How To Price Your Consulting, Courses, and Offers When Selling to Corporate
How should you price when you’re selling your courses, coaching, or consulting to a corporate audience? It is so tempting to tally up how much time you have invested in a project and base your pricing and your proposal on that number. Bad idea.
When selling your courses, coaching, or consulting to companies, you should never ever price based on the time you have involved in the project. Let’s talk through what you should do instead.
The Old School Method of Pricing Your Proposals
The typical, “Old School” method for pricing looks like this…
You have a client call with CEO Steve and he says, “Hey, I would like a coaching package for two of our executives. What would that look like? Can you send me a proposal?”
First, you do the happy dance. Then, you think, “Okay, for two executives, how many hours will this take?”
You start to work the numbers which usually looks like this:
How much revenue do I want to make this year? >> $100,000
How many hours am I working this year? >> 40 hours a week x 50 weeks in a year = 2,000 hours available
How much do I charge an hour based on that? >> If I want to make a $100,000 with 200 hours available in a year, that means that I should charge $50 an hour.
Done.
This is an easy and logical formula to follow, right? Let’s take it a step further and apply to an ongoing coaching package.
You decide to put together a coaching package over six months that equals roughly 50 hours of training. At $50 an hour for 50 hours, you’re going to package up your time at around $2,500.
This is typical. But, not the best approach.
Here’s the thing: When you send proposals like this to a business, you end up being seen as a commodity.
You=Commodity=Not Good.
Why? Because you are setting yourself up to be price shopped.
This company is going to get proposals from several experts and compare prices. You don’t ever want to compete on price. You want to compete on value. You want to generate the most value and become THE obvious choice.
There are strategic ways you can position yourself as the high value offer so you don’t get lost in a sea of low value and low price competitors. Let’s talk about a different way to do this…
Positioning Your Courses, Coaching, or Consulting Differently For a Corporate Audience So You are the High Value Offer
To position yourself above all the options out there, you must have a different conversation with your prospect.
1) The Value Of The Problem
In your needs analysis conversation, you are going to identify the problem and get clear on the value of solving that problem.
Here’s an example:
My company was approached by a large chain of national retail stores. When they came to us, they said, “Hey, we need to get coaching training for our managers. We’ve got 50 managers we want to run through your coaching program. Can you send us a proposal”.
Sounds like a dream, right? The client magically shows up at the coaching drive-thru and places a training order.
This wasn’t my first day working the drive-thru. I knew better. I had taken training orders before, sent out a proposal, and waited forever to hear back. I knew that if I was going to win the proposal, I needed to understand the problem this training was solving.
I set up the call and followed the Conversation Frame we teach in our programs.
The head of sales told me they wanted their managers to be better at coaching.
One of the best tools in your toolkit when you’re talking to a client is to simply ask “why”? It starts with:
- Tell me more about this.
- Why do they need to be better at coaching?
They talked. I listened. The gap was starting to show up.
2) What Is The Gap?
Every time a client reaches out to you, they are trying to bridge the gap between where they are now and where they need to be. The value of bridging the gap is the value of the work that you do. You are their guide moving them from “here” to “there”.
Back to our example:
To get clear on the gap, I asked more questions.
As we went deeper into the conversation, they started to tell me that in all their retail stores, they had an average transaction amount of $5 and their benchmark was $10.
This is $5 gap on every transaction.
I asked how many transactions a day were falling below benchmark.
20,000 transactions
$5 x 20,000 transactions = $100,000
We’re starting to see the value of solving the problem.
3) Value Of The Gap
Once you see the gap, you can begin to attach value to solving it.
What is the long term value of bridging the gap. For this client, the $100,000 gap was per day.
$100,000 x 365 days in a year = $36 million dollars
Suddenly this is not a conversation about buying a coaching program. This is a conversation about capturing a $36 million opportunity.
4) Your Value Is The Contribution to Bridging The Gap
When you look at it this way, it becomes so much easier to own the value of your work.
When you attach your work to bridging a gap, your prospects can see the value of your work.
We won the proposal.
This particular client went on to become one of our favorite success stories. The client generated massive value for their stakeholders. The project was valued by the client highly and generated multiple 6-figures in consulting revenue in the first 6 months.
Summary
You are an expert that can help your clients solve meaningful problems.
If I had taken the order and priced it like most experts do using the Old Method, the pricing would have looked something like this:
50 hours of training x $50 hour= $2,500
When you value based on the transformation that happens when you bridge the gap for your client, this increases exponentially.
The project was highly valued by the client and generated multiple 6-figures in consulting revenue in the first 6 months. Multiple 6-figures vs. $2,500.
I want to really encourage you to think about the following when you’re talking with your client, before you put together a proposal, AND before you put together a price:
- Where are they now?
- Where do they want to go?
- What is the gap?
- How do I show up as a solution?
Simply showing up and having different conversations is going to instantly set you apart. You’re going to be seen as a strategic partner.
What’s one idea you will put into play in your next client conversation? Love to hear!
Looking to start selling your courses, coaching, and other offers to small, medium, and large businesses? Our Get Corporate Clients Masterclass, walks you through the step-by-step process for finding corporate clients, leading a conversation, creating a proposal, and closing the sale. Click here to learn more.
Thank you, I’ve tweeted this link – very helpful.
Very refreshing take on finding gaps and increasing value!