Not sure what to charge for your life coaching packages? Coaching pricing can be a delicate balancing act – charge too much and you’ll struggle to find clients, charge too little and you could have a permanent ceiling on your income.
If you’re looking to increase your pricing and income as a professional coach, this guide will show you how.
Pricing Your Coaching Packages: 2 Essential Strategies
First, let’s define a coaching package.
Once you’ve got a clear idea of how you’d like to help your clients, the next step is to consider how you will offer it.
A life coaching package is quite simply a bundle of offerings; in addition to one-on-one coaching sessions, a few example offerings are listed below:
- Group coaching
- Access to digital coaching resources (e.g., worksheets, exercises, or handouts)
- Accountability check-ins
- Membership in an online community
- Seminars
- Retreats
- Workshops.
Designing a package might sound like hard work, but we’ve created an in-depth guide to help you get started: Creating Your Life Coaching Packages: 17 Templates and Tools.
If you haven’t created a package yet, don’t worry. It’s never too early to start thinking about a pricing strategy!
Strategy 1: Cost-Based Pricing
The first coaching pricing strategy, cost-based pricing, is the most common approach used by new coaches.
It involves selling your life coaching package based on the costs of the goods and services involved in them, then including a profit margin for yourself.
Let’s say:
- You value your time at $60 an hour on average
- You plan to spend an estimated 30 hours delivering your life coaching package to a client over the course of six months.
Using the cost-based pricing strategy, you will price your coach package at $1,800 per client because here, you are focusing on what the coaching service costs you: your time.
Cost-based pricing is simple and works well for goods, but it’s the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to coaching pricing.
The problem is that coaching is a service, not a physical product. So how can you break through your income ceiling and scale your practice?
The answer is to use an entirely different strategy: value-based pricing.
Strategy 2: Value-Based Pricing
Value-based pricing doesn’t consider how much time you spend delivering your coach packages but the value of each package for each client.
Building on our earlier example, let’s say your goal was to help your client land her dream job that pays $180,000 per year, which you ultimately end up doing.
What do you think this desired end result is worth for your client?
The $1,800 you would charge with cost-based pricing (30 hours at $60 per hour)? Or $18,000, a one-off 10% of your client’s new annual salary?
Value-based pricing is a complete shift of focus from the cost of your time to the value you create for your clients. It’s far more scalable than cost-based pricing, and a win-win arrangement for both you and your client.
So now that you know what strategy to use, let’s consider your life coaching fees!
Setting Your Life Coach Fees
Value-based pricing is a complete shift of focus from the cost of your time to the value you create for your clients.
The most effective way to implement a value-based pricing strategy is to think about your target market and what your offer will be worth to them.
How will you change their lives? What outcomes will they gain from working with you?
If you’re still unsure, or if you’re completely new to coaching, look at what other practitioners in your life coaching niche are charging.
This will give you an idea of the average coaching prices for different packages, and you can decide whether to charge higher or lower based on how you want to position your services.
Click here to learn how to create a successful life coaching business model for the first time.
Coaching Costs: What To Consider
You probably have a better idea of how to price your coaching services by now, but how do you know when you’re nailing the price?
It’s a good question, and it’s also unlikely that you’ll get it right the first time.
Here are three tips to help you out:
- If you are converting all your potential clients into paying clients, you are probably pricing too low. You may end up working with clients who aren’t serious enough to commit for the long haul or even some who aren’t a good fit with your style.
- If you are converting too few leads into clients, your coaching costs may be too high. Provided that you’re not making mistakes elsewhere along the line – in your initial consultation calls, for example – and try dropping your coaching prices to see what happens.
- As a general rule, if you are converting a good amount of potential clients into clients, you’re on the right track. Congratulations!
28 Life Coaching Package Templates
The great thing about structuring your life coaching services as packages is the flexibility that it provides.
Once you’ve created a few solutions, or “building blocks,” you can easily scale your packages up or down to charge more or less for your services.
To do this, you’ll want to start with a basic “signature” coaching program and add or remove elements based on your clients’ goals.
Let’s take a look at how three example packages might look for a career or executive coach.
Career Coaching Packages Example
A 2-month career coaching program might include:
- 6 one-on-one career coaching sessions
- 2 group coaching sessions
- 3 accountability check-ins between appointments
- Exclusive membership to a LinkedIn Job Seekers group
- Access to a digital library of resume templates, strengths assessments, and other useful tools.
Executive Coaching Packages Example
A 3-month executive coaching package could involve:
- 12 weekly personal sessions
- Results and feedback from a 360-feedback assessment tool
- Attendance at a networking retreat for professionals
- A weekly inspirational blog post, exercise, or podcast
- 6- and 12-month follow-up calls
Mindset Coaching Packages Example
An intensive mindset coaching package might look as follows:
- Daily guided meditations, delivered digitally, as shown above
- 5 hours of video guiding through specific processes and strategies
- A PDF ebook on growth mindset and limiting beliefs
- A personal Thought Record with personal feedback from you
If you’re after more inspiration for your life coaching program, check out our comprehensive guide: 25 Brandable Done-For-You Coaching Program Templates.
How To Deliver Your Packages [+ 30-page PDF]
So you’ve designed your life coach package, and now it’s time to get it noticed or in the hands of your existing clients!
Luckily, digital programs are easy to deliver. Much easier than printing out hard-copy resources or emailing PDFs to your cohort!
If you’re new to online coaching, our free 30-page coaching guide covers everything you need to know about delivering seamless, engaging packages efficiently and effectively.
Coach, This Changes Everything will not only show you how to share your program with clients but also how to:
- Centralize, organize, and streamline your online practice
- Engage and motivate your clients on autopilot, maximizing their progress and chances of success
- Scale up your practice with one-to-many programs such as group coaching and online courses.
Download your copy of Coach, This Changes Everything to get started:
How To Increase Your Coaching Package Price
Once you move beyond cost-based pricing and billable hours, there are many ways to increase your income.
One of them is to increase your coaching package price, and the good news is that this is easy!
Here are a few ways you can raise your coaching prices by adding more “building blocks” to your signature program, which will ultimately deliver more value to your clients:
- Create an online course for your clients to follow alongside your sessions
- Organize a seminar with expert speakers or thought leaders in your niche
- Run an interactive workshop where your clients can network while learning
- Offer more feedback on your client’s work or progress
- Host a webinar in which you teach your clients key concepts
- Provide support between sessions using live chat or personalized video
- Give your clients exclusive access to information products or resources (e.g., worksheets, videos, and exercises)
There are many ways to provide the extra support and guidance that will help your clients achieve their goals. If you’re looking for some great ways to add more value to your packages, our life coaching tools blog contains some brilliant templates that you can customize with your $1, 30-day Quenza trial.
Final Thoughts
It can be daunting the first time you put yourself out there as a coach – you might feel manipulative like you’re overcharging your clients, or you may end up overworked and overwhelmed.
The key to nailing your coach pricing is to keep your client’s desired end state in mind. Think about the transformation you’re going to deliver, and don’t be afraid to price accordingly!
