Chris Williams is the founder of Group Coach Nation. He works with entrepreneurial and business experts, speakers, coaches, and leaders helping them market, monetize, and lead their own high-ticket mastermind or group coaching programs.
He loves to teach experts how to generate leads, close high-ticket deals, and build strong, transformational groups. Chris typically works with people in the efficiency or marketing spaces and who help others grow their businesses.
How to Price Your Group Coaching Program
For many first-time program creators, the most difficult question they face is, how do I price my group coaching program?
Chris believes that the most important thing about pricing is the coach’s mindset around it. Too often, he says, we tend to be our own worst enemies and talk ourselves out of charging what our program is worth.
The first step is to look at the transformation your clients will receive from your course and what it is worth to them monetarily.
“What kind of impact would you have on their time, money, life, or business? You can measure that and say, well, wow, they double or triple or quadruple their income, or they cut their time in half, or they make an extra half-million dollars this year. Once you quantify that, you can say, well, I’m going to charge a percentage of that to get them to that process.”
So if, for example, your clients will make an extra $500,000 this year and you want to charge 20% of that for your course, you’d be charging $100,000. Depending on your view of money, that might be a lot or a little.
According to Chris, that’s where the sneaky mental games can creep in.
“People who think $100,000 is a lot don’t sell it. The people who think $100,000 is a little sell it just fine. So we’ve got to get our mindset about money out of the picture and just deal with the facts. Here’s the value. Here’s what we do. Is that something you’d like to take advantage of?”
Consider the Price Point of your Ideal Customer
However, it’s also essential to consider the population you serve and their price point. For example, a brand new entrepreneur may not be able to afford a $100,000 program. In that case, Chris says you’ll have to only offer that to people who are past the initial start-up phase.
“I’ve found over time, the people who are most successful at this group coaching process succeed at helping new beginners most when they focus on their marketing efforts on that middle to upper-tier market level that can actually pay well and take advantage of it to get something done. Then you can bring the rest of the market up with a little more of your own time, money, and team members by offering beginners a lower-tier solution to help them get started.”
Chris recommends beginning with the high-ticket programs before building the lower-tier ones. So, instead of creating a low-end funnel that goes to a higher offer, just start with the real thing.
Then you can re-purpose the resources, recordings, and all the stuff that comes from doing that work and break it out into little sections for those who don’t have the resources for your entire program.
Price Testing
If you’re nervous about charging 10 or 20 percent, start lower and price test.
“Every three sales you make, increase your price by 20% and go sell three more at that new price. Watch the data to understand why the sales pattern is happening. Then, keep increasing your price until 50% of people say no because of price alone.”
It’s essential to have a well-defined sales process so you can be sure people are saying no due to the price. If it’s a misunderstanding of the product or a timing situation, it’s important to understand that so you can identify where in the sales process you are encountering problems.
In Chris’ experience, most of the time, it’s not because of pricing.
Payment Plans
When it comes to payment plans, the most important thing is to keep the timeline for repayment within the coaching program time frame. If payments extend past the program, repayment rates tend to fall off.
After that, Chris recommends experimenting with your community.
“Do they need a certain level of payments? Do they want it broken into five payments or two or three payments? Some like weekly or monthly payments. Weekly payments sound annoying to me, but some people love it.”
Bartering
Bartering is another thing that comes up quite a bit in Group Coach Nation.
Chris says there are ways you can share resources and knowledge to boost both your brands but, do this with caution.
“You want to make sure you’re making money, not bartering your life away. But if you’re going to pay someone to write copy for your new website anyway and you’re working with three copywriters that you’re trying to get into your group, offer one a discount to help you get the job done right.”
Be aware of the tax rules in your state and make sure everyone signs a contract that makes the agreement very clear-cut.
How Long Should A Program Be?
Figuring out how to price your group coaching program isn’t the only question you need to answer before you get started.
When it comes to the length of a coaching program, Chris has data on that too. Six weeks is typically the low end of any coaching program, and a year is on the long end.
Most successful courses fall into the eight to twelve-week range. This allows people to feel they can make significant progress but not so long that they begin to lose interest.
Building A Successful Program
In Chris’ experience with people who come into Group Coach Nation, there are three broad categories.
First, there are beginners who don’t know what curriculum to teach. They have an idea of what they want to do, but it’s all a little fuzzy.
Then, there are those who are moving to a group coaching model because they have too many leads, and they want to handle a group of people at one time instead of one-on-one coaching. They have a curriculum and audience but just need to get the machine moving.
There’s a middle group between these two that has either the prospecting figured out, but they don’t know how to build a curriculum, or they have the curriculum figured out but don’t know how to attract an audience. Chris says about 80% of his audience falls into this category.
If you fall into this middle category, the following advice is for you.
Get Paid To Build
Chris believes that you shouldn’t even begin building a course until you’ve proved the idea’s worth and that people will buy it.
“Never build in a dark closet alone. That’s a disaster waiting to happen, wasting your life.”
Chris has found that the most successful people already have committed buyers before they even begin to build.
Prospect Flow
Next, you have to have a prospect flow. Everything revolves around whether or not you have enough leads coming in or not.
“If you don’t have a way to predictably generate on-profile leads, you don’t have a business. You’re just getting lucky.”
Chris has dedicated his business models to figure out how he’s going to generate leads predictably. That’s it. If you can do that, you can do anything.
Create Content Over Time
Once you’ve proved you have an idea worth buying, you’re going to create one or two lessons worth of content. Don’t create everything upfront.
In those first few lessons, allow the group to ask questions. They’ll likely remind you of a crucial step that you would have forgotten to cover. Chris says the rest of your curriculum will become very apparent as you finish week one.
The Rest Will Happen
If you get paid before you build and make sure you have a predictable way to generate on-profile leads and build your course based on the questions your audience is asking, Chris says the next step is not to sweat the rest. It will happen.
Steps to Pricing Your Group Coaching Program
Here are the three things you should consider when figuring out how to price your group coaching program.
- Consider the transformation and price accordingly
- Look at where your ideal customer is on their journey
- Test pricing and increase every few sales
Learn More
If you want to learn more about Chris and Group Coach Nation, click here.
For more on starting a group program or mastermind, check out this month’s Playbook!