The Pricing Mistake Every New Coach Makes

There's one bugbear which I've got about the coaching industry, and that is that I see a lot of coaches come out of getting their certification or out of a coaching academy, and they're kind of given a little shove and told to go and get clients. And one of the most common things which I see them struggling with is about how to communicate the amazing work that they can do as a coach for their clients. So this is why it's super important to ensure that you have some kind of a compelling offer that you're able to put into your marketing and into your sales message so that you can convey to the client what it is that they're really buying. Basically, in short, coaching clients aren't buying the coaching which you deliver. They're not buying sessions. They're not buying time spent in a room with you talking about their business or their life or whatever it is that they're getting some help from you around. What it is that they're buying is some kind of a transformation, some kind of an outcome. So rather than making this about you and what you do as a coach, you've got to figure out how to make it about your clients and what results they get from your coaching. So I'm gonna try and break down just 3 really simple steps about creating an irresistible coaching offer so that you're able to articulate the amazing work which you do to potential coaching clients. First of all, it's worthwhile me emphasising why it's important not to sell your coaching by the session or on a per-session basis. Now I know this seems like a bit of a weird way to start this video off. However, I see this as one of the biggest mistakes which coaches and therapists make when they're first starting out, they think that their time is the thing which is important and therefore that's where they feel the value exchange happens, when they're sat down actually coaching a client. It's not that, and the reason why a lot of coaches get caught in the per session or per time, sort of time for money type trap, selling their coaching by the session, is because they feel or they calculate their potential earnings based on the number of sessions which they deliver each and every month. So let's say, for example, if you're charging $100 an hour for your coaching and your goal is to make $4,000 a month, well, therefore it means that you've got to sell 40 sessions. And it doesn't matter who those sessions are for or what results happen within those sessions or how many times a client books sessions with you. The only goal which matters when you're selling by the session is you as the coach selling more sessions. That makes it all about you and paying your mortgage and putting food on your table. Whereas we all know as coaches, the goal here is to create a transformation for the client. And it doesn't matter whether that happens in one 30-minute session with you, or whether it takes a weekly session for an entire year before they start to see that transformation. The value exchange happens based on that transformation. So here's the first of the 3 simple steps when you're productizing any kind of service, but most importantly coaching. You've gotta really heavily focus on what is the dream outcome which you're gonna be delivering for your clients. So let's take, for example, if you're a fitness professional or a personal trainer, it might be that your client's dream outcome is to lose a stone and a half in weight. It might be that they've got some kind of competition coming up. Let's say, for example, they're going to be running their first 5 or 10K. So the anchor there is to get focused on that outcome, delivering that transformation so that they can confidently run their 10K or so that they can confidently feel empowered to lose weight in whatever shape or form that takes. It could be if you're a life coach, for example, and maybe one of the assessments which you do with your clients before you start working with them is something called the Wheel of Life. Mm-hmm. So you're looking at their career, their love life, their relationship with money, and the various different aspects of the Wheel of Life. I think there's 8 different points on that circle. And you're grading each one of those functions on a scale, out of a scale of 1 to 10. And it might be that maybe you're focusing on one specific area of their life to get started with. So if maybe their love life was a 2 out of 10, The goal through working with you as a life coach might be to help them achieve an 8, a 9, or a 10 out of 10 in terms of their love life. Now, that might not necessarily mean finding a partner. It could be getting happier in their existing relationship, or it could be being content being single. That acceptance of the fact that they're okay on their own could be the transformation which that individual needs in order to thrive. So focus really heavily on what the dream outcome is that you're delivering specifically for the client, and remember It's not tied to the amount of sessions which you deliver. The client is buying the transformation, not how many sessions there are. Selling by the session is only within your best interests as a coach, so that's why we don't sell it that way. We only sell the dream outcome from the client's perspective. The second thing that you then want to consider is, can this outcome be delivered over a clearly defined period of time? The typical way, and Rich Litvin talks about this in his amazing book, The Prosperous Coach. Rich Litvin is one of those coaches that I look up to massively, and it's well worth checking out both his podcast and his YouTube channel, 'cause he's got some great interviews on there, and he runs some fantastic courses. But he always talks about, once you've identified that dream outcome for a client, that the client needs to know what the rules of engagement are, how long this transformation typically takes. And that's the keyword I want you to remember here. The most common thing I get back when I start talking to coaches about how long the transformation takes to deliver for their clients is, it depends. And actually, at Fearless HQ, we've banned the 2 words it depends now. It's a swear word. You'll actually have to put money into the fines kitty If I hear you say it depends to me or any of our coaches. The keyword here that we're looking for is on average. You're gonna— like, results are a bell curve. You'll get some outliers where you get really super fast results. You'll get some clients where the results take longer. But 60, 70, 80% of your results will fit into this small narrow part of the bell curve. And Rich says that most coaching transformations typically take place between about months 3 to 6. So you want to think about creating maybe a 12-week transformational coaching program up to a 6-month coaching program. The other thing which she says as well is that if you're coaching too intensely with a client, that, that can also be quite detrimental to the client's progress. They can feel a certain level of stress and pressure if your sessions are happening too, happening too regularly with them, for example, and they don't have time to implement, or they feel that they've got to bring too much homework to each session. You know, after they've had a session with you and running into the next one. So you've got to get the balance right in terms of the overall length of time the transformation takes and also the cadence which you're using to deliver your coaching over that period of time. So if, for example, a typical transformation— and we're talking here, you know, mind, body, and spirit, whatever that transformation looks like with the individual— if that transformation takes 6 months, well, actually doing weekly sessions for 6 months is massively intense. That's 24 sessions and it doesn't— a week really passes by quite quickly, so it doesn't give people quite enough time to be able to implement accordingly. So what Rich suggests is that if you're going to do a 6-month program, an appropriate cadence might be roughly doing an hour to 90-minute session once a month, or maybe once a fortnight absolute max, but no more than that. If you're doing a 12-week program, then it's likely to be a little bit more intensive. The results happen faster. There could be a deadline looming, which is also helping to contribute towards when that outcome needs to be delivered by. So you might want to do either sessions every 3 weeks, maybe once a fortnight, or you could potentially do some weekly. But what he says is don't do the entire program weekly because it still can be quite intense. Maybe for the first month of the 12-week program you would do weekly sessions, and then you would start to break out to maybe fortnightly or every 3 weeks after that. That just gives your clients Enough time to be able to implement in between sessions. And the key thing here is create that lasting change. What you're trying to do through your coaching is to empower your clients to be able to get into the habits of doing the things which are going to make a difference to them, which even when you stop working with your clients, they feel empowered to carry on doing the work on their own that you were doing together. And so it creates that lasting change, it creates better results for clients, longer-lasting results, And also, most importantly, they feel they're getting value for money. Imagine that, you not being around and the client still feeling like they're benefiting from the coaching work which you did together. So what have we got so far? We've got one, ensure that you're creating that dream outcome for a client. And the second thing you want to be focused on is being able to deliver that outcome over a clearly defined period of time. And like I said, there are occasionally outliers. In my own program, we've had somebody get a return on investment within 5 days. Bit of luck, good judgment and timing, things like that. But they needed— they had a couple of sales calls coming up. We did their coaching on a Wednesday. They had 2 sales calls on the Thursday and Friday after the Wednesday session, and then by Monday they'd signed up 2 clients, which gave them 2 times the return back on what they'd actually invested in the program. That's really unusual. Results don't normally happen quite as fast as that. We normally fit into that sweet spot of 3 to 6 months. We did also have another client at the completely other end of the spectrum whereby her dream outcome, she had a really clear idea about who her ideal client was and was really focused. It was one very specific organization that she wanted to work with. In the end, it took her 12 months in order to be able to get that client on board. She was super pleased and the contract ended up being, I think it was about £180,000, so about $240,000 just for that one single contract. And in her words, it was worth waiting for. But like I said, those are outliers. A majority of clients typically fit into this sweet spot of about 3 to 6 months, which is really where I feel most coaches need to operate around. I think if any shorter than that, you're rushing things. Any longer than that, and you're probably serving your own sort of benefits there by getting this person locked into long-term sort of coaching plans. And there is a balance to be had, and you need to discover really what's going to work best for you in terms of those outcomes and the length of time. So the third thing that's really important when you're creating that sort of irresistible coaching offer is then the price. And this is where I think a lot of coaches tend to get unstuck. A lot of coaches, when they're setting their prices, base their prices based on their own internal value system and their own relationship to money and perhaps how much they would spend on something. And the challenge with that though is that as a coach, you're making a decision on behalf of all of your client base at that point. And really what you want to do is just test and measure, test and measure, test and measure. I don't know who it was that made up this rule, but once upon a time somebody said you could only put your prices up once a year and maybe by 5 or 10% if you're feeling really brave. The reality is with something like a coaching program, and this is the same for any service business if you're watching this and you, you're not a coach but you run a service client business, you can test your prices out almost on a daily basis if you want to. If you've got enough sales calls or consultations coming through. I don't recommend doing it quite as often as that because it starts to get, one, a bit confusing to administrate lots of different price points. The other challenge is as well, if prospects start speaking to one another and everybody's getting different prices, it could be quite confusing and potentially put you in a bad light. So again, there's a balance to be had here. But let's say, for example, if you enroll your first 10 clients onto your, I don't know, 6-month transformation program, coaching program, first 10 clients, I don't know, £3K, That might give you the confidence to then be able to start to elevate your prices. I suggest initially when you're first starting out that £1,500, so about $1,800, is a good sort of starting point on a 12-week program, and probably around about £3,000, so about $3,500, for a full 6-month coaching program. Enroll your first few clients, test and measure, get some feedback, start to get some reviews and case studies and testimonials for the clients that you've worked with. All of this will bolster your confidence as a coach, and then you can look to start to adjust your prices. So if you've managed to enroll, I don't know, 10 clients in the first 3 months and everything's going well, it might be that— and you're on a 6-month program— it might be at that point you could jump from, let's say, $3,000 up to maybe $4,500 or $5,000 or $6,000 for your next 10 clients. Then test and measure, gather the feedback, see whether the clients are getting remarkable results as per what you've promised and agreed with them. And, you know, take that feedback and then use that to kind of feed the machine. If things are going well, you could look to increment your prices again. This kind of— I want you to remember there's no hard and fast rules here for how much you should charge for your coaching. What you want to think about is what economically stacks up for your business. If you've got too many low-paying clients, you're going to need so many clients in order to hit your financial objectives. If you're charging too much, it might be that you find it really hard to find the right audience to pay those really high coaching fees. So again, there's a balance to be had here. I'm of the very firm opinion that the ideal coaching practice looks like double the income with half the clients, which means you need to be at the upper end of whatever it is that you feel confident sort of charging, even just ever so slightly outside your comfort zone, because that means you're learning, you're growing into those prices as you start to work with more clients. When it starts to become comfortable, that's normally a good indication that you should be looking to increment your fees. So there we go. So there's the 3 ways to create an irresistible coaching offer. So first of all, focus on what is the dream outcome you're delivering for your client. The second thing is, can that be delivered over a fixed period of time? And the third thing, you need to set a fixed price for that. One caveat to this, sometimes people want to talk about offering guarantees as a coach. I'm very much of the opinion that you do when you sign up to an ethical and moral code of conduct, a way that you operate within, and as a part of that, there are no guaranteed outcomes. Now there are certain areas of coaching which tend to be a little bit more predictable than others, but my view is that anything which is related to the mind, the body, the spirit, those sorts of things, it's very hard to offer guarantees, and I'd probably avoid it if you could. Guarantees can come across as a little bit gimmicky, trying to attract clients in with money-back guarantees and things like that. What I prefer though to look at is around perceived value, so What you're looking for is that during the coaching, or certainly when you get to the end of the coaching, to ask the client whether they've had value for money from the coaching work that you've done together. What's their perceived value and what's their perceived return on the investment which they've made? Now again, majority of the time it's going to be good. If you don't ask for that feedback, you'll never know. Sometimes you ask for that feedback and it can come across as a little bit, you know, a bit strong. Sometimes people have got opinions on what your coaching was like and whether they really got value for money from it. I'd probably avoid guarantees initially, especially if you're starting out. As you start to get more experienced and get sort of more consistent results with clients, you can start to introduce guarantees. But like I said, don't do like fully blown 100% money-back guarantees and stuff. Make your guarantees based around the perceived value that your coaching clients are going to get when they work with you. And obviously, things which swing the odds in your favor in terms of success— if you work with similar sorts of clients week in, week out, month in, month out, you're going to start to get more consistent results. If with those clients you're working on similar things, you don't stray too far outside your area of expertise and training, again, you're going to find that your results will be much more predictable and much more consistent. If you start to broaden, you know, the type of client you work with and the sorts of things you're helping them with and fluctuate in terms of timescales and stuff like that, you'll start to see that the results that you get will become very inconsistent. Unpredictable, and you'll start to create some sort of more unhappy clients. And obviously what you want to do is avoid that. So long as you're focused on getting that dream outcome for the client, trust me, things will always be good. And then you should be able to take those 3 things and be able to articulate that through your marketing, through any emails that you're sending out to prospective clients, through any videos which you're doing. Most importantly, when you meet somebody and they say, oh, this sounds interesting, this coaching thing, so tell me what you do, you're able to easily articulate it. So what that sounds like is, we help coaches create their first $10K months within 12 weeks without doing any great deal amount of social media marketing. So it's not the best, most well-formed example, but you get the idea. So we help this specific niche go from A to B, nothing to $10K, within this predetermined time period. And then you also want to think about what's their comfort food, what's, what's going to get them stuck. So in this case, a lot of coaches think they've got to be out there blasting out on social media day in and day out. I know that there's a better way than that, which you can see in one of our other videos, I'm sure, which we'll share a link to below. One particular way is partnerships. That's well worth checking out that video if you get a moment. And then obviously for a fixed fee. So if you're interested to know a little bit more about Feelers Business and what we get up to, we do offer a free coaching session. You're welcome to go and check out the link in the description description below. I'd love to have a conversation with you, and if you've got any questions following up from this video, please do feel free to drop them into the comments. I love hearing from our viewers. It helps me also to decide on what my next video is going to be about, so drop a question in, you may see that in a future video.