That’s a provocative question isn’t it? What’s a coach worth….? Pricing – sigh!
Let me start by saying that what a coach charges is absolutely not an indication of their personal worth. It’s an indication of the value of their service to the intended recipient. Let me say that slightly differently; pricing is an indication of the value of a product or service to the intended recipient.
Let me explain.
Trying To Sell Coaching To Anyone or Everyone
You may have heard me talk endlessly about how it simply isn’t possible to market to everyone – or anyone. Those who do, spend lots of resource; time, energy and money, and get little response for their efforts. Any coaching client that they do engage is actually by accident, rather than by design.
Pricing, when one is trying to market to everyone is an absolute minefield!
How do you decide on a figure? Is it based upon what your training organisation told you you can expect? Is it based on what you feel you’re worth? Or is it something in between? Should you charge what others charge, or should you charge something completely different?
What Difference Does Price Make?
I’ve seen coaches charge anything from £15 – £500 per session. One must stop and consider this fact. The two coaches I have in mind both have postgraduate diplomas in coaching – virtually the same qualification. They took their qualifications around the same time, and they are roughly the same age.
Why then does one feel able to charge £500 and the other only £15?
Does the coach with the £500 price tag actually have clients? How about the £15 coach?
The answer is yes to the £500 coach (they do have clients) and no to the £15 coach (they don’t).
Who Is Buying This Coaching?
The simple answer is that the first coach, the £500 coach, knows exactly who their ideal client is. They understand the most significant problem that this type of client has, and they know how much they are prepared to pay to get rid of this problem. They also know that if their price was, say £250 a session, then this particular client would think that they didn’t know what they were doing – and they do know.
The £15 coach started off with an ideal client, but didn’t get instant results from their marketing efforts. Their view of what was achievable, by when, and how much effort they needed to invest was poor. Having failed to achieve coaching-business nirvana in a matter of a few weeks, they then got an attack of ‘bright shiny object syndrome’ and, having failed to generate a significant income in no time – with no effort – they flitted elsewhere to try something else.
The £15 coach has paid thousands and thousands to various organisations and individuals, many of whom said a similar thing; know your client. Know your client like you know your best friend, and then be where they are, with a message that this kind of client can understand, which explains simply and clearly the benefit of your coaching to them.
The £15 client didn’t rate this advice and so instead of knuckling down and doing the work (and make no mistake, it’s quite hard work) they flitted from free Facebook group to free Facebook group. They took free online course after free online course, and still they couldn’t find clients who wanted to pay them. They started off with a price of £100 a session and that price dropped and dropped until it eventually ended up at £15 but they still couldn’t find clients!
What this shows is that cheap prices isn’t what attracts coaching clients. What attracts clients is when they understand that you work with people just like them; people who have something to overcome that they need to overcome.
Marketing Is A Process Not An Event
Marketing to your target audience is a process. Depending upon who your audience is will dictate the speed at which you engage clients, assuming of course, that you got your message right for that audience.
Some coaches think that marketing is an event.
For example a marketing event might be to launch a website. There are more than 3 trillion (TRILLION!!) websites. Launching a website doesn’t mean that anyone will ever find it, let alone actually become a client.
Another marketing event might be creating various social media accounts. Just because you have an Instagram account, or a Facebook page, or a LinkedIn profile doesn’t mean that you have even an audience, let alone a client.
Marketing And Pricing
How you construct your marketing strategy doesn’t dictate your pricing. The two are not related.
Your pricing is dictated by your target audience. Different target audiences have different price tolerance. However, I’ve yet to find the target audience who feel that coaching at £15 is worth buying.
Want to talk? This is my diary.