Paid consulting and coaching calls are a powerful way to enhance your income as a freelancer. Instead of directly performing a service for a client, you use your time to answer questions and provide direction. Further, a paid consulting call allows you to impact a client’s business strategy significantly. That’s why a one-on-one coaching or consulting call can be pretty profitable.
Why start offering 1:1 Paid Consultation and Coaching calls?
Before creating a paid coaching or consulting service offering, it is essential to understand the advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of these calls include the potential for higher income compared to directly performing freelance service. In addition, one on one coaching calls provide the opportunity for you to share insights based on your expertise. Since you are offering direction based on your current knowledge, less preparation time is needed.
However, one-on-one coaching and consulting calls have some disadvantages. First, clients are usually only willing to pay for advice in this format when an individual has significant expertise. If you are getting started as a freelancer or consultant, it may not make sense to offer paid 1:1 calls. Second, one-on-one calls have limited leverage – there is a limit to how many calls you can book per day. If you are looking to scale your income further, you may find it worthwhile to create and sell digital products. For tips on creating digital products, see our post on how to sell digital products.
One-On-One Coaching and Consulting: Three Examples To Inspire You
When you develop a significant level of expertise, you can charge significant prices for your one-on-one services. Take inspiration from these three consultants and coaches as you design your service.
- Elise Montgomery: 6 Month Business Coaching Service
Offering a single one-hour coaching call isn’t the correct answer for every situation. Elise Montgomery sells her coaching services in a six-month package offered at two prices. Clients can receive a $500 discount by paying the entire fee upfront for $5,500 or pay in 6 monthly installments of $1,000. The coaching process starts with a one-hour deep dive call into a client’s business and then transitions to weekly 30-minute video calls.
Montgomery’s expertise includes a track record of business success as a realtor and coaching over 75 highly effective clients.
2. Mandy Brahnam Offers $500 Real Estate Consulting Calls
Based in Midland, Ontario, Brahnam offers $500 per hour paid consulting calls to help clients with real estate. Specifically, Brahnam helps clients with arranging joint venture deals in real estate. Arranging a joint venture is a way to bring together two or more people to bring a real estate deal to life.
3. Chris Ferdinandi Helps Software Developers
It can be difficult to get answers as a software developer when facing a complex problem. Chris Ferdinandi offers one-on-one video calls with clients to help with a range of programming questions and issues. The 1-on-1 coaching calls last for 60 minutes and can be used to address technical matters (e.g., how to approach a project) or career programs. In addition to the 1-on-1 call, Ferdinandi offers a package of free digital bonus products such as “Live Code Sessions,” where he shows how to create JavaScript projects from scratch.
Who can offer 1:1 paid consultation and coaching calls?
While anybody can offer one-on-one paid consulting and coaching calls, there are a few questions to consider first.
Start with critically reviewing your expertise and experience. For example, software expert Chris Ferdinandi has developed deep expertise in JavaScript, including writing ebooks and creating a podcast. Therefore, potential clients can easily see his substantial expertise in JavaScript. If you are at a beginner level of expertise, offering a paid coaching or consulting service might not be the right move. Instead, focus your effort on selling your expertise as a freelancer.
The next question to consider is whether there is demand for the service you plan to offer. Generally speaking, it is best to focus on areas where there is proven demand. There are many types of business coaches and consultants. That is a good starting point if you can solve a painful business problem! On the other hand, there may be minimal demand for a “growing an award-winning rose in your home garden” service.
While market demand and your experience matter, you will ultimately need to test demand by offering your service to the public. In the next section, we’ll cover how to get started.
How to get started with offering 1:1 Paid Consultation and Coaching calls?
When you first start offering paid 1:1 consulting and coaching calls to clients, there are a few points to keep in mind.
- Solve A Specific Problem.
The more specific you can be, the better! For example, imagine you were looking for help in a sales career and had two coaching services to choose from. The first coach said, “I can help any salesperson increase their sales!” The second coach said, “I specialize in helping new salespeople make their first ten sales.” The second example is much more specific and exciting for a new salesperson.
- Set Expectations For What Can Be Achieved.
There are limitations to what you can achieve in a coaching or consulting call, especially if you offer a single 1-hour call. Avoid making unreasonable promises to transform a person’s career business in one hour completely. Such a promise is tough to fulfill, incredibly when relatively inexperienced.
- Get Testimonials.
Take a look at Ferdinandi’s coaching call webpage – there are multiple testimonial quotes from several people he has worked with. When possible, include quotes from people you have worked with in the past in your one on one coaching web page. If you have no testimonials of any kind to offer, you might not be ready to offer a coaching service.
- Start With A Competitive Price
As a general starting point, start with a price of $100 for a one-hour consulting call. Additional market research may show you to charge more in some cases. However, a reasonable starting point is $100 per hour – primarily if you work with business clients.
Use fast market research to create your offer
Don’t get discouraged by potential competition. As a new coach or consultant, you can learn a lot from how other people present their paid consultation services. You can conduct all the market research you need to get started in about two hours.
- Search for competitors on Google and other search engines
Use the following types of searches:
- NICHE coaching call (e.g., real estate coaching call)
- NICHE coaching program (e.g., sales coaching program)
- NICHE consulting call (e.g., web developer consulting call)
Tip: Browse clarity.fm for inspiration! Clarity is a website where business experts offer their expertise through paid phone calls. If you are interested in offering business coaching or consulting calls, browsing Clarity FM for inspiration is a great idea.
2. Review competitor websites for the following elements
Packages and Pricing: Check how the person packages their pricing – is it a flat rate for a one-hour call, or is it a more involved package?
3. Testimonials: Check how the person presents testimonials from past clients
Website: Go beyond the person’s coaching or consulting page and look at the rest of their website. In particular, look for proof of their expertise in the form of books, podcasts, articles, and videos.
4. Social Media: Review how each business promotes its services on social media.
After reviewing 3 to 5 competing offers, you can stop gathering research and turn your focus to coming up with your unique twist. For example, you might find multiple real estate coaching services. Your expertise might be geographic (e.g., real estate sales coaching for New York agents), based on experience level (e.g., real estate sales coaching for new salespeople), or based on strategy (e.g., real estate sales consulting using TikTok).
Pricing your paid calls and consultation
Pricing your paid consultation and coaching call services requires research, testing, and marketing expertise—experiment with using the following options to come up with your price.
- Flat Hourly Rate.
The easiest way to price your paid consulting or coaching service is to charge a flat hourly rate. For example, career coach Jen Polk offers a 45-minute consultation career advice consulting session for $150. If you’re just getting started with individual consulting or coaching, a flat rate is a great starting point.
- Offer A Package.
In many cases, your clients will have complex needs and problems. For example, imagine you are a newly promoted executive, and your communication skills need work. In that situation, signing up for a longer-term coaching package may be a good choice. Marie Moran and Company offers a “gold package” that includes an introductory meeting, interviews with other people, written reports, and 16 hours of coaching sessions for $20,995.
- Increase Perceived Value With Bonus Items.
There are limits to how much you can cover in a short coaching call. To make your price feel more affordable, you may want to offer bonus items. In particular, it is wise to offer digital files as a bonus because they are easy to offer. For instance, JavaScript expert Chris Ferdinandi offers several bonus items, including a “Web Developer Career Guide” and the “Vanilla JS Projects Bundle,” including free templates, tips, and tutorials.
If you have already created a lead magnet for your website, you may have the foundation for a bonus item. For example, let’s say that you offer a free video course as a lead magnet. In that case, consider creating a supplement to the video course like a checklist or template. You can then offer the video course and checklist as free bonus items for coaching clients.
- Use Different Prices For Different Services.
No rule states you must price all of your consulting and coaching services in the same way. For example, life coach Wendy Pauls requires a minimum three-month commitment for coaching. However, there are different prices based on frequency and duration. Clients who want a weekly one-hour coaching session pay $350 per month with a three-month minimum. As an alternative, clients can also pay $199 per month for 30-minute weekly coaching sessions (also with a three-month minimum).
Aside from time commitment, you might also charge different prices based on the complexity or speed of the service. If you offer a 1:1 service where you review a client’s business website or documents in depth before the call, you may be able to charge a higher price because of the additional preparation you put into the call.
- Consider Offering A Launch Discount.
When you launch your coaching and consulting service, you may not have testimonials or much experience. In that case, offering a launch discount for your new one-on-one service makes sense. However, make sure you apply firm limits to the discount (e.g., “this 50% off discount is limited to the first ten clients”) to reinforce that it is a temporary price reduction.
- Offer Your New Service To Your Warm Network.
When you first design a new service, it is best to offer it to people who already know and like you. For instance, let’s say that you are an experienced software developer who has worked with freelance clients for the past two years. During that experience, you may have noticed that many clients may make mistakes during the project planning phase. To prevent that mistake, you decide to offer a 1:1 consulting service called “Planning Your Software Project In 60 Minutes” to help clients create a more feasible plan.
Once you have the idea for the service offering developed, email past clients and invite them to book a call. The sales process should be relatively easy because past clients already like you. After performing the service a few times, consider asking for a testimonial and raising your prices.
Offer One Time and Monthly Paid Consultation and Coaching Call using CheckYa
Step 1: Login to CheckYa, From your CheckYa profile page, click on ‘Offer Free/Paid Sessions’.
Step 2: Choose the ‘set the price per consultation’ option, add your price, enter the details about the call in the description, add the link, and hit save!
Your potential customers can now easily book a Paid Consulting and Coaching Call with you via CheckYa.
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