How to Price Coaching Packages (9 Simple & Rewarding Tips)

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In the game show, The Price is Right, contestants try to guess the price of the merchandise they’re shown. The winners are those who name a higher price than their competitors without exceeding the actual price.

Pricing your coaching package can feel like that. It can feel like you’ll lose if you price your package too high or too low.

  • Too low, you’re not making enough, or people don’t value your offer.
  • Too high, and your prospective clients will go to someone else.

You need to find that sweet spot! Right?

You’re in the right place if you’re wondering what that sweet spot is for your coaching service. It’s time to step away from the game show drama and learn how to price coaching packages the right way.

1. Consider Your Mindset

Before we grab our calculators and do the math, let’s begin with mindset. After all, thoughts about pricing and personal worth are often the biggest obstacles to finding the right price.

While all coaches realize the value of the right mindset, there’s a tendency to let it slip when it comes to our own baggage. So, let’s begin by clarifying what you’re pricing.

When you price your coaching, you’re pricing the change clients want to see in their life.

This means your decisions about attaching dollar amounts to your coaching don’t reflect your worth or time. That’s impossible! Even the wealthiest person in the world could not afford to pay what you’re worth.

What people are willing to pay for coaching reveals the value they place on their time and quality of life, not on yours.

So with that in mind, let’s move on! 

2. Consider Your Value Proposition

Most people can figure out most things if they are suitably motivated. If you’re a business coach, your client could search the internet and talk to friends and neighbors to figure things out independently. Eventually.

Clients need education and experience to improve their decisions and results. When they sign up as a client, that’s precisely what they’re leveraging.

Start by assessing your education and experiences.

  • Education: What formal education and degrees have you completed?
  • Certification: What certificates or certifications have you earned?
  • Experiences: What life experience have you overcome or currently live with?

For example, if you have a life-altering condition or disease, and you’ve figured out what to eat, how to move, and how to advocate for yourself, that’s gold for your clients!

To appreciate the wisdom you’ve gained and offer clients, review your experiences and education and draw a connection to how each helps your clients.

For inspiration, check out the About Me section on other coaches’ websites. Well-designed websites communicate a coach’s value proposition so that they feel like the right fit to the right client.

Kamini Wood’s About page is an excellent example of positioning education and experience as client benefits. She weaves details from her experience and certifications, telling why her coaching is meaningful.

Kamini Wood offers a perspective that’s been shaped by her education and experience
Kamini Wood offers a perspective that’s been shaped by her education and experience

3. Analyze Your Target Audience

Now that you know how your experience and education help others, it’s time to look into the wallets of your potential clients.

Begin by asking two questions:

  • What are they willing to pay?
  • What upper limit price do they perceive as valuable?

First of all, the amount you charge depends on your audience. For example, college students won’t be able to pay as much as a Wall Street broker. Let’s take a look at an example for a resilience coach.

A college student may pay a resilience coach up to $5,000, justifying the cost with the value of completing her degree and landing a high-paying job. She may perceive packages of $1,500 as being less effective.

The Wall Street broker might only engage in online coaching packages that are $150,000 or more because that price carries an expectation of exclusivity. Very few can afford this package.

The key here is to know your audience and choose a price that reflects their purchasing power and falls within their expectations.

Consider defaulting to a higher price, particularly if you can demonstrate that your coaching will help them obtain meaningful goals.

While Katie Sandler doesn’t disclose the cost of her private one-on-one retreats, the details of her high-touch option frame it as an exclusive offer. This package description conveys high value.

Katie Sandler offers tailored impact retreats of three to five nights in California or Florida
Katie Sandler offers tailored impact retreats of three to five nights in California or Florida

4. Connect With Your Competition

Most online coaches don’t list the cost of their packages, so getting their prices for comparison can be an exercise in futility. Yet, you can get some valuable information, growth, and leads by connecting with them.

Start by finding them. Your competition isn’t everyone in your coaching niche or sub-niche. Instead, your competition is anyone who offers the same results using the same method to the same audience.

And while making friends with your competitors can feel awkward, they can become your best allies. You may find you’re better with some types of clients, and they’re better with others.

Connecting with them can also help you with pricing because you can get the information they don’t list on their website.

If you can’t find the information you need, consider basing your coaching pricing on the averages in your niche. Another good idea is to consider the average salary of coaches per region.

5. Consider Your Costs

It goes without saying that to make a profit, you’ll need to know your expenses. When you set pricing based on your financial planning, you’ll breathe a bit easier when bills roll in.

If you don’t know much about finances, begin with a simple spreadsheet that tracks your business income and expenses. As your business grows, you’ll want to learn to create your profit and loss statement or hire someone to perform this function for you.

The Basics of a Profit & Loss Income Statement for Small Business Owners

Badass Small Business Owners provides a simple overview of tracking business income and expenses using a profit and loss statement.

Even if you’re not ready for something detailed, it’s crucial to know your business costs so you know how much you need to clear to make a profit.

Consider all the tools that are important to your business. They include fees like these:

  • Your salary
  • Coaching platform
  • Domain registration and hosting
  • Zoom (or other communication tool)
  • Accounting costs
  • Bank fees
  • Virtual assistance
  • Email service provider
  • Legal insurance or fees
  • Taxes

Once you total your expenses, calculate the minimum you’ll need to charge for a profitable online coaching business. Compare that minimum to the number of available spots in your schedule.

For example, suppose your expenses tally up to $75,000, and you know you can support ten clients at a time. For a six-month package, that’s 20 clients a year.

Use this calculation to determine your minimum price
Use this calculation to determine your minimum price

Take your total annual expenses of $75,000 and divide it by the total number of packages you can support in a year, which is 20. According to this, you cannot charge less than $3,750 for a six-month package

Several free apps and spreadsheet templates make estimating and tracking business income and expenses more manageable. And some platforms, like Thinkific, include an expense tracker.

How to Improve Profitability

Making contingency plans can lead you to entertain additional ideas for increasing profitability. While raising prices can sound like a no-brainer, these other options diversify your income. You don’t need to rely solely on having all your coaching spots full to be profitable. These alternatives can impact coaching prices and also lead to additional leads.  

Here are options that can improve profitability.

  • Price sessions strategically. Cover your business expenses with a fraction of your available spots. In the example above, raising the cost of coaching packages to $7,500 means costs are covered at half capacity.  
  • Supplement with digital products. Low-cost digital products can meet the needs of those who can’t afford one-on-one coaching and expand your reach.
  • Speak at paid speaking events. Speaking events can supplement your income, build credibility, and increase clients.
  • Implement automation. Use a coaching platform to reduce the time committed to administrative tasks. This could create time for another coaching client.
  • Eliminate non-income-generating activities. If your podcast, YouTube channel, or Facebook group costs time or money without yielding results, consider eliminating these activities to invest your time in something more profitable.

6. Select a Pricing Strategy

When pricing your coaching sessions, there are three ways to price your services.  

  • Hourly: Clients hire you for a one-time session to get help.  

Pros: Hourly rates are viewed as affordable. People generally come prepared to get as much out of one session as possible.

Cons: It positions your services as time-based rather than on results. Sixty minutes doesn’t seem as valuable as a result you can help them obtain.

  • Retainer: Clients hire you on an ongoing monthly basis.

Pros: This can become a source of steady income. An ongoing relationship helps you know the client better.  

Cons: Unless boundaries are clearly defined, it can result in clients who feel as though they can call you at any time. An ongoing agreement isn’t results oriented and may not motivate a client to take the action they need.

  • Packages: Clients purchase a program that helps them accomplish a goal.

Pros: These packages are results focused. That means they’re not paying for your time or access to you. They are investing in their transformation.

Cons: If they don’t reach that transformation, you may need to add a supplemental package or follow-up plan. (Not everyone has the same journey.)

We recommend you sell coaching packages. This model is the best for most coaches.

However, some niches, like the health niche, tend to offer monthly packages. And if you’re coaching around a result where the time to obtain an outcome varies greatly, like recovering from an autoimmune disorder or recovering from debt, consider bespoke packages based on a standard.

For example, suppose you have a nine-month debt-recovery package based on $15,000 of debt for couples making about $60,000 annually. If someone’s debt or income is wildly different, you might need to shorten or extend your package.

7. Communicate Your Value

Since people are willing to pay for the change in their lives, let’s examine the quantitative and qualitative benefits of what your coaching can do for their lives.

Quantitative benefits are those measured in money or time. (And time can always be converted to a monetary benefit.) Qualitative benefits are significant non-tangible experiences people are willing to pay for.

Beginning with the quantitative benefits, get out your calculator and tally up how your coaching benefits their bank accounts.

  • If your coaching helps singles purchase a first home, average the amount they save.
  • If your coaching prevents divorce, research the cost of an average divorce.
  • If your coaching eliminates invisible spending, research the average savings.
  • If your coaching creates additional revenue, research the average gain.

Samantha Siffring’s program, Mama to CEO, refers to a simple quantitative benefit by alluding to the amount of money it’s possible for at-home moms to make in their own businesses.

Samantha’s description here is an excellent example of using a quantitative benefit
Samantha’s description here is an excellent example of using a quantitative benefit

In most cases, the financial benefit of coaching, like the $100k Samantha mentions, far outweighs the cost of investing in a coaching program.

And your value doesn’t stop there because qualitative benefits are the most significant motivators for buyers. This way of assessing benefits is especially helpful for those who offer coaching that improves the quality of life, like mindset or hobby coaching.

How does it feel for your clients to achieve results? How does it feel to dance cabaret, to love yourself, or to protect yourself with boundaries?  

Write out these qualitative benefits and consider what people already pay to achieve this feeling in other ways, like vacations or a new car.

Krista St. Germain, who offers coaching to widowed moms, does a brilliant job of listing meaningful qualitative benefits on her website.

Krista’s Work With Me page uses qualitative benefits to help clients imagine what’s possible
Krista’s Work With Me page uses qualitative benefits to help clients imagine what’s possible

Whether quantitative or qualitative, when you list the benefits that are most meaningful to your future clients, it positions your coaching as an investment rather than a cost.

8. Test Various Price Points

Testing different price points can give you a solid sense of what your clients will pay. And this doesn’t have to be complicated. You run a few simple A/B testing rounds to compare how different price points perform.

To do this, you’ll need to decide how to create your call to action and then do it twice—once for each price point in the A/B test.

For example, if we wanted to know if a package would sell better at $1,500 or $2,000, we might try one of these three ways of testing:

  • On phone consultations, give a $1,500 price on half the calls and $2,000 on the other half.
  • Place the offer on the website and set up an A/B page with these two prices.
  • Schedule two similar live events and give different prices at the two.

Using a series of A/B tests where you control the variables so that the only difference is the price, see which price performs best. ClickFunnels is an example of an online tool that supports A/B testing. However, you can do this with most other platforms by building two separate pages.

ClickFunnels automates A/B testing and is helpful in tracking high-volume sales
ClickFunnels automates A/B testing and is helpful in tracking high-volume sales

Keep testing until you find that sweet spot!  

While you’re testing offers, use strategies that create a sense of urgency because when clients take action quickly, it improves the quality of your information.

9. Review Customer Feedback

You’ll always want to meet with clients at the end of every program! This last call is an opportunity to wrap up and discuss the next steps to maintain the benefits they experienced in your program!

This off-boarding conversation also lets you capture a testimonial and valuable feedback.

And if you continue to receive feedback that your program is “such an excellent value for the money” or “affordable,” it could signal that it’s time to increase your pricing.

While many programs receive feedback using forms, we recommend collecting feedback using an in-person video call. This face-to-face communication helps you read body language and ask follow-up questions.

Always ask the same questions of all your clients when they complete their coaching. Tracking this information over time lets you monitor changes on these crucial KPIs.

These are a few suggested questions you may want to ask during your offboarding session:  

  • Was this program worth the work and the cost?
  • What significant perception shifts happened for you?
  • How do you think, feel, or act differently?
  • How would you describe what I do?
  • Could any tools, templates, or resources have made this even better

To keep these offboarding sessions comfortable, add a transcription tool to Zoom, like Fathom or Tactic, rather than taking notes. This improved eye contact lets you focus on your client. Later you can use the transcript to navigate to the feedback and testimonials in this call.

Fathom is a free tool that uses AI to take notes for you during a Zoom call
Fathom is a free tool that uses AI to take notes for you during a Zoom call

Using these nine tips, you’ll find your sweet spot pricing so it no longer feels like you’re playing The Price is Right!

However, you will eventually want to raise your prices again. So let’s take a look at how and when to do that.

How to Increase Your Coaching Prices and Justify It

The best time to re-evaluate your coaching prices is when your one-on-one availability is full and you have a waiting list. This position is enviable because raising your prices won’t feel so dramatic.

Here are a few tips when you’re ready to increase your coaching prices.

  • Increase value: Use the comments from previous clients to add more outstanding value to your program. This could be an added call, a new tool, or a guest speaker.
  • Build credibility: You can improve credibility by seeking additional certifications, getting testimonials from well-known speakers or publishing a book.
  • Increase visibility: Actively pursue being a guest on podcasts and events. Continue speaking on the fundamental points in your area of expertise.
  • Bundle services: Offer two or three of your coaching packages into a master bundle.
  • Group coaching: Convert some of your one-on-one spots to a group coaching package and then raise the price of your one-on-one sessions. This option lets people choose between a lower group price or one-on-one access.

Conclusion

Pricing your coaching package doesn’t need to feel like a guessing game. Using these tips, you can position it so it’s an investment that will have your new coaching clients excited to start.

So, how easy did you find these tips to implement in pricing your coaching packages?

Did this help you to assess the valuable service you offer others?

Comment below and tell us about your experience in pricing your coaching.

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