Dear Rebecca,
Thanks for a great conference call again last week-you are so inspiring!
I must admit though that I find your idea of doing a course of treatments at the same price as single treatments, rather difficult to come to terms with. With my facial toning treatments, I feel that I was able to get a few signed up because I greatly reduced the price to make it much more attractive to prospective clients because of the increased value i.e. firstly £225 for 10 sessions instead of £360.

The only thing I could add for free would be the collagen gel for home use worth £25 and a holiday voucher for £100 discount with many travel companies which Embody sent me from a cancelled promotion. Even with these, I can’t see clients eagerly paying £360!
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Best wishes, Cynthia, www.natural-radiance.net

Dear Cynthia,

Thank you for your lovely comments I love what I do and it is so wonderful to know that sharing what I’ve done helps others too.

To answer your question, everyone’s clients are slightly different so the only way you will know for sure is to try it yourself. But I can assure you that if you add enough value in a different way, they will pay full price. It just depends on what your particular clients will respond best to.

You could try the collagen gel and travel vouchers. Or you could ask some other alliance businesses to put in vouchers for their businesses (that both give your clients a gift and promote them). Or perhaps you could write a short guide about something that you could include as a mini-book.

Or if you don’t have time to write something, another idea is to download some free audio recording software and get a friend or close client to agree to you recording a conversation with them then include it as a free CD. You could pick someone that has a common problem (like ageing or stress) and then you do a full consultation with them finishing with giving them an action plan of how they can attack whatever the problem is for the best results.

To do audio recordings I use something called Audacity… really easy to use and is a free download from their homepage http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/. If you do this, don’t worry about sounding professional on CD, just speak normally and give the kind of advice you usually would with clients. The key is to be relaxed, listen, question and then give genuine advice.

Chances are your clients will love this. Most people love a good bit of reality TV and audio is no different. Not necessarily in the Big Brother type format but think of all the property type programs where they do a consultation and then they dispense advice/help and you get to see what happens. Your clients will be reassured other people have the same worries as them, will continue to reaffirm you in their minds as the expert and will be fascinated to hear all your advice.

The sky is the limit in terms of ideas of what you could include. Think outside the box. It might help to sit down with a friend and do some brainstorming as to what your type of clients will value?

If you can include items in the package that they really want, they will pay full price without even blinking an eye.

Regardless of how good services are, when they are discounted, clients value them less. Hard work and great service deserves rewarding. So long as clients feel they are getting good value as well as good service they will happily pay for it and continue to come back.

Good luck! Do let me know what you come up with and how you get on.

Best wishes
Rebecca