Dear Helper,

One of the perennial questions most wellness professionals have is about fees and how to price their services. This is a valid and complex question not easily addressed with generalities. It's often best to work with a coach to set your best price point. However, this article will give you a short "cheat-sheet" on pricing as a marketing strategy.

First off, I think pricing is one of the most difficult topics to address in an article since it is very personal and so many factors contribute to what you charge as a helper, healer, or wellness professional, including:

•  Your experience prior to entering your profession
•  Your experience in your current profession
•  Your track record in your current profession
•  Your target market
•  Your niche or specialty
•  What you feel you are worth
•  The demand for your services
•  The cost of living in your location/market

- and more.

I also know that our readers are at different stages in building their practice. Therefore, please take the information that works for you and discard the pieces that dont!

And as always, we love receiving your feedback, questions, and success stories, so please post a letter to the Forum if you have anything to share!

Warmly,

Coach Jaz

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PRICING TO FILL YOUR PRACTICE

Would you agree, especially for newer wellness professionals, that there is no better way to build your practice than by actual client work?

We believe that until you have a full practice, you should not turn someone away due to money.

This thought really hit home recently when an inexperienced coach I know said that his clients "could not afford his coaching." He only has 3 clients!

In my opinion, this is telling him something...

Lower your rates, get clients and reap the rewards!

Here at Helping The Helper, we recommend two kinds of pricing strategies, which work best when combined together.  The strategies are:

(1) package pricing

plus

(2) a three-tier fee strategy

...with the lowest rate made available only if necessary. Each price point has a corresponding level of service.

In case you're not familiar with this concept, below is a quick and simple example.

Feel free to borrow this Pricing Sheet as your own.  It can be used "as is" for wellness/life/business coaching, organizational/feng shui and other wellness-oriented consulting, psychological/spiritual counseling, etc. (Read the notes that follow and Example #2 to see how you can use the same structure for ongoing clinical visits.)

EXAMPLE #1:  Coaching/Consulting/Counseling Price Sheet

PREMIUM PACKAGE - $400/month   Includes: 3 - 60 minute sessions (2 by phone, 1 in person), unlimited email support and "Just in Time" drop-in coaching/consulting/tune-up service as needed

STANDARD PACKAGE - $250/month   Includes: 3 - 40 minute sessions and unlimited email support

BASIC PACKAGE - $175/month   Includes: 2 - 30 minute telephone sessions

YOU TOO CAN USE PACKAGE PRICING!

Example #1 above uses the principles of both package and 3-tier pricing. Many wellness professions have a tradition of package pricing (e.g., coaches, personal trainers, massage therapists, reiki practitioners, feng shui consultants, counselors).  If you're in one of these you can incorporate this pricing structure very easily. 

Other wellness professions especially in "healthcare" or clinically-oriented modalities (psychotherapist, physician, acupuncturist, chiropractor) tend more toward a per-session or per-visit fee.

In these situations, the three-tier system can be used on its own.  For example,  a therapist can charge $115 for a half-hour session, $165 for an hour, and $200 for a 90-minute session. (***Notice that the price per minute goes down as the client opts for longer sessions. This way, the bigger the commitment, the bigger the value and savings.***)

However, clinical professionals can also benefit greatly from the promotional power of package pricing. All it takes is to design a specific treatment "program" (we recommend everyone create one!) tailored to your Who/What and packed with a variety of valuable services. (You can learn more about creating a program in the Virtual U workbook "Creating Your How".) See the real-life example below to see how this could work.

Remember, whether you are in a wellness profession that traditionally charges per-month or per-visit, connecting pricing to different levels of SERVICE will make your services more appealing to more people and still maintain your professional credibility. This is far better than a simple "bulk" discount - e.g., "10 visits for the price of 9."

Also, where ethical and licensing standards restrict you from offering discount and bulk pricing, you can often still price differentially for various levels of SERVICE. (This is only our general understanding so please check with your licensing or ethics boards on it.)

So you see, package pricing is possible for anyone. It's your decision if it fits with your profession and with your personal style.

Here's an example of package pricing for a well-thought out clinical treatment program designed by one of our HTH members, acupuncturist Jared P. in Colorado...

EXAMPLE #2:  5-Step Allergy Elimination Program

Jade package =$2000 (saves $500 plus herb discount)

• weekly treatments for 6 months
• daily drop-in and tune-up treatments as needed
• allergy log/analysis
• unlimited email/phone check-ins
• 20% savings on all herbs

Gold Package = $1400 (saves $250 plus plus herb discount)

• weekly treatments for 6 months
• free allergy log and analysis
• unlimited email/phone check-in
• 10% savings on all herbs

Silver Package =$845 (saves $105 plus herb discount)

• twice a month treatments over six months
• free allergy log and analysis
• 5% savings on all herbs

Per-Visit Fees:

• $140 initial visit
• $70 thereafter

PRICING ANALYSIS

Again, notice how Jared's patients get more value (in terms of services and savings) when they go for the more "premium" packages. This is a way of rewarding your clients for committing more fully to their health and to a more complete treatment program.

Tell clients the package deals are your way of encouraging commitment and making an ongoing treatment program more affordable. They will still have a choice to go the "per visit" route, or they can decide get a variety of savings with a package. This way, they will feel very supported by you, while you will be pricing to fill your practice.  You'll get committed, paid-up clients, but without sounding like a bulk discount mart!

That's the power of 3-tiered, package pricing!   Don't limit yourself to per-visit fees.  Let this be your incentive to package your existing services into a complete package that you can price attractively using this powerful pricing strategy.

HOW TO KNOW WHAT TO CHARGE

Due to popular demand, we are developing a new Virtual U workbook that will go into great detail about the best way to determine and present your specific fee structure and how to handle the low-income client.  The simplified version is to only offer your lowest price option if:

1. You want the client and believe they are truly motivated.

2. You feel the client would benefit from your services.

3. You know they cannot afford to hire you at a higher rate (for example, they are on disability or in school, etc.) It's not enough that they merely think they'd like to spend less.

Ultimately, the idea is to REACH MORE PEOPLE, even at a lower rate, until your wellness practice is 80-100% full. Then raise your rates!

Assuming you are working in your profession full-time but dont have a full practice, is it better to have 15 clients bringing in $250 per month (total = $3,750/month) or 8 clients bringing in $400/month ($3,200/month)? We believe the former. Of course it takes more time, but that is something most new, full-time wellness professionals have a lot of!

The benefits of serving more people at a lower rate are many! Here are just a few:

1. The more client work you do, the faster your skills will improve. As you become a better helper your belief in yourself will grow dramatically through your experience and the results your clients are achieving. Nothing is more critical to your success than confidence in yourself and your services. Everything comes back to your belief! (Do Module 1B again if you need a belief "boost".)

2. Clients paying a lower rate (a fee they can reasonably afford and that isnt a major drain on their monthly budget) use your services longer. They view the $200 - $300 per month as an ongoing investment. They do not question it. Often, higher paying clients hire you to achieve a certain goal and once that goal is achieved they stop seeing you. The client can rationalize the higher fee for a short period of time, but not as an ongoing expense.

3. You will generate more referrals. People typically seek out your services after they have experienced you or when they are referred by someone who has experienced you. Put simply, the more clients you have, the more referrals you will generate and the less marketing you need to do! (Dont you love the sound of that?!?)

While the client fee you charge is NOT always an issue (and in some target markets, such as corporate and executive coaching, high-end personal training, or very specialized medical services, you NEED to charge more in order to be taken seriously), the bottom line is that there are more individuals willing and able to invest $150-$300 per month for wellness services than there are individuals who are willing and able to afford $400+ per month for wellness services.

Imagine getting 3 new clients per month at a rate of $250. If the average client stays with you for 9-12 months you would have a "full practice" of 24 clients within 8 months and earn $6,000/month or $72,000/year. Assuming you provide three 40 minute sessions/month, you would be working with clients 24 hours/week (counting prep time), with one week per month off!

Of course you need to add in time for marketing and administration, however I know A LOT of professionals in the wellness and healing arts who would be thrilled to earn $72,000 in their first year of business! Even experienced, very skilled wellness professionals can struggle to make this kind of money, usually because they are not marketing right, and not pricing their services attractively.

Please dont feel intimidated by other practitioners who charge $150 per session and $400-$500+ per month. Learn what they are doing and model them, but do not feel that you need to be charging these rates in the beginning as you're filling your practice. I virtually guarantee that most wellness professionals who have a full, thriving practice of individual clients the rate of $400, $500/mo per client and up (and there arent that many of them) didnt start there!

I certainly didn't.

EXAMPLE OF COACH JAZ HERSELF

I was lucky. My very first client came to me right in coach training school and i charged her $90/month (30 per 60 minute session).

After graduating I did a lot of trades (good self-care) and "free trial for a month" special offers. A good friend, a successful acupuncturist who has advised me closely about the HTH program, recommend this and it worked well. It was essential that I had enough outside funding from my savings, some part-time work, and a rental property to tide me along during these early days.

After 6 months of that I got my next paying client who started at $100/month with the agreement that after 3 months if she continued it would be at my "full fee" of $265 for 3 60-minute sessions. She stayed on and I got another client at $265. I dropped my part-time work and took out a home loan on the property to concentrate full-time on coaching.

It was all pretty slow going until I implemented a really great marketing program (the one I have now licensed and customized for YOU all in the HTH program!!) My practice took OFF.

As I gained experience, created a powerful niche (Who/What), developed a program (How), mastered the new client enrollment process through powerful Intro Sessions, and coached more and more people, I systematically raised my individual 1-1 rates and revamped the "mix" of services I offered to clients.

Basically, anytime my practice approached 80% full I raised my rates, lost a couple clients, then gained even more at the higher price. As you can imagine, it took quite a few visits to my Belief Narrative from Module 1B to give me the courage to take this leap.

I also used my Belief to make intuitive decisions about when to raise my rates even when I was not 80% full.

I convinced myself to be bold about this, reminding myself over and over that the value I provide is very high, and my relevant experience in wellness and business before becoming a coach is quite extensive. Because of this, I was able to raise my rates to a "true value" market rate very quickly, even as a relatively newer coach.

FEE INCREASE TIPS

Many marketing experts suggest that you tie a fee increase to events or activities that enhance your expertise or credibility. I agree and tell all my clients to track these activities, let their community know, and use them as a reminder to reconsider their rates.

So if you get credentialled, take another training course, give a talk, publish anything, are interviewed, etc. put it on your website, in your newsletter, and mention it to everyone you can think of. It boosts your professional image while at the same time boosting your own belief. If it makes sense to you intuitively and by the 80% rule, raise your rates.

Another tip is to balance a fee increase by increasing the value given, eg, change 40 minute sessions into 50 minute sessions, or offer more between-session support. Do this for a while, then drop the additional services (a way of raising fees without changing the dollar amount.) Alternate these two strategies. This can help a fee increase feel smoother to your clients (but mostly I think it's value is in helping us practitioners to feel less nervous!)

Additionally, once you start raising your fees, we recommend you reserve only 2-3 spots in your practice for clients who fall below your new price point - i.e., the "low-income", pro-bono, or trade clients.  Tell those who want to pay less than you currently charge something like, "I have 2 low-income spots in my practice and unfortunately they are both filled right now.  Would you like me to place you on the waiting list for that, or refer you to another provider?" 

And when you do allow someone to pay less than full fee, try to avoid granting a simple discount.  Be sure to let them know they are in one of your coveted pro-bono or low-income spots.  Get lots of testimonials from them, see if they can refer people to you, if they can trade or barter part of your fee, or if all else fails, give them a limited-term "scolarship" or "wellness grant" (funded by you.) 

These kinds of things help clients feel less like charity cases and more like they are paying for their wellness services in other ways.  It makes them feel they are making a contribution, and also puts them on notice that they need to really get the most out of your generosity and take charge of their wellness!

SUMMARY

There are many strategies for setting and increasing fees in your wellness practice. This article captures the most simple and effective ones. Like all aspects of promoting and managing your practice, you have to implement a strategy that fits for you and your market, and then tweak it, tweak it, tweak it. Repeat and refine. That is your marketing watchword!