As a business and marketing coach, one of the most common questions that I receive from my private platinum clients is “how do I raise my fees and attract clients who are willing to pay?”. Many coaches raise their fees dramatically, and then become frustrated when a consult or two doesn’t result in a signed contract, so they go back to their old pricing. Has this ever happened to you?
This dilemma keeps many coaches from raising the investment for their programs in the first place, or precludes them from keeping their fees in the healthy range, and worse yet, from earning the income they desire, and deserve. Understanding the psychology behind the sales-process is crucial to breakthrough the “it doesn’t work” mentality, or what I call, “stinkin’ thinkin'”.
When I deconstruct with my private clients where their marketing process is struggling, the answer to why clients say “no” usually lies in one of three very important parts of the sales process:
First of all, we have to understand that clients do NOT want to pay high coaching fees. In fact, most people don’t dream about “hiring a coach someday”, or put your photo on their vision boards. This sounds harsh, but people don’t roll out of bed and think, “today’s the day I’m going to get online and find me a coach!”. They also don’t thumb through Vogue, O Magazine or Home Beautiful and see a coach on the O List or the “spring trends” checklist and whip out their MacBook and credit card, right?
Of course there always exceptions to this, but as a general rule, this is usually true. Here are three fool-proof ways to raise your fees, keep them high, and attract clients who are willing to invest:
1. Be crystal clear about the benefits clients receive in working with you: Clients hire coaches to get the results that they are dying to have. They hire us to look better, to feel better, to stop worrying about stuff, to make more money, etc. So unless the client have a solid understanding of how they will benefit by working with you, and how they will get the solution to with whatever is keeping them up at night, they won’t pay any fee (no matter how small) to hire you.
Therefore, to get high-paying clients, your consultation/break~through session MUST be very clear about how working with you with help them to achieve their goals, desires, dreams, etc. You have to show them how your work will make a difference for them in a very personal way. Explain to your client in no uncertain terms what their end results will be after working together.
2. Become comfortable with your fees: Sometimes it takes a consultation (or five) to get comfortable with saying your new and upgraded fees out loud, and clients pick up on this anxiety and then pass on signing up.
(Here are three tips to become comfortable with your new pricing structure:)
Practice saying your fees aloud, to your mirror, and to your family. (Pets are often willing listeners also).
Make a list of the top 25 ways clients get amazing results from hiring you and refer to it often.
Remember that if half as many people decline to work with you at your higher fees, but you’re charging twice as much, that’s half the work for the same amount of income you were making before. So don’t worry that less people are saying yes, you will attract even higher quality clients at your higher prices.
3. Have a systemized marketing funnel: There is a process to warming up clients who go from cold leads to hot prospects who are ready, willing and able to hire you and pay your steep coaching fees without any hesitation. For this to happen, there needs to be a relationship that you’ve previously established with your prospective client. This is where the marketing funnel comes into place. Most clients come into the funnel by trying something for free. They might download your freebie from your website, read your newsletters, read some articles on your website, attend a teleseminar, or any of these types of marketing strategies that you’ve put into place. They then will become more likely to advance through a series of products and/or programs which become progressively higher of an investment.
Once customers have become familiar with you and like what they have experienced at a smaller investment, then they will become more likely to invest with you at a higher level, such as group coaching program or a product.
Which of these three marketing strategies do you need to implement? Feel free to leave me a comment, I’d love to get your feedback.