent exemption.
- coreyhaines31/marketingskills, offers skill, https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/offers/SKILL.md, 47,986 stars: the pushback letter in step 7 uses its value equation, dream outcome and perceived likelihood over time delay and effort, and its line that price is the comparison rather than the value, which is why the reply argues the outcome instead of the cost.
- phuryn/pm-skills, pricing-strategy skill, https://github.com/phuryn/pm-skills/blob/main/pm-product-strategy/skills/pricing-strategy/SKILL.md, 26,086 stars: its recommendation output ends with key assumptions paired with how to test them and risks paired with mitigations, which is the shape of the wave plan in step 4 and the walk away price in step 7.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/schedule/2, read 7 September 2026: paragraphs 11 and 15 are quoted in step 2 and are the reason the contract is read before the plan is built.
- Business Companion, Chartered Trading Standards Institute, https://www.businesscompanion.info/focus/holiday-parks/part-1-contract-law-and-unfair-terms, read 7 September 2026: the notice and exit wording in step 5, the Consumer Price Index point in step 8, and its requirement that the reasons for a change and the method of calculating it be set out before the contract is entered into.