Raise your prices, book more clients, become expensive.
Since most of us got into coaching to help people, it seems counterintuitive to pursue higher price points in our industry, especially if you have been told by some of your audience you need to be more “accessible.” There is nothing wrong with accessibility, but I see trends indicating that more coaches are burning out because they are charging too little. And there are even some coaches losing clients because their prices are not in alignment with their services.
The fear
Most of us are actually afraid of raising prices, or we get onto sales calls and by the time we get to the ‘how much is it’ part, we freeze! We immediately offer discounts, price breaks, or just quote a smaller price in the moment. I cant count how many clients have told me, “oh I was on the call and my prices are actually _____(high five figures!) but I only quoted ___, I don’t know why I do that!”
The other day I hopped onto a website because I am looking for a branding person to recommend to a client. This person had all the elements I liked and I was about to recommend them, when I saw the price.
The price made me say hmmm. It was MUCH lower than I anticipated. Immediately I thought well, is she not experienced? Maybe it isn’t as good as I assumed.
So I hopped off the site and found someone commensurate with my views on how much branding should cost.
The service provider lost that client, as well as any other business I could bring to her. (and I know a bunch of folks!)
Raise your prices. Raise your prices. Raise your prices.
I understand why we freeze up or lower our price point on calls. We really want the win. We want the client and absolultely hate feeling the failure of hearing we are too expensive. We don’t actually even give our client the choice!
If you have been excluded from anything in the past, you may also have feelings about leaving some of your audience behind. Another post for another day, but right now think of your best clients. The ones who love you and do the work, they will pay to access your genius. They will want you to only accept certain types of folks in. In other words, they WANT YOU TO BE EXPENSIVE.
The how to raise your coaching prices section.
Ok so you made it here. And I can give you actionable steps but the first thing you must do to raise your coaching prices is to actually believe in your offerings and understand long term and short term effects of your coaching.
What ROI does your coaching or service have for your client? How much will they get back in the 6 months following? How about 3 years? 10 years? My rule of thumb is that the ROI should be at least what they paid within a year, then in 3 years should be at least 10x what they paid. By 10 years you should be looking at 100x the price they paid.
For health coaching or life coaching, how do you raise your prices as a life coach? How do you raise prices as a health coach?
Simple-you focus on the value of wellness. If you have ever had chronic illness or experienced anxiety, or had relationship issues, or needed better support, you understand that emotional and physical wellness is more important and more valuable than ANYTHING you can buy. Including homes, companies, cars, college educations, boats, yachts, private jets, purebred puppies etc.
The world is full of unhappy people who have everything money can buy yet don’t experience happiness, physical, or emotional wellness.
Life coaching, emotional and physical wellness has the greatest return on investment. Charge accordingly.
Here are 5 ways my clients have approached higher ticket coaching offers. In other words, here is how to become booked out at the most expensive rates in the coaching and consulting industry.
Focus on results. Make sure you are offering a simple to follow process that actually works. Highlight the clients who are experiencing the most growth. Evaluate and add to your offers as you discover better ways to do things. Do not just set your program and forget it.
Work on becoming superlative. Create your online and offline presence to show everyone there is no competitor anywhere near you in the market. Become the niche of one and only. Use only the highest visuals, language and messaging so your clients understand before they are on the sales call; you are worth it.
Offer premium. Both client experience and client journey to the sale! Look through the touchpoints in your marketing and uplevel them 30x better than anyone in your niche. Offer your audience personalized attention, beautiful communication and VIP treatment. Yes, this will cost more. Your circle and audience doesn’t have to be massive to get clients at this price. And when you charge these higher rates, you can afford the extras.
Be exclusive Limited editions, capped client numbers. Only a certain number then the spots are gone! Build demand by selling out at your current price points. Once you are 80% booked, up your prices and start a wait list. You will be inaccessible to many, and that is ok. Refer your price sensitive clients to other coaches and stick with your strategy. Remember, you can always write a book once you hit 12 million!
Develop your mastery. Spend time, energy, money, resources on research, activities, and assets to make sure you have total mastery over your arena. You should be upleveling your skills and have at least 10000 hours of practice. You also need to know the data from your market, and be up to date on the trends that are coming. These are the hard things most coaches and creatives aren’t willing to do. But to become the most expensive, we need to start working on our mastery. and since the market is changing rapidly and often, we also need to keep up.
Raising your prices isn’t for the faint of heart. High ticket sales and high ticket coaching can help you attract better clients, and position yourself as a leader in the industry. Go to it.
