If yes, one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face is pricing your services.
Related to this are also your life coach prices and the question how to charge for life coaching.
Sadly, this is also the most crucial factor that you need to pay attention to since it can make or break your coaching business.
High fees can drive clients away, while low fees might make them think twice about the quality of the service that you will provide.
With that in mind, how do you determine a reasonable price for your coaching packages? This article will teach you how, so keep on reading!
Key Takeaways:
In This Article
There are range of factors that should determine the most reasonable fee you should charge for your services.
First, you need to keep in mind your geographic location, and the expendable income of your target market.
Private coaching services in the United States can be more expensive than those found in the Philippines. If you provide service in an urban city, your rates will be higher. If you live in a rural area, your rates will be a bit lower.
Second, you have to know your target client. Who do you target with your life coaching business? How much do you think they can afford?
And more than their financial capability, you also need to put yourself in your target clients’ shoes and ask yourself, “how much am I willing to pay to have this problem solved?”
If your target clients are businessmen, athletes, artists, and celebrities, you can charge higher. But if you are gearing towards low-end clients, then you need to lower your rates.
You’ll also need to consider the primary type of payment schedule that you want to implement in your coaching business. For this, you have three options—by the session, monthly, and through coaching packages.
If you have clients who are looking for short-term assistance and guidance, you may want to offer a per-session fee.
This type of payment schedule can also help you accommodate your clients who need long-term help but want to pay only after their coaching sessions due to specific reasons.
On the other hand, a monthly fee is great for clients who are willing to visit and work with you consistently but are still unsure whether life coaching is best for them.
Lastly, you have the package payment schedule, which is the best payment schedule for your ongoing and long-term clients.
This is perfect for clients who want to work with you over a certain period or during a life transition. A package deal is beneficial for your clients since it comes with guaranteed savings that they can enjoy.
Aside from the fact that life coaching packages provide significant savings to the client, it also offers lots of benefits for you, the coach. How is this so?
Imagine that you are a new businessman who is seeking help in achieving his business goals. You came across two listings.
The first one states, “Business coaching for new business owners – $70/ hour.”
The second one states, “New business coaching program: Get your business up and running (and thriving) in just one month! – $600.”
Keep in mind that clients are looking for you because they want to solve a problem.
By offering a package deal, you are providing them with a comprehensive system that can help solve their problems. You are like a one-stop shop for all of their business advice needs.
Are you ready to get started on creating your life coaching packages? Before you begin curating your proposals, I would like to share with you some of the pieces of essential information that you need to include in your packages.
Service Description. This serves as an overview of the package—what the client can expect to get from it and for what purpose the package is created.
Duration. The first thing that you need to determine is how much coaching your client will receive through a particular package. The duration includes the following information: how many months the coaching will take place, how many coaching sessions will take place in a month, and the total time or the number of hours the coaching sessions will have.
This decision should be based on the amount of coaching that your clients need to achieve their goals, along with the amount of coaching you can give and the average amount of coaching that your clients will be willing to pay for.
Communication Methods. In this section, you should enumerate the modes of communication you will use to carry out the coaching session. Possible methods of communication that you can include here are face-to-face, email or chat support, and coaching calls via the telephone or video chat.
Other Perks. The more offerings you provide for your client, the more attractive your coaching packages will be. That’s why it is always a great idea to include add-ons or perks in your packages.
One of the add-ons that you can offer would be additional references or learning resources like ebooks, video tutorials, audiobooks, or physical books.
Additionally, you may also want to include perks that can help your client to gauge and measure their performance, and identify if he is taking the right steps towards their goals.
These may consist of professional feedback, a critique of their work, and psychometric tests.
Moreover, you can also offer a few perks that can help them advance their career or widen their business opportunities, like access to or a meeting with prominent people in the industry that they are in.
Lastly, you may also offer simple support tools like a written report summarizing the insights and strategies that you have developed during the coaching session. Another great idea is to provide chat or email reminders about the steps and strategies that you and your client have agreed on.
The more offerings included in the package, the higher the price you can charge for the package.
Now that you know what should be included in a coaching package template, here are some life coaching package examples that can provide you with a better understanding of how you can structure your packages.
Each is categorized according to the total time of the coaching relationship.
1-Month Package
This package is for you if you are preparing for a new challenge, getting ready for a new business venture, or gearing up for a life transition that may take place in the next few weeks.
3-Month Package
This is the perfect package for you if you are preparing for a life project that encompasses all of your goals—financially, personally, physically, and emotionally.
12-month Package
This is the best package for you if you are already anticipating encountering financial, personal, and professional challenges in the future and are looking for ways to manage them.
A great strategy when packaging your coaching services is to offer several tiers of coaching at various price points.
Many coaches and online businesses choose to create pricing tiers based solely on the amount of time you can use a service. So, for example, they might offer rolling monthly packages, but also quarterly and annual packages which cost the customer less per month.
You can create value-based pricing tiers for your coaching business this way, even if you have no additional services to offer alongside your coaching.
Since the life coaching industry is still in its young phase, the regulatory body that governs such industry still has no established guidelines on what is the appropriate rate for such a service.
Due to this, it can be difficult for you to determine how much you should charge for your life coaching services.
To help you discover the answer, let’s take a look at the following information:
The going rate for life coaching differs by a large margin. The average going rate for life coaching is between $100 and $500 for one session.
But as mentioned, the fees for life coaching services are not really regulated, so you can still find a few life coaches who charge higher than $500 and lower than $75.
On the other hand, an executive coach who works with large corporations can charge as high as $1000 or more.
It would be best that you start with the average going rate of life coaches in your area.
New coaches might decide to offer slightly lower rates, so they can quickly attract prospective clients, gain some income and gather testimonials. Then, as you attract more clients, you can increase your rates.
You can go higher than the average rate, depending on your expertise, your popularity, the demand for your services, years of training, and experience.
If you are just starting out, there’s nothing wrong with charging the average coaching rate. In this way, you can easily book paying clients, allowing you to gain not just experience but amazing testimonials as well.
Once you have a portfolio or a group of clients who are willing to testify that your coaching strategy works, you can charge more.
Of course, you’ve also got to keep in mind the time you are planning to commit to coaching.
For example, if you know that you can probably schedule 10 sessions every month, and you hope to earn $2000 per month from coaching, you know that you’ll have to charge about $200 for one session to reach your goal.
The answer is most likely no.
I say most likely because there are rare exceptions. These exceptions are the type of coaching that is prescribed and supervised by medical doctors like weight loss and smoking cessation coaching.
But these aren’t generally classified as a life coach.
Some people do report being able to reimburse their life coaching expenses from their health insurance companies. However, these payments were usually made to clinics that are employing life coaches and not to a coach with a private practice.
Establishing a pricing strategy for your life coaching packages is one of the most challenging parts of building a life coach business.
A good strategy is to price your service based on how it compares to the average life coaching rates for your area. If you believe your coaching service is well above the average quality for your area, don’t be afraid to raise your coaching prices. One of the biggest mistakes made by experienced life coaches is undervaluing themselves and leaving money on the table.
Packaging your services is an important step to maximizing the value for your clients and upping your own earnings.
When done properly, this can do so much to help you thrive in your life coaching career.
For more information about the earning potential of life coaches in your region, see this guide on average life coach salaries.
About The Author
Bijan Kholghi is a certified life coach with the Milton Erickson Institute Heidelberg (Germany). He helps clients and couples reach breakthroughs in their lives by changing subconscious patterns. His solution-oriented approach is based on Systemic- and Hypnotherapy.
