What to Ask Yourself When Listing Prices On Your Website

By Kelsa Dickey

When financial coaches ask me a question about should I or should I not do X for my financial coaching business, my answer is usually it depends. That response goes for the question of whether or not to put your prices on your website. It can be a good idea or a bad idea, and your yes or no response depends on where you are in your business and what’s best for your business growth.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to putting your prices on your website.

1. Let Them Know What They’re Getting Into with Your Prices

The first school of thought is to yes, put your prices on your site. By listing your prices, you allow the buyer to qualify or disqualify themself right away. If they see your price and immediately think there’s no way I’d ever pay that amount, you don’t have to hop on a sales call with someone who would likely never had said yes to your services in the first place.

The downside of course – especially with financial coaching – is that the price might scare them away. They could see it and think there’s no way I could ever afford that coach, when in fact because of your stellar coaching skills, they actually could. But if they disqualify themselves only on price, you never get the chance to sell them on your service which they might truly need, no matter the price.

2. Sell Only One Step Out With Your Website Pricing

This school of thought revolves around letting them know what the next step is and how much it costs, but not anything beyond that. So for instance, on our financial coaching website, we list only our discovery session price. We have a long-term coaching program, but the price for long-term coaching isn’t anywhere on our website. We just list the Eureka session and its price. People can book that service and know exactly what that cost is from our website, but no services beyond that are listed.

When You Shouldn’t List Prices on Your Website

There are two scenarios though where it might not make sense to list your prices on your site. Leave that number off your site if you’re just starting out as a financial coach, and the only service you offer is a one-time discovery session and/or if your clients would not be able to afford your discovery session fee without your help.

If your typical client would not be able to afford a couple hundred dollar unexpected expense, don’t list your prices. They will likely only see dollar signs and not the value of your coaching. Instead, you’d direct a visitor to your site to book a free Q&A call so you can qualify them as a potential client and explain the value of your service there, not on your website. Don’t let your website do the heavy lifting of selling your services in this scenario.

If you’re a new coach and only working to get clients in for beta or discovery sessions, don’t list your price. Since there isn’t a step beyond your discovery session, you would want to list that service. That would be selling a step too far. Direct them to your Q&A call where you’ll give your price but also explain the value of what they get from paying that price.

My Preference for Listing Prices on My Website

I prefer the second option for my website, but mostly your ideal client will be the biggest factor. For us, our ideal client is smart and educated, stressed about money, but not so much that they don’t have any money to spend. There is room in their budget to hire a coach and they know they could be doing more with their money than they are, so coaching seems like an investment, not so much another expense.

Because of their circumstances, they don’t need to hire a financial coach. They do not have major pain points when it comes to their finances nor are they in a crisis. They are smart so they keep trying to fix things on their own. Hiring us means that they have to want coaching, not need financial coaching.

And part of our coaching process from the initial conversation with a client to the time they make their commitment, our job is to help them see that they do want financial coaching and that it’s worth the investment. Otherwise, they would just keep trying to make progress on their own and be content with trying new things.

From talking with a lot of coaches over the years, most of the time their ideal clients would assume that they can’t afford coaching once they see the price. On top of that, they don’t fully understand what financial coaching is. This is why I think setting up pricing the way teach it in the Financial Coach Academy and do it for our coaching business is the way to go. 

You can learn more about our financial coach training program here. And if you’re reading this blog post and thinking, “Oh man, if I don’t list my prices it means I have to have more sales conversations. I hate sales conversations.” Consider this: One of the modules we teach in the Academy is selling with integrity. It’s one of the most popular modules because selling can be scary whether you’ve got your prices on your website or not.