CampfireShould I raise my prices, and how do I package my offer?
Probably, but raise the package before the number. Price-shopping happens when you sell a unit of time, because every hour looks like every other hour. Sell a defined outcome over a defined period instead, and price it so that one client pays for the marketing it took to find them. Then the price stops being the first question.
Why this question keeps coming up
Six of the 46 sales calls in our backlog since June raised this question, and it is the most common one from clinicians building a coaching or consulting business. It almost never arrives alone. It comes bundled with "people are price-shopping me" or, from the other side, "I'm in demand and I need to own that." Both are the same problem seen from different ends: the price was set by looking at what everyone else charges, not by looking at what the offer has to do.
Here is the mechanism. When the thing you sell is an hour, the buyer can only compare it to other hours, and the cheapest hour wins. When the thing you sell is a result with a start, an end and a method, there is nothing to compare it to except the cost of not getting the result. That is not a trick. It is just a package doing the job a price list cannot.
The number that decides your floor
Your price has to cover what it costs to find a client, or you can never advertise. Across the Campfire Benchmark, the three clinic Meta ad accounts that track booked appointments spent $17,946.51 for 136 bookings, which is $131.96 per booked appointment, pooled, before anyone has bought anything. That is clinic data, not coaching data, and your market may be dearer or cheaper. But the shape is the same everywhere: a booked call has a cost, only some of those calls buy, and the ones who do have to pay for the ones who didn't.
Run that math on your own offer. If one client needs four booked calls to close and each one costs you something like the Benchmark figure, acquisition alone is several hundred dollars before you have delivered a minute of work. A low-ticket session cannot carry that. A program can. This is the rule we use for our own pricing and the one we tell owners to copy: one client's plan should cover the marketing it took to get them, with room left for the work.
Package first, then price
A package is three decisions. What outcome does the client get, by when, and what do they do between calls. Write those down in plain words a prospect could repeat to their spouse. If you cannot, the offer is not finished yet, and raising the price will only make the vagueness more expensive.
Once the outcome is defined, the format follows. Twelve weeks is a useful default because it is long enough for a habit to form and short enough that someone can commit without feeling married. Put the calls on a cadence, decide what you review between them, and name what they walk away owning. Then price the whole thing. Do not price the parts, because the parts invite the buyer to start removing them.
How to raise it without losing everyone
Raise the price for new clients, not current ones, and tell current ones what the new price is so the loyalty is visible. If every prospect says yes without hesitating, you are still low; a good price gets a pause and then a yes. If nobody is saying yes, the problem is usually the proof, not the number, so go back and collect three short results stories before you touch the price again.
One more thing we see on calls: owners who are "in demand" and still charging the old rate are not being generous, they are being fully booked at a price that leaves no money to delegate. The raise is what buys back your time.
If you run a clinic, not a coaching business
The same logic applies to a plan of care, but the numbers and the insurance questions are different. The neutral guide to cash-based physical therapy pricing on Clinic MarketingOS covers that side, and the package pricing calculator lets you test a number before you say it out loud.
Questions around the fire
How much should I raise my prices by?
Enough that one client covers what it costs to find them, plus the work. Start from your acquisition cost and your close rate, not from a percentage. A raise that doesn't change what you can afford to do is not a raise.
Won't a higher price bring in fewer people?
Fewer inquiries, usually. Fewer clients, not necessarily. Price-shoppers drop off first, and they were the hardest to serve. What you lose in volume you make back in close rate and in the time you stop spending on people who were never going to buy.
Should I offer a cheaper option too?
One smaller first step is fine if it leads into the main program. A menu of tiers is not; it turns the sale into a comparison between your own products. Two options at most: the program, and the way in.