Pricing & Packages

Yannick’s Sales Slide Decks, and evolution of my offer over time

Your coaching packages and fees will be evolving over time, so my first piece of advice is not to get too stuck on “getting it right” from the get go. In the following I’d like to lay out my journey into where I’m at now with pricing and packages.

Phase 1: Simple Start

During my training I didn’t charge for coaching (see my advice on “Transitioning from free to paid coaching clients” to help you set the right foundations and use the opportunities that at the time I had no idea existed when offering coaching for “free”). What I learned quickly though is that people will mess you around if they’re not invested. Getting stood up, cancelling sessions at short notice, and not doing “the work” between or during sessions, was quite common. While I just felt happy to get to learn, if I could go back to that time, I’d move into Phase 2 from the get go, which unfortunately took me a good year.

Phase 2: Charging a Nominal Fee

At some point, and I don’t remember what the trigger was, probably another time waiting for a client Once I started charging £5 (the equivalent of a beer in a bar or overpriced coffee), I started to see some significant differences in clients’ engagement, and it kick-started a different relationship to the work. I certainly wasn’t making money, but I was able to see the power of an exchange, and the enormous value of a client’s commitment.

Phase 3: Stepping Up to Full Fees

Quite quickly after starting to charge a nominal fee, I moved up to £50/60min session, which felt like a huge step up at the time, but I also knew it was worth it. A piece of advice I got much later from Caroline Freyer-Jones, and which I wish I had back then, was to just “pick a number you can say without gagging”. While it first felt like a bit of a stretch, and I didn’t fully believe that lots of clients would say yes to my offer, I quickly learned that they would.

While I knew on some level that I could probably charge more, since I had few outgoings and lived quite comfortably (I was single with no kids and had a part-time job that paid all my bills) I stayed in that comfort zone for a few years – much, much longer than I needed to.

Until one of my coaching students (my part-time job was coaching related and I had quite quickly started teaching coaching) told me that he was also charging £50 and thinking about going up to £90. It was a much needed reminder that I was more than ready, and just stuck in my comfort zone.

At this point I had also been working with an ontological coach to embrace being a “business man” as a necessary part of my identity, and work out how I could be that in an ethical and authentic way. And I also took the courageous step to invest heavily (£3000 for 6 sessions) in hiring my third coach (more of a business mentor, really) to specifically work through some of my money story, and figure out the specifics around selling and pricing structure.

What I came up with I outline in Phase 4, but what I had underestimated is the effect it had on me and my future clients to invest a significant amount in my own development. To this day I remember what it was like to say yes to a high-fee coaching engagement, the courage it took, the anxiety that came with it, and the exhilarating feeling of excitement about the opportunities it would open up. I also returned my investment within 6 weeks of putting my prices up and working with Phase 4 fee structure, which made me confident about what I, myself, was offering to clients. Of course it’s more tangible when a client is working directly on charging more, to see a return on investment (it’s less clear when you’re working towards connecting to a sense of purpose, or waking up with more energy, or feeling more engaged, or in love), but to me it instilled a lot of confidence in what I was offering, and after the first few clients had said yes to my new rates, and got SO much more out of the work with me (despite me not having become a better coach in those 2 month, the only thing that had really changed is that I charged them more, which upped their commitment so that they worked harder), I knew I had wasted a fair bit of time in my comfort zone (Ok, arguable, time spent in comfort isn’t really time wasted, but it did feel like I had robbed people of the possibility to achieve a whole lot more from working with me, which I now knew was due to how invested I had asked them to be in the coaching process).

Phase 4: Offering a Single, Focused Package

When I started charging “normal” rates as a coach I offered prospects one choice:

Do you want to work with me, or not?

A single offer is powerful due to its simplicity, and the client having to make as few choices as possible to get to a yes. Many sales experts swear by it. I’m sure it will work for you, and I’m sure it would still work for me.

Back then I ran 2 hour consultations, which I didn’t charge for, but which set me apart from all the coaches who offered 30min chemistry calls, or rushed consultations. I wanted to offer plenty of space to hear people’s stories, and as they experienced what it was like to be listened to at depth and with heaps of curiosity, they experienced what it was like to sit with a coach, and often they would already have lots of insights along the way, and we’d find ourselves in a space where the coaching journey had already started. They had clarified where they wanted to go, who they wanted to be, and what it was like to be in conversation with me. At the end of such a conversation, I didn’t have to ask them whether they want to start coaching anymore. Instead, I basically asked them whether they would like to continue and have more “of these types of conversations”, which made my offer so much more tangible.

What exactly this offer is really isn’t that important, because it depends on what feels right for you, what works for the kind of clients you’re working with, the current economic climate, and a bunch of other factors. I wanted to offer people lots of flexibility, I wanted to invite them into a committed journey, I wanted to set an end point/deadline (but also keep this a little flexible), and I wanted them to be able to stay connected between sessions. To this day I offer the same structure as part of my offering (albeit at a higher price point at the time of writing this. I call the package “All In”, see details here). Back then it was the only choice, I charged £1500, and it stayed like that for about a year.

Phase 5: Introducing Tiered Options

Personally, I deeply value autonomy and giving people choices, so after a year, and inspired by some of the sales literature that I read at the time, I moved away from a single choice and started offering people 3 choices.

This had the wonderful effect that I wasn’t asking “yes or no” anymore. I was asking “which of the following options would work best for you?”. This assumes, implicitly, that (obviously) this person will want coaching (that’s why they’re talking to you), and by asking “A, B, or C?” you’re sending the message that this is going to be right for them (remember, only make offers if it also feels right to you!), and I found that I had excellent results using this approach.

My packages at that point were “VIP”, “All In”, and “Flexible” (see Slide Deck for details), which to this day are my most popular packages and most commonly selected by clients.

Phase 6: Raising prices Confidently

Raising prices is one of the most common challenges for kind-hearted coaches.

One thing that helped me was to remind myself that money buys commitment, and that commitment in turn buys change, success or whatever a client wants to work on. And I had experienced first hand how much more value I got from the coach that charged more, compared to the coach that had much better skills but charged me less. The more I charged people, the more they got out of the coaching. So, from that perspective, I was doing my clients a favour by raising my prices.

Another thing that helped me was to decide how much money I wanted to earn, and how much I wanted to work, and then to do the math to figure out how much I needed to charge for an hour of my time in order to make that happen.

Third thing that helped was to consider all the elements that should really factor into how much I’m charging beyond the value of my time, which I’ve listed at the bottom of this blog.

And finally, you’ll find a lot more advice for how to raise your prices as a coach in this blog post, based on a number of conversations I had with a true expert on helping coaches grow their business.

Personally, I had identified that the biggest block for me to raise my prices was that I wanted coaching to be accessible, and not exclusive to successful business leaders, large corporates, and wealthy individuals. In my ideal world, everybody has access to a coach, and while I need to charge a particular rate to maintain being a coach and finance my life, I refused to move beyond what I considered a reasonable stretch.

The charity solution:

One solution was to offer 2 slots of coaching at any one time, at a rate that the client would find being a stretch, but they would freely chose what that amount would be. This offer would follow a “normal” consultation and sharing my standard rates. It was important that the person thinks long and hard about this. Don’t offer this option from the get go. Often you’ll find that people can make things happen if they really want to, but that they’ll jump on more comfort if they can. If I reconnect with a prospect, it’s very clear they really want to do this but really can’t afford it, by far, and a payment plan isn’t an option for whatever reason, then, and only then, I’d offer them a slot, explaining where I’m coming from value-wise, that I really would like to work with them, that I believe in what they want to work on, and that I’m running this system where I make coaching accessible to people who can’t afford the rate. It’s important that they pick the rate, and that this is based on trust, but that you expect them to stretch themselves a little beyond what seems affordable to them, as to be in that sweet spot between anxious/too stretched and comfortable. If you’ve not currently got a charity slot available (don’t call it charity btw, it doesn’t land well!), they will have to join the waiting list and wait their turn, which could take months, or longer (at this point I noticed that some people miraculously happen to be able to find the money, after all, to start working right away).

Phase 7: Dropping Prices, Not Rates

Post pandemic, the coaching industry hit a bit of a slump, and since so many of my clients were self-funding individuals, it felt like I’ve reached a ceiling on how much I could charge for coaching, and since I was still committed to helping people out that needed help, but I also need to earn more due now being a dad and facing new dimensions of running costs, I figured out how to raise prices in a way that I felt was ethical.

And so I added a few more options to my packages repertoire (a standard 6x50min option, a pay-as-you-go/single session option, and a monthly retainer, as outlined here). These were designed to drop the total cost of working with me, so that the initial commitment wouldn’t feel so daring, while still allowing us to make significant progress. Often clients can see changes relatively quickly, and it’s not rare that this translates into more income, which can then finance more coaching. This way I wasn’t dropping my rates, but I did reduce the cost of working with a coach.

While sales experts will tell you (they certainly told me) that giving people 6 or 7 choices means that they’re less likely to sign up and that you’d be creating the tyranny of choice, and that it’ll be more effective to offer one or three choices for maximised sales outcome, I value autonomy more than sales outcome, and I believe this sends a great message in that you value your client’s autonomy, and that they’re in charge of this process as much as possible.

I often make a recommendation in terms of what I believe a good package would be for them based on what I’ve heard, so you can still get the same effect. It just takes a little longer to talk your prospect through the available options, so you need to make this really clear and concise when presenting these options. I really like what I’m offering, and I’m presenting it with confidence, which is the most important thing, so keep in mind that you’ll need to own whatever you’re offering, regardless of what you decide to settle on.

Phase 8: Raising 1:1 fees by offering groups, products, events, or courses

The last phase of my pricing and packages development was born out of leaning into a niche.

When I offer coaching to individuals, the rates (if you were to calculate them down to the hour) don’t differ from package to package (other than single sessions, which are more expensive because I want to incentivise people to commit to to a journey, and also because I spend time with clients free of charge during consultations). Hence there is no alternative choice, other than to work with a different coach. I don’t know about you, but I get excited about working with someone once I sat down with them for an extended conversation, so it was, and still is, really difficult for me to raise my prices. If someone were to not be able to afford my coaching rates, they’d be off working with a different coach (ideally), and I might not see them again.

Of course, a prospect might come back a year later having raised the funds to work with you, which is a common narrative by successful coaches-turned-business-coaches, and it does happen from time to time, so I appreciate you may trust that process. But I guess I love coaching more, and as I said, I believe in the accessibility of coaching, and making my skill set available as broadly as I can.

The solution for me was to not raise my coaching prices, as to keep it accessible, but to raise prices for my work with coaches, a niche that I had leaned into for some time, and for whom there were plenty of choices available to learn from and with me, if they couldn’t, or decided not to invest in working with me 1:1.

Over the years I had written a book (£20), ran monthly Coaching Labs (£37), coaches could work with me in groups (£80/month), I was running regular training courses and workshops (£100-500), and I had recorded countless podcasts, written blogs, and established the Coaching Cabinet, a peer support group for coaches, which I am facilitating to this day (all FREE). So if a coach couldn’t (or wouldn’t) work 1:1 with me, there were plenty of options. If a coaching client wasn’t in a position to invest, I had nothing to offer them.

Also, my time had become so much more valuable due to the birth of my daughter, that I felt good about selling my 1:1 time at a premium. However, I didn’t want to only work with other coaches, and so I kept my coaching rate as it was, as to ensure a continued flow of clients albeit a challenging economic climate.

Phase 9: Scaling

As of today (October 2024) I’m continuing to scale operations, I’m now working with a team of 4, and for a good 2 years now I have been moving towards creating resources for the kind of clients I’m most passionate about supporting: my fellow coaches.

I’ve always done this. It was never a marketing strategy. But it sure works as a marketing strategy: to produce value for the niche you’ve chosen to lean into, marketing wise, and to serve them as best as you can, while making it as easy as possible for them to find, approach, and work with you. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be working with anyone else (I lean into my work with coaches, but I’ve got plenty of non-coaches reach out for existential coaching), but it establishes you in a particular field and allows you to impact more people. Also, the higher your 1:1 rates are, the more time you can spend creating 1-to-many resources, and to offer free content.

Every coach needs to make a decision as to how they want to approach their business, and what sort of work they enjoy the most, so there really isn’t a blue print that will work for everybody. But I hope these insights into how my business has grown over the years will have given you some valuable insights and inspired you to look ahead into your own future as coach, not get too stuck on the decisions you’re facing right now, early in your journey, and to use some of the learning I gathered along the way.