How to price and package your high-end coaching services in 2021

How to price and package your high-end coaching services in 2021
How to scale your coaching business with ConvertKit Commerce
You live to change people’s lives, but you also have big dreams of your own. So what’s your next move?
If you’ve felt it’s time to level up your coaching services in 2021, this post is for you. First, we’ll explore what you need to consider when planning your first (or next!) high-end coaching package. Then, we'll tackle the topic that most people feel a bit unsure about—money.
Don’t worry; we’ll have plenty of real-world examples and numbers for you to reference along the way. You ready?
Start selling within minutes
As a creator, you deserve to get paid for your work. ConvertKit Commerce is ready-made to help you sell digital products.
Get paid with ConvertKit Commerce
How to package high-end coaching services
When you first started coaching, you may have offered standalone coaching calls or paid webinars. While these are a great, low-commitment way to start getting clients, they likely can’t help you scale your business to six figures and beyond.
If you want to increase your impact and revenue, your next step should be developing a signature high-end coaching program. These are programs with a specific topic and method spread out over a few months. Packaging your expertise and guidance into a repeatable process makes it easier for you to convey your value and help more students without reinventing the wheel each time.
Let’s review what you need to figure out to design a high-end coaching package your audience will love.
Hone in on your outcome
What sets a high-end coaching service apart from an entry-level program? The outcome.
A compelling transformation story has two parts: what a person’s life is like now and what it will be like after the program. The greater the impact you can have on someone’s life , the easier it will be to sell your offering—and the more you can charge for your program.
We see this idea in action on Patrice Washington ’s coaching site, where she offers two different coaching programs to meet the varying needs of her audience:
Patrice’s coaching programs target different people within her audience. Images via Patrice Washington .
The Earn More Money Bootcamp is 4-hours of pre-recorded content for new entrepreneurs who need help defining their brand and developing their first product. This shorter program helps them start to turn an idea into a plan. Once a person is ready to elevate their speaking and teaching skills, the 50-person hands-on program Command The Stage is there to help. Offering resources that cater to different points in a business journey opens Patrice up to opportunities across a larger audience.
Kendra Tillman ’s coaching business, StrongHer.Me, also caters to students at different points in their career journey. Kenda identifies three personas within her community: The Initiator , The Activator , and The Innovator . Each path has a unique coaching program formatted to achieve different goals. The journey starts with The Initiator, where Kendra helps students gain traction with their business or ministry. At the other end of the spectrum, The Innovator program focuses on adding income streams.
Kendra’s first-stage coaching program includes a planning session and exclusive content. Image via Kendra Tillman .
By separating her coaching packages into phases, Kendra can address specific problems. This makes it easier to choose content that will best help, leading to better results for students.
Choose a format
After establishing the desired outcome of your program, you need to choose a format. This includes how many people are in the program together, how often you accept new students, and how you’ll deliver content.
Examples of how to structure the program include:
Private coaching programs that are always open for enrollment with one-on-one calls
Group coaching with a monthly subscription that includes community support
Cohort programs that open at set intervals and complete the program together
This is the point where you should also think about how often you’ll meet with clients, what resources you’ll provide them, and what they’ll have access to after the program is done.
Kristen Kalp uses a cohort format with monthly billing to help overwhelmed business owners. Her KK on Tap program only accepts a handful of new students at a time, but then runs for an entire year. There’s a mix of one-on-one calls, group meetups, access to content, and on-demand email support.
Kristen positions her coaching program as a way to get access to content and much-needed support for an entire year, without a large upfront cost. Image via Kristen Kalp .
The KK on Tap program details also prove that you don’t have to create totally new content for coaching to be worthwhile. Kristen bundles in access to courses and books she’s already created, as well as access to future workshops, as a way to make monthly coaching more worthwhile.
Consider adding recurring payments
Once you’ve decided how to set up your coaching program, you need to consider billing. Rather than selling the program in one large lump sum, you could split up program costs over a few months or set up a monthly subscription.
PS- setting up these recurring payments takes just a simple click “Subscription” when you set up in ConvertKit Commerce .
Krista Kathleen offers a monthly payment option for both her life coaching and business mentoring packages , which cost $4,500 and $7,000 paid in full. If the upfront cost is too large, Krista offers a payment plan that runs alongside the program. Instead of $7,000 at once for business coaching, students can pay $1,199 a month for six months.
By offering a payment plan, Krista makes her high-end coaching packages more accessible. To Krista’s benefit, this simple option also turns a standard coaching package into recurring revenue.
Krista helps potential students imagine the outcome of going through her program. Image via Krista Kathleen .
Of course, Krista keeps the outcome of the program top of mind to back up the larger price tag. Since the coaching commitment is a six-month program, tying the monthly pricing to that time frame makes sense.
Setting up recurring billing in your coaching business is good for both you and your clients:
Consistent income: Setting clients up on a recurring coaching package keeps you from having to sell to new people constantly. It also provides a predictable base income to smooth out boom and bust.
Makes high-end coaching more accessible: Breaking up large coaching packages into monthly installments could be more accessible for clients. It lets them get started and begin to see results without committing the full amount.
Help clients build and maintain momentum: Transformation takes time, and you can help people more by working with them consistently for at least a few months. Plus, the more you can help people, the better their results will be, which leads to stronger testimonials and more demand.
Another benefit that comes with some recurring coaching packages is a sense of community. Shared Practice ’s Owner Mastermind is a monthly coaching community for dental practice owners. For $999 a month, dentists who want to grow their business get access to coaching, networking, courses, and advertising tools.
Dentists who want to work and grow alongside other practice owners can join a monthly coaching program. Image via Shared Practices .
The group positions the program as a tool that helps throughout the journey of owning a dental practice, and therefore one that’s billed monthly. When you bill coaching clients monthly you have an opportunity to position yourself as a long-term partner so that students don’t have to grow alone.
Check out competitors
Your final step in determining what your high-end coaching service will look like is checking out competitors. It’s helpful to research:
What transformations other coaches offer
Which people within your niche have programs available
How you can provide a unique experience or perspective
Understanding what’s out there lets you find how you can be different, as well as what elements or outcomes your audience might consider must-haves.
Don’t forget: you don’t need to cater to everyone
When you have a lot of ideas and a passion for helping people, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to please everyone. Deciding who the program isn’t for can be illuminating, though. Think about any milestones that a person should have hit before joining the program.
Talking plainly about who the ideal student is helps people identify when a program is either too novice or advanced for them. It might feel weird turning students away at first, but someone with mismatched goals to your program could grow frustrated.
If you want to see this idea play out in a (very) high-end business coaching package, look no further than Pat Flynn ’s SPI Accelerator. The twelve-month program has recurring calls, exclusive content, discounts on other courses, a private Slack community, and a three-day event at the end. Altogether, being a part of this community will set you back $29,999 or $2,998/month for 12 months.
While live events are currently on hold, the coaching package usually includes a 3-day retreat. Image via Pat Flynn .
Pat Flynn has content for every stage of a person’s business journey, yet this program focuses on a niche within the larger audience. The description specifically says it’s for business owners making six figures in annual revenue, and that if the price is too high, it’s a sign that you aren’t ready for the program just yet. Having half as many perfectly suited students go through your program is much more fulfilling than a full roster of people not ready for your help yet.
4 steps to choosing online coaching prices
Right now, your brain might be swirling with ideas. There’s an elation that comes alongside every new idea, but sometimes thinking about the fine details has a way of bringing you back down to earth.
How much do I charge for this new coaching package idea?
Luckily, you don’t need to make a wild guess and hope it sticks the landing. We’re going to go through four steps to clarify how much your program is worth and what you need to do to hit your goals.
To make it all a bit more concrete, we’ll go through these steps as if we were a creator. For our mock-pricing scenario, we’ll assume we:
Are a productivity coach with an email list of 3,000 people
Already have a $39 ebook and $150 one-off coaching calls
Want to create a recurring new high-end program that accounts for most of our income
Let’s get started.
Step #1: Map out your expenses
Nearly every business venture will come with a few expenses, so it’s better to get them out on the table right away. Your costs as a coach and tools to help you manage your business could include:
Website hosting
CRMs
Video equipment or editing software
For our scenario, we’ll use ConvertKit as a baseline for our coach’s expenses. For an email list of 3,000 people, a productivity coach would pay:
$49 a month to market and grow business with email marketing
2.9% + $0.30 per transaction to sell their coaching services
Step #2: Measure your impact
Some new coaches will take an hourly billing approach, but high-end packages are usually better served with value-based pricing. Having a set price from the get-go helps students know what to expect, and it also gives you a benchmark to compare results to.
Take our productivity coach as an example. If their coaching program helps a founder get organized and hit new goals, it’s conceivable that the coaching could help the student increase their revenue for the year by $20,000. With this outcome, suddenly, a $5,000 coaching package doesn’t seem so expensive.
A $20,000 outcome from a $5,000 coaching investment is a 4X ROI.
Thinking about your potential impact on a student may help you feel more confident charging higher rates and also gives you a talking point on your sales page.
Step #3: Set your income goals
After you’ve thought about what you want your students to get out of the program, it’s time to turn the attention to you. There are two income questions to ask yourself:
How much do I want to make a year?
What percent of revenue will come from coaching?
A creator who wants to make most of their $100,000 income goal from coaching needs to sell a different number of courses than a person who only plans to make a small portion of their earnings this way.
Let’s assume the productivity coach in our scenario has two goals:
Make at least $100,000 a year
85% of their income comes from coaching packages
This could mean our coach wants to sell $120,000 worth of coaching packages in a year, or $10,000 a month. There could be several ways to hit this target:
Have 10 students at $1,000 a month
Have 20 students at $500 a month
Have 100 students at $100 a month
While these three scenarios all shake out to about $120,000 a year, they could represent vastly different workloads for the coach.
Step #4: Calculate your target number of sales
The final piece of the pricing puzzle is how many students you can handle at a given time. It’s safe to assume that higher-priced coaching packages mean more work for you than, say, a one-time consulting call.
Since you need to feel your best to perform your best, think critically about what workload you want to manage. How many clients could you work with a month? What would be the max number of students that a cohort could have while still feeling personal? If you aren’t sure, it’s probably better to start with fewer and then increase your number of students as you nail down your processes.
Now it’s time to put all of the details together from our mock scenario with the productivity coach.
Monthly Revenue Goal: $10,000 a month
Target Sales: 20 students a month
ConvertKit Expenses: $49 a month
Transaction Expenses: $400 a month
$10,000 a month / 20 students = at least $500 per month per student. We also need to cover roughly $500 in expenses, so let’s round up to 21 clients each month.
The productivity coach needs to maintain 21 clients for their $500 a month recurring coaching package to hit their goals.
They could either reach this through a monthly commitment, like what Shared Practices or Kristen Kalp does, or by splitting multi-thousand dollar packages into monthly installments. Keep in mind that this represents the pricing floor, which means you could go higher. Factors that would make you increase prices above your minimum include:
Wanting to add wiggle room in case you need to take on fewer students some months
Justifying a higher price because of the potential positive impact for students
You might also raise your high-end coaching package price as demand increases, or you add more content to the program. Figuring out your pricing as a creator isn’t an exact science, and it doesn’t have to be a static decision. You don’t need to get it “right” on the first try, so release any pressure you’re putting on yourself to do so.
How to scale your coaching business with ConvertKit Commerce
Now that you know what you want to charge for your coaching services, you need to decide how you’ll collect funds. While setting one lump-sum is an option, your business can benefit from recurring payments.
If you use ConvertKit Commerce, you can easily manage your marketing and sales in one platform . Here’s what you need to do to set your coaching services up for recurring sales.
You’ll first need to set up a new product listing by navigating to the “Products” tab on your ConvertKit account. To set up your recurring product in ConvertKit Commerce , click the “Create a product” button.
Then, enter your product details. This first step contains the name of your coaching product, the amount, and the billing frequency. Currently, you can sell products one time or monthly.
Now that you have the basic details, you need to establish a delivery method. You can use ConvertKit Commerce to sell a digital product like an ebook , set up a paid newsletter , or collect payments for services.
The third and final step in setting up recurring coaching payments in ConvertKit Commerce is to choose which custom subdomain your listing will live on. You can also set up a page URL to match the name of your product.
Once you’ve created your product, it’s time to get selling! Promote your coaching packages in an email series that nurtures new subscribers or segment your audience based on their goals. Having your email marketing and product sales together in a platform lets you manage your business from a single hub.
If you’re ready to take your coaching business to the next level with ConvertKit Commerce, sign up now to get started .
Start selling within minutes
As a creator, you deserve to get paid for your work. ConvertKit Commerce is ready-made to help you sell digital products.
Steph Knapp
Steph Knapp is a freelance B2B + SaaS content marketer that loves educating and empowering curious humans. When she's not typing away, you'll find her volunteering at the animal shelter and obsessing over a new hobby every week. She shares marketing, freelance, and cat content on Twitter @ hellostephknapp.