Lesson 5:
Determine Your Fee
By Daniel Janal
Founder, Great Teleseminars
How much will your seminar cost?
Is it free or are you going to charge something?
The question here is how much money do you want to make? This is not a stupid question. What is your goal in all of this?
FREE. You're probably wondering if anyone offers free seminars, and if so, why would they? Teleseminars are great tools for prospecting. Coaches and sales trainers use this format to find new clients and introduce themselves to new audiences. Bill Brooks does free seminars for his sales training courses. He doesn't charge because he doesn't want any barrier to entry. He wants lots of people to come. If he charged, people might not come, or they might ask for their money back if they felt the session was more of a sales pitch and less of an information session. During the seminar you can introduce yourself, the concept, your benefits, what people can get from working with you, and then offer them the opportunity to buy your products or service
Another reason to not charge is because you might want to spread your message or you might want to use this format for networking or for group mentoring.
FEE-BASED. Now, let’s look at the fee because frankly that’s what a lot of you are here for and you all want to know how to make a lot of money.
I want to share a very important rule with you. I invented it and I call it the “50-20” rule. No, this is not the 80-20 rule that says 80 percent of your work comes from 20 percent of your efforts or 80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your clients. That’s a totally different thing. This is Dan’s “50-20” rule and the question is, very simply, this: "What is 50 times 20?" The answer is 1,000. So if you want to make $1,000 you need 50 people to give you $20 or you need 20 people to give you $50. Either way, you make $1,000.
Do you see where I’m going with this? The sky is the limit here.
How much can you charge for a teleseminar? Pricing ranges from free to $15 to $150 for a single, one- hour session. Multiple sessions or courses can cost hundreds or thousand of dollars.
Whatever you charge will depend on:
- The supply and demand of your topic. You can charge more money for material that is truly unique.
- The financial resources of your target audience. How much can your clients spend comfortably? Are you selling to individuals or corporations? While everyone has a budget, sole proprietors are spending their own money. Whatever they give you, they are taking away from their families! Corporations generally have training budgets and are happy to spend money with you.
Some companies also won't respect you or your seminar if you charge too little.
Pricing is a very mercurial element. The best advice we can offer is to test prices to find the point at which people are glad to pay.
You don't want to leave money on the table. I originally offered my teleseminars at $25. A competitor offered hers for $29, so I matched that price. I didn’t experience any fall-off in sales! So I had a 20 percent increase in income, roughly, by doing nothing more than raising prices.
One question you need to find the answer to is: What price will the market bear? The only way you will know is by testing.
Decide on a Format
The next thing you need to decide is the format. Are you going to do one session or a series of sessions? Both are e*ually valid options. The choice you make is based on your needs and goals.
Single Session. Let's look at the benefits of a single session. It has a low price so it helps the impulse purchase. It’s a short-term commitment both for you and for them. Let’s say you start to talk on this topic and you realize that not many people are interested in it. Then you are done. You haven’t made a long-term commitment. Some topics can be covered ade*uately in one session. You can also test more titles and do a wide variety of topics.
Disadvantages include the fact you need to start from beginning with marketing and sales for each event. You'll also have more administrative hassles from the multiplicity of seminars.
Multiple Sessions. On the other hand, you might want to offer multiple sessions. This can be two or more sessions. Most audio albums contain 2, 3 or 6 products.
The benefit is that you’re making one sale at a much higher price so there’s a bigger profit. Instead of selling six seminars six times to six different audiences, you are selling a six-seminar series one time to a targeted market. You also benefit by spending less time marketing one seminar instead of six seminars. However, you might need to create longer sales copy to convince people to spend more money.
You probably stand a better chance of turning teleseminar students into consulting clients, if that were one of your goals. I don’t want to go on record saying that that will definitely happen or that long terms are better for converting clients than short term. I haven’t done that test yet. But it seems to me that if they met with you four times over a four-week period there would be a lot more bonding opportunities there and they’d really get to know you. If there were interactive *uestions, you’d get to know them as well.
Another benefit is that when you finish a longer-term seminar series, you will have more products to sell. You can also package those products in one album or a bundle so you can sell them at a higher price. Also, you have the option to sell each session individually.
There aren't any real disadvantages to a long-term series. I suppose if the title doesn't sell well, then you might have not made the best use of your time.
Action Step:
What are you trying to do?
- Make money
- Prospect for new clients
- Build rapport with clients
- Other
What format is going to work?
- Single event
- Multiple event including _______ sessions over ________ weeks.
What price will you charge?
- Write your answer here: ________ per _______ (session, week, series).
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