Sunday, September 06, 2026
Paid social and search rent attention you don't own. Your email list is the one channel most SMEs already have permission to use — and almost never invest in properly. Here's how to turn it into a real asset.
When did you last raise your prices on purpose, not because a supplier forced your hand, but because you decided your business was worth more? For most SME owners the honest answer is "I can't remember," and that silence is quietly capping growth more than almost anything else in the business. McKinsey's research across the Global 1200 found that a 1 percent price increase, with demand held constant, lifts operating profit by an average of 11 percent, far more than an equivalent 1 percent increase in volume delivers. Growth doesn't always mean finding another customer. Sometimes it means charging what the business already deserves from the customers it has. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith has watched this play out across nine companies of his own and 200+ businesses coached one-on-one: the fastest-growing ones are rarely the cheapest.
The named enemy is the owner's own fear. Most SME owners assume a price increase will trigger an exodus of customers, so they absorb rising costs quietly, hold prices flat for years, and compete on value instead of price while quietly bleeding margin. In reality, a well-handled price increase loses far fewer customers than owners expect, and the ones most likely to leave over a modest increase were rarely the most profitable ones to keep.
A three-step approach that avoids both extremes, freezing prices out of fear, or raising them blindly across the board.
"I have grown my business 5x since working with Kevin. Everything Kevin told me to do was the complete opposite of what I had been doing. Working with Kevin has truly been a complete game changer."
— Richard, Chem Suppliers
Most owners know their prices are behind where they should be. They don't act because the conversation feels confrontational, and because they're too close to their own pricing to see it objectively. An outside perspective, one that has priced global brands and is not emotionally attached to a number set two or three years ago, usually finds ten or fifteen percent of headroom that was sitting there unclaimed the whole time, simply because nobody within the business was willing to ask for it.
If your prices haven't moved in years, that's not loyalty to your customers. It's a growth lever sitting unused.
...and you become the owner who prices the business at what it is worth.