The TV was on in a room I was in the other day and it was showing a daytime TV programme which involved 3 interior designers and antique experts each buying a house gift for a specific family. Each expert had a different monetary amount to spend buying their gift.

The family can only choose one gift to keep, which they do before finding out who brought the gift and how much that expert had to spend. As part of the show we got to see the families discussion about which gift was worth what price tag.

It was interesting to see what they valued in line with their lifestyle, personal preferences, tastes and needs. The value that the family was finding in each gift and their guess at a price tag was not in line with the actually amount that it cost.

So how does this apply to coaching? One of the things I often see coaches doing, particularly those just starting out, is deciding upon their price purely by looking at how much they want to charge per hour.

I’ve attended trainings in the past which taught that the way to decide upon your price is to decide upon the monthly/annual income you want from coaching and then the number of coaching sessions you want to carry out in that time. Dividing the financial amount you want by the number of coaching sessions gives you a price to charge per coaching session.

While this can be a useful piece of information to give an indication about the practicalities about the number of hours you want to be coaching for etc. I have to be honest, it’s not my preferred method of pricing a package.

There is lots that can be said about pricing and I want to focus primarily today on what value your coaching is worth. However, as I have mentioned the exercise above I wanted to briefly add an extra point. Interestingly, on the trainings I’ve seen this done there was no mention of being aware of what outgoings that you have in connection with your coaching. If you are planning on running a profitable coaching practice this information is useful to know!

However, as the family on the tv demonstrated with their house gifts, the “value is in the eye of the beholder.”

I invite you to consider the value that your coaching brings to your ideal clients, both emotionally, financially and practically. As well as what it costs them emotionally, financially and practically if they don’t choose to work with you.