#326: Should Health Coaches Put Prices on Their Website? Here’s What You Need to Know

Hello there, health coaches, thank you so much for joining me today. It's actually, it's kind of an interesting day. I joined a gym for the first time since Covid. Oh my gosh. I've been working out at home for years now. So instead of doing that, I usually do that. I usually do every single morning. It's like the very first thing today. I flip flopped my schedule around to try this. I'm going to start work earlier than take my kids over to the gym around four, because now I got a 13, almost 14-year-old. He wants to work out too, but it feels like bizarro land over here to turn the whole routine on its head. So we'll see how it goes. Thanks for joining me today. And one of the interesting things that happened while I was joining a gym is that I was considering two different gyms in my area and the first you have to call and they want you to visit and you take a tour and they give you the pricing verbally in the office.

And then the second, actually, it really surprised me, they had pricing listed on their website and you could just hit a button, boom, buy button, just join. And I was like, that's new for a gym, right? My whole life, I've probably belonged to a gym pre covid for 25 years or something. I never saw a gym offer a signup process like that before. But I guess these days though, you can just buy anything online. You can buy a car online these days. No haggling, no dealership. You just hit a button and it gets delivered. It's amazing. So it brought this question to mind, should health coaches be listing prices on our websites? So if you're here live with me in the Facebook group, go ahead and tell me in the chat, yes, no, maybe what do you think should pricing for private health coaching be published for the public to see on your website?

Carolyn is saying she's actually writing her 2025 pricing this week. So this is timely. I mean, there is always a lot of debate around this, so I want to explore both sides of the argument and then you can decide for yourself what you're going to do with that information, what you're going to do with these perspectives on pricing, because it's touchy, right? Pricing is probably the part none of us ever want to talk about. We certainly never want to talk about it when it comes to actually signing a client, having that conversation. Let's just talk about both sides. I'm going to give you my opinion too, but ultimately this is your business to make decisions for. Yes. And by the way, if you're thinking, well, what about my website, Michelle, I got to build it. I got to update whatever. Maybe you've been going back and forth about what to put on your website.
I bet there's some other elements of your site that are up in the air too, not just the pricing, but what else are you supposed to say on that thing? So you might want to check out my free website planner for health coaches. It's at healthcoachpower.com/planner. And whether you're going to be building your own site or maybe you're hiring somebody to help you, a designer, a developer, this is going to help you pull together everything you need for an effective health coaching website. So again, you can go ahead and grab my free website planner at healthcoachpower.com/planner. And Caroline says, we always have had prices on the website, but I'm considering not placing the fees on the website anymore. I'm not afraid of the talk. I think it may lead to more engagement. So here's someone who's had done one side of the coin, perhaps flipping to the other.

I can't wait to see how this turns out. Let's get into it. So let's start with the pros. All the reasons that yes, you might want to go ahead and put pricing on your website. And again, if you're here with me live, tell me in the chat, even if you're split, you don't know which way to go. What do you see as some of the pros an argument for publishing your pricing? Again, I've had this conversation maybe 5 million times in our Facebook group and with health coaches inside Healthy Profit University. I think the number one point I hear most often is about transparency, right? Valid point. We're not here to make a killing. We're not trying to trick anyone, right? We're health coaches and we're here to come from a place of service, so why not bring full transparency to your process? I love that.

And there's a level of certainty people have with that. They know there's not going to be any surprises, so that feels really good. In fact, I've heard health coaches say, well, I wouldn't hire anyone that didn't publish their prices. So is that true for you? In fact, it would be really great to just think about all the different service providers that you've hired or that you hire at the moment. Was there ever a time where you had to get on a call or have somebody visit your home or have some type of consultation before pricing was shared? Probably right? I know my cleaning service had to come look at my house before quoting a price. Same for my lawn maintenance crew, my travel agent, you guys, I'm preparing to go to Iceland in a couple of weeks and the travel agent had us book a call in the beginning to discuss our needs, and that's where she talked about her fees.

They were not on her website or of course, my new gym. So there's probably lots of examples in your life too where the prices are not publicly displayed and you actually have to contact someone before can get that information. But on the other hand, there was that other gym that shared rates right on their site when I purchased health insurance recently, those rates published online, I guess they have to be through the state of New York, any type of retail purchase like Amazon going to list pricing. So I think both types of buying are valid and what we want to consider is what's going to be most beneficial for health coaching services like specifically. And I'll have more to say about that in just a few minutes. Linda's saying, yes, I had a consultation before any contract signing and during the consultation it allowed me to decide whether this is the right provider for me or not.

Yeah, sure. And also, I don't know what kind of provider you were talking to Linda, but it allowed them to see if you were the right kind of client for them. I imagine if my cleaning service showed up at my house, and I mean, I don't know what kind of mess it would have to be for them to say, no thank you, but you can imagine if it was super extreme, they might say, this is not something that we can take on as a client. You actually, you need help with hoarding or whatever the issue is. Some providers or service providers might just back away and say, this isn't a good fit. So it's helpful on both ends. Now here's another reason the health coaches might want to share pricing on a website, and I mentioned this briefly earlier. We don't really like talking about money.

I mean, Carolyn over here said she's not concerned about the conversation. She feels comfortable with it. How many of you love to talk about pricing with a potential new client? We talk a lot on this podcast about overcoming that fear and how to do it better and how to feel more comfortable, and you got to get real in touch with your own money story. But it's a lot, especially when you're new to coaching. This is the difficult part of closing the deal is always naming that price. So what if we just list our prices online and then we can just point, see it's over there. That's what it says. That's the amount. Maybe we can avoid all those awkward conversations about money. I think that probably feels a lot better to coaches because people are going to come in, they're going to already know your pricing, and then what a relief.

We're not natural born salespeople. I get it. So here's what I have to say about that. For a low cost item, like a $20 ebook or something, it's fine to list pricing. It is expected, no argument. You're not going to book a call with someone who's interested in buying a $20 ebook. That doesn't make sense. But speaking for many years of experience, you're going to find, even with the $20 ebook, just sitting on your website says the title says the price, there's a buy button. It doesn't lead to many sales. There's a lot of different reasons for this. So for example, how much website traffic are you really getting? How many people are seeing this on your site? But an even bigger reason is because when somebody sees this sitting on your website, this $20 ebook, they're like, oh, cool, I'll grab that later. And then they're gone, right?

They leave, they forget, they never come back, they never buy the ebook. So you will always make more sales if there is an end date by which somebody has to act. That's one way to do it rather than having it always available. So if you are going to have pricing for something on your site, an example would be inside FastTrack, we sell clients into a five day jumpstart program. Now, the prices listed on a sales page, so it is published, but it is inexpensive and there is a clear deadline by which they have to join. So even when publishing prices is the normal thing to do, it's not necessarily going to get you that $20 sale or that $99 sale for your product or for your service. Not that many people are going to actually get that help without some extra marketing savvy. Most likely.

What I have experienced in my own health coaching business, what I hear from other health coaches is you put something up on your website and it just kind sits there collecting dust, and then it's not helping anybody. So that's what the low ticket item, something that is inexpensive. I'm sure you can see how that becomes an even bigger problem when we're talking about higher ticket offers like private coaching, which is available of course, year round generally, no deadline or urgency around it. It's just a matter of somebody deciding they want to hire you, right? And it's expensive. So even more reason that somebody might see it and go, huh, interesting. I'll think about it, or huh, that's expensive. And then they click away, they're gone. So here's where listing your prices can actually turn potential clients away as they make that snap decision that it's too expensive.

Now, of course, people buy things all the time that they feel are expensive. We're going to hear that objection time and time again from people. It's too expensive. It's too expensive. If you are here, live with me. Tell me in the chat, this will be fun. What's something you've paid for recently, even though you found it to be quite expensive? Example, I just bought a chicken. A whole chicken from a biodynamic farm that I order from the chicken was like $45. I know that's expensive for one chicken. I buy it anyway because I see the value in that kind of quality meat. I understand the value of the kind of farming that is going on to produce that chicken. So I'm like, it's a lot and I kind of grip my teeth, but I buy that $45 chicken anyway. Not everyone's going to make that same decision, but it is worth it to me.
I really understand what goes into it. Now, other people might spend $200 for a seat upgrade on an airline even when they think it's expensive because they've been on an airplane before. They know how the leg room can be. It's worth it to them. Not me. I'm five foot three. But to somebody else, it becomes very valuable. So the point is people definitely definitely pay for expensive purchases all the time if they of course have the money available to them in some shape or form, and B, they see the value. Now, here's the kicker. Nobody can understand the value of health coaching just by reading your website. They just can't because this is coaching and what is coaching? It's a human interaction. There's no picture you can share that. Someone's going to go, oh, now I get it. There's no bulleted list you can write that can explain or demonstrate the power of coaching.

All we can put in a bulleted list is like this many sessions. This is how long they are. This is the dates, but nothing can explain how you're going to feel having a conversation with this coach, that life-changing power of those conversations. Here's another kicker. Most people haven't experienced health coaching before. We've all eaten chicken. So we all have some frame of reference around buying an expensive chicken. We've all flown on a plane that didn't have a lot of leg room. So we inherently understand what that upgrade fee is all about. We have context for making these buying decisions, but with coaching, people generally have absolutely no context. I mean, how many times has somebody asked you, well, what is health coaching anyway? They don't know. They're likely in contemplation, that contemplation phase when they arrive on your website. So they're a little ambivalent knocking them over with a hefty price tag at this point.

Too soon, too soon, I think you are sabotaging what could have been a very successful path for this particular person. They come to your site, they become interested in what you do, they want to talk about it. They want to keep dipping their toe in. They could become a client for sure, but too early in the process. Whoa, whoa, whoa, how much does it cost? All right, let me think about something else. Remember, coaching is a human interaction. So you need to offer coaching. Coaching within the context of a human interaction. It's not like selling a pair of socks on Amazon. You are selling your own personal service, your own personal interaction with this individual.

So by the time someone is on the phone or a Zoom call with you for a consultation, if you do it that way, instead they're more in a preparation stage. They are more serious if they've taken time to book something on the calendar, if they're taking time to speak with you, they're getting ready to act. That's a more appropriate part to put up that what can feel like a big brick wall of like, well, this is what it's going to cost, right? I mean, obviously for some people money is nothing. They can find thousands of dollars in their couch cushions, but for most people they're going to go, oh, okay. Or, oh, I got to think about that. Let's give them that point a little bit later once they've already walked down the path a bit more. This is why we book calls. Private coaching is pricey, no doubt about it.

And people often have questions or they need some reassurance that they're making a good decision. And secondly, because we need to demonstrate our value in the context of that conversation. We do not often think of it this way, but that sales call or that consultation or discovery call or whatever you call it, that's part of coaching, we're trying to help this person figure out for themselves what their next best step is. That's really all it's, we never have to be worried about being salesy or pushy because just like you're going to coach them through making other decisions, you start here. You start with that very first call. So they are actually experiencing coaching and whether they come out of that call having hired you or not, they're going to go, huh, well that was good. That was helpful. What I think is listing prices on your website is great for people who never really intended on hiring you at all.

For people who are just looking, they're just kicking tires, they see the prices and it's going to validate the voice in their head that's like, nah, don't need this. Too expensive, moving right along. But listing prices on your website, it's not great for people who are or could be serious about potentially hiring you. It acts as a barrier to them moving forward. It certainly isn't giving them a reason to go, yeah, I definitely want to do it now. Oh, I got to pay a couple thousand dollars. Yeah, let me go for it. I mean, it's going to give everybody pause and they can almost stop before they've started. So in my opinion, listing prices is to be avoided not just for your business or for the sake of earning, but for the sake of this potential client getting the help that they want and need.

We don't want to throw up roadblocks that make them go scurrying away scared, and I'm going to throw in two other practical reasons to not publish your prices, but I would love to hear what you guys are thinking about all this. So here's one I don't know about you guys, but in the beginning of my coaching practice, and when I say the beginning, I probably mean the first several years I was experimenting with different pricing and packages. I wanted to know what was going to sell well. I wanted to know what I enjoyed in terms of how long to work with the client, what seemed to be getting the best results, et cetera. It would be pretty awkward if somebody said, Hey, last week your package was X amount, I noticed on your website, but now it's higher or now it's lower, or now it's three months instead of six months.

And you're like, so when you keep your pricing private, you will never have to explain yourself. These changes, which are very, very natural as you get comfortable with your offering, they can just live in here. Nobody's going to have to know about that. If you offer something and it bombs and nobody wants it, you can just change it. This is your business and it's a beautiful thing that you do not have to be public about every step along the way. Here's something else, keep in mind that private coaching is a premium service and you do not need to accept every client that shows interest. So if someone comes along, let's say they have health issues that require help that's far, far out of your scope of practice, do you want them to just hit a button and buy your coaching program? No. Like we mentioned earlier, you are the service provider.

In this case, you might say this isn't a good fit. I'm going to encourage you to do that probably 100 times more than you're doing it now because you're probably not doing it at all. Or maybe you've done it once. You need to be interviewing potential clients and turning away anyone that is going to be problematic for any reason. It doesn't matter what they pay you if it's going to be a real energy suck over time. So if you don't want to work with someone, you don't offer them your program, you don't explain your pricing, you don't do any of that, right? Only for people that are good fit. So if someone's coming to you for all the wrong reasons, they don't get the offer. They don't need to know your pricing. That's another reason why you never have to tell anyone your pricing before having a conversation with them because you get to decide if you're going to invite them.

It's in a way, it's like dating you, just having this first date with someone. You're not going to ask them if they want to marry you until you find out that it's a good fit. So if they're asking everything about what it's going to be like to marry you, no, no, no, no, no. First we just need to talk about what's going on here. I might not make that offer. So then pricing never needs to be part of the conversation at all. If it's just not a good fit and then they wouldn't have seen your prices and it's just a moot point, you can redirect them elsewhere. Carolyn is saying, before my own business, I was selling packages for, I was going to say 49 99, but just for anybody listening, that's with no decimal 0.4, 9, 9, 9, 9, like $5,000. People knew upfront as it was on the website, I was selling 13 to 15 packages a month.

It often doesn't matter what the fees are, clients are after what we can offer them, but she says, I'm leaning towards not posting fees. So for some people, like I mentioned earlier, $5,000, they can find it in their couch cushions. They can just reach into their Tesla in between the seats and they can pull out $5,000, in which case it's not a barrier for them, but for a lot of people it will be, right? So there's target markets to consider. Who are you advertising your services to? But again, there's just no reason that they need to know that upfront. Well, I need to know upfront is that you can help them. Like you said, clients are after what we can offer them. Have the conversation. $5,000 starts to sound a lot different after you just had an amazing conversation with Carolanne and the feeling in your body is so much lighter and you're like, oh, this was great.

Suddenly, suddenly you can find $5,000 too. Jenny says, what about posting a range of prices from 500 to 5,000? Is that still bad? I don't think any of it's bad. I think it just has the potential to be confusing and not helpful. I'm not sure that is helpful to anyone immediately just going to be like, well, what can I get for 500? And this is not the market. We are not haggling over apples. We want them to go in and just give you the story You need to be able to assess, can I help this person? And then do you really have programs that range from 500 to $5,000? In which case you should tell them which program is the appropriate one for them. You don't need to mention the other price points. That's another reason. If you guys have multiple offers, you have to have that consultation to find out which of your packages and programs are appropriate for what this person is trying to accomplish.

Missy says, I'm a pharmacist leaning towards career change. Oh, hi Missy. So that's a big difference. When we're working, and I don't even know what your question is yet, but when we're working in a more standard medical model and now moving into the holistic health world, she says, after listening so far, I would not post pricing. I think coaching is personal and they need to see what is available and they need to see what is available in the sense of, again, having that not like, well, let me look at Missy's website. Oh, well, her coaching package is $2,000. Now I'm going to look at Jenny's website. Oh, hers is 1500. That's a better deal. This isn't how people shop. People don't shop around for health coaching the way that they shop around for even a car. There's no comparison. There's no being able to compare Missy's package to Jenny's package to Carol LAN's package because people generally don't know about enough health coaches to do that in the first place.

But even if they did, our packages and our expertise and what we bring to the table, it's just apples to oranges. So it's not really helpful. What you're probably thinking, two things I figure coming out of this episode. I want to address both of them before we wrap up. The first is, how should you go about signing clients and talking about money, if not with the pricing on the page of your site. And second, if you're not putting pricing on your website, what should go on it? So what's the most effective way to sign clients? Typically, you get that book a free call that everybody puts on their site, and this is not the best solution, but it is far better because you are guiding potential clients into a conversation. And at that point, you can showcase the value of your services. Yes, but to really do this right, requires more than a prospective client hitting a button and popping themselves onto your calendar because you're going to get so many cancellations.

You're going to get the no shows, very, very common. And you're also going to get that situation where they show up just to pick your brain just because you let them. They just gave them time on your calendar so freely, sure they'll take a free session, they'll come pick your brain all day long. And that's why inside FastTrack, I do teach a very specific sales recipe. It starts before anyone books a call with you and then takes you through the whole process. And this method has an outrageous success rate. I see it like our coaches who've never held a consultation before. They're able to go into their calls and they come out with a new client like it's nothing. So we're not going to get into all the nuts and bolts of that today. But suffice it to say there are big benefits to not publishing your prices.

And if you want to learn more about the process we use inside FastTrack, you can go to healthcoachpower.com/blueprint. And what about your website? You guys? Do you have a website? I'm sure some of you do, some of you don't. Some of you probably have website that you hate. I hear that a lot. What should be on that site? I'm going to give you a quick list right now. Go through the greatest hits of the best Health Coach website. So the first element is you, the human element, because you are selling a human interaction. So if I arrive on your site, I want to see you, I want to hear your voice come through in the copy. I want to understand who you are, right? Because this is a coaching relationship with you. Second thing you need on your website is to reflect your reader or your potential client and their story.

It's almost like you're having a conversation with someone, even though it's a static website, your site needs to communicate this to this person and let them know you understand exactly where they're coming from next, you need a clear call to action that people are likely to take because you can have a call to action like buy my ebook for $20 and nobody's doing it. You can have the book a call button, which again, very low success rate that people are actually going to go and click that button and book a call. Your best bet when you have a visitor to your website is to offer an evergreen lead magnet. So something for free in exchange for an email address. They're much more likely to do this. And then you have them on your mailing list so you don't lose them. Once they click away from your website, any other scenario, they click away and you've lost them, right?

Anyway, those book a consult buttons, I just wanted to tell you, they kind of scream, I'm desperate for clients. Here's my whole calendar. Please just pick a time and there's a better way to do it. So anyway, you want to call to action, and I really prefer that you're collecting email addresses. Your website is a relationship building tool. It's not a pricing list. So I want to remind you again that you can grab my free website planner to help you out when you're structuring your website. Either if you're building it yourself or you're hiring someone. In any case, this is going to be very helpful. It's at healthcoachpower.com/planner. So today we talked about the pros and cons of listing pricing on your website and why consultations allow you to better communicate value and connect with clients as a human. And if you remember only one thing I would say make it this, your coaching business, it's about building relationships also. That's the key to all good marketing. That's going to be the key to all your repeat customers and referrals. It's all about building relationships. It's not just making sales. You are not, not try to sell like we're Amazon either. Thank you for tuning in today. If you have a health coach friend who is struggling to find clients, or maybe they're working on their website, share this episode with them, it's definitely going to be an eyeopener. And thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you all next week. Take care.