Value pricing – is it right for your coaching business?

Pricing is one of the major considerations in branding and marketing your coaching business.

Is value pricing right for your coaching business? Do we charge for our coaching services by time or value? Value pricing enables us to charge significantly higher fees by reducing the risk to our clients, and increasing the likelihood they achieve what’s important to them.

In addition our pricing has a direct and immediate impact on the brand we portray and our cash flow, which in turn will impact the success of our coaching practice.

While most coaches charge by the hour, value pricing may be the best option for a select number of potential clients. The approach reduces their risk, increases their likely return and enables coach and client to work as genuine partners.

To charge by value we need to be able to:

1. Determine which potential clients are open to value pricing.
2. Build trust.
3. Facilitate our client to develop their objectives and take them through a process to help them understand the value they will get from achieving them.
4. Agree some appropriate metrics to check progress.
5. Avoid discussing price until steps 1–3 (above) have been completed.
6. Offer a number of programme options, at least one of which will be outside of their budget.

It is important that we facilitate our clients to come up with their perceived value, rather than attempting to tell them.

This is because our clients understand their business better than we do, and they’re more likely to buy into the results they’ve come up with.

If we have genuinely helped them through this facilitation they will begin to identify us as the person who can help them achieve the results they want.

In order for us to facilitate this process it helps if we have view on:

• The likely challenges our client has and the implications of not solving them.
• The opportunities they have and the benefits that are likely to follow from solving them.
• Our likely approach and how we are better than our competitors.

Value pricing won’t be the right approach for all coaches, however it is worthwhile for all coaches to understand the approach so that they can choose to introduce it in their practice if and when appropriate.

Michael Beale is a Richard Bandler NLP trainer, coach trainer and Marshall Goldsmith leadership and team coach, who works with clients worldwide. He has been successfully running his business for 14 years. You can read more about Michael on LinkedIn.