Influences Effecting Your Hourly Rate
You can go many different ways in pricing your coaching services. The lowest possible price is one that will pay your expenses and leave you enough to survive on. It isn’t a very exciting prospect, and I do not recommend it. You probably are worth way more than that or else you should quit and go do something else you can excel at. So you can and should charge more than the bare minimum, How much more?
Many suggest “look at your competition and set a similar price for your own services.” I do not recommend doing things just like the competition. You want to be different, or else you are a commodity. If you are just like the competition, why should the prospective client choose you?
But the real problem is that in doing so is that you pricing the competition, not yourself. This price is irrelevant and besides, I didn’t become a coach to be like the next guy. Did you?
So, how much should you charge?
If your price now is average to the industry, then you are probably quite secure in selling your service for this price. The others sell, don’t they? This is safe. It is probably deep inside your comfort zone. Yet, as a coach, you should always challenge you clients to get out of their comfort zones. You know they can’t get better results doing what they are already doing. Shouldn’t you be applying the same principles yourself?
Here is what you should do. Take your current price and consider raising it a little. Are you still feeling OK with this price? If so, you should raise it higher, and continue to raise your price until you begin to feel uneasy. When you are no longer 100% certain that you can sell at this price. The uneasiness means that you are stepping out of your comfort zone. At this point, raise the price just a tad higher, one more step.
This is your time that you are putting a price on. This is your most valuable and precious resource. You should always strive to get the most out of it, and this will never be in your comfort zone. Only when you step outside of it are you being paid your true value.
Yes, this also means that after a while, when you get used to selling your services at this price – raise it again! The exact same reasons will apply.
Clearly you should also challenge yourself to deliver the higher value that your clients would expect for the higher price. You will not be overpricing yourself when you keep improving like that.