How to Negotiate a Price Increase With Customers

Your customer understands why prices have risen and still says no. Finding out what prevents them from agreeing gives you something to negotiate.

You can explain a price increase perfectly and still leave the meeting without an agreement. A customer may accept that your costs have risen, value your service and want to keep working with you, while having no room in this quarter’s budget to pay more.

Your price increase lands in someone else’s budget

From your side of the table, the increase may be overdue. Your business has been absorbing higher costs, and continuing at the old price is becoming difficult. By the time you speak to the customer, you may already have spent weeks discussing the decision internally.

Your contact is coming to it fresh, possibly alongside similar requests from other suppliers. The June 2026 OECD Economic Outlook describes how energy and other input costs have been pushing up inflation while putting pressure on growth. For a business facing both cost increases and uncertain sales, approving more spending can be a difficult decision.

They may need to explain the increase to a finance director, revise their own customer prices or wait for the next budget period. Understanding that process helps you judge whether changing the price, timing or another term would make a difference.

Make your proposal easy to take into the next meeting

Give your contact a proposal they can explain to colleagues without having to rebuild your case. Set out the new price, the products or services it covers and the proposed start date. Where higher costs are part of your rationale, show how they affect this account, distinguishing confirmed changes from assumptions about future costs.

Connect the price to something the customer recognises. If they rely on specialist support or a particular response time, explain what maintaining that service involves. A contact trying to justify extra spending needs to describe what their business gets for the money.

Once you have presented the proposal, give the customer time to respond. Filling a pause with a lower offer risks negotiating against yourself before you know what they think of the first one.

Find the problem behind the objection

“We cannot accept this” leaves a lot unexplained. Your next question should help you work out what would have to change for the customer to consider an agreement.

Across three studies, research published in Psychological Science found that considering the other person’s perspective helped negotiators uncover agreements that might otherwise have been missed.

Statement: We have no budget

Question: When is the next opportunity to revise the budget, and what would that involve?

Statement: Another supplier is cheaper

Question: What does their offer include, and which differences matter most to you?

Statement: I need approval

Question: Who needs to be involved, and what will they need to make a decision?

A buyer waiting for budget approval might need you to join a conversation with the finance team.

A smaller increase may leave the same problem unsolved

Suppose you are asking for a 6% increase, but the customer cannot change its budget until next quarter. Offering 4% immediately could still leave them with an expense they cannot approve. You would be offering to give up margin without resolving the timing problem.

Further discussion reveals that the customer could commit to a defined order volume for six months. Your operations team would welcome the certainty, so you calculate whether that commitment is worth delaying the increase. If it is, a proposal could be:

“If you commit to the agreed order volume for the next six months, we can hold the current price until next quarter and apply the 6% increase from that date.”

Waiting until next quarter gives the customer time to obtain budget approval, while firm orders give your team demand it can plan around. You would need to agree the quantities and dates, and check that your business can supply them profitably. A hopeful sales forecast is worth less than an order the customer has actually committed to place.

Keep the exchange conditional. The delayed increase depends on the order commitment, so present and agree them together. If the customer cannot commit to those quantities, ask whether they could change payment terms or agree a service scope that costs less to deliver.

Agree the change before it reaches the invoice

Nobody wants to reopen the negotiation because the first invoice includes an increase the customer thought would start later. Confirm the date, how existing orders will be treated and the commitments attached to the new terms.

If the customer still needs approval, agree who will seek it and when you will speak again. Confirm that approval before asking your colleagues to implement the new terms.

Prepare for the customer who understands and still says no

When you prepare your next increase, think through the customer’s likely decision process as carefully as your own costs. Leave time to discuss the proposal with the people who have to approve it.

Practise these conversations with our sales negotiation training, or download Pushing Price Rises for guidance on preparing and negotiating a price increase.