118 | Should you put prices on your website?

0:00 Hi there! Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman, and in this podcast I share tips, tidbits, and resources that might be helpful for herbalists and nutritionists who are in private practice. I got a question from Cora about whether I have published anything in my newsletter or in the podcast about whether to post your prices on your website. And I've addressed this in different workshops and in my Monday Mentoring community, but I don't think I've done a specific podcast episode on this. And if I have, it hasn't been for a while. So great question, Cora. Let me address it right here. The short version is, yes, I think it makes sense to publish your prices on your website. So ta-da, the end. That is a 38-second podcast episode.

0:41 But I will elaborate a little bit just to give you my thinking, because I know there are people who disagree with this, who feel that you shouldn't publish your prices and that you should try to have a call with people so that you can, meet them in person and share prices in that context. All right, so here's why I believe pretty strongly in publishing your prices. Number one, because if the price is there, then people can self-screen if it is not what they're looking for. And we always get in the mindset of, oh, it might be too much for people. Some people might be actually looking for somebody more expensive. There are people who want a more comprehensive thing, who want somebody who's at the top of their.

1:21 You know, price range, they want a sort of a high end experience. And they might look at your price and be like, Oh, no, that's not really what I want. I want like a full service, you know, all in kind of thing. So either way, up or down, your price can help screen people in or out. All right. So if we think about like, Oh, I'm not going to tell them the price because I want to meet them. The implication there is that you are then going to try to convince them to use your service, even if they're a little bit outside of their comfort range, when it comes to the pricing in either direction. I don't really love that as a way to start out a relationship. As a potential client, there's always that thing hanging over your head. If you don't know the price, you're thinking, ooh, am I going to really love this person and then find out it's eight bazillion dollars to work with them?

2:06 And then it's an awkward situation. I'm going to have to say no. They're going to pressure me. I'm not good under pressure. I might commit to something that I don't actually want to do or that's not in my budget. It just starts the whole thing off awkwardly and that's hanging over at their head. So I don't love that. I don't love that. And I also think it's just not a good use of time. If your consult is $5,000 and the person was looking for something closer to the range of $75, it just doesn't make sense for both of you to take time out of your schedule to have a meeting, only for them to find out, oh, this is 800 times more than I was thinking about paying. And it really, truly isn't even possible. So I just think, why don't you put the price on the website? If for some reason you don't have a specific price, like maybe you custom design packages based on people's need, at least give them a range.

2:52 Like my packages run from $500 to $2,000 or whatever it is. That way people can look at it and see, is this approximately something that I would be comfortable paying? Even if it's a little bit of a stretch, let them make that decision. And then the only thing left for them to decide is, is this person a good fit? If you want to have a call then that you can determine, do I work the way that this person, you know, the type of support this person wants? Are we a good fit? Might I need to refer them to somebody else? Do I have an opening in the range that they were looking to get started? All those kinds of things. You can certainly work all that out in a discovery call, but if they already know the price, then that's kind of out of the way, and you're just working on...

3:33 Determining whether you can help them, whether you're the best person to help them, and so forth, and going from there. So I think it just removes a lot of pressure. It starts the relationship off on a, foot that feels like you're giving them information, you are trusting them to make a decision to know if it's worth pursuing just from a financial standpoint, and then you can chime in after that. So that's my, those are my thoughts on that. You also sometimes, if you have multiple services and packages, there have been times where I can't remember what I charge. I have to actually look it up myself on the website. So again, it's nice of the people have seen it before. You're not always on the hook to just immediately pull off the top of your head how much all the different variations of what you do cost. So that's a tertiary benefit, but just one to think about.

4:20 All right. So in summary, in my opinion, put it up there on your website. As I've talked about in a different podcast, you can change your prices anytime. So feel free to take your best guess, see how it feels. And if you want to change it next week, you can. If you want to adjust it, whatever, that's fine. But I do recommend putting your current prices on your website so that you can start your relationship off with transparency and trust that the client can make a good decision about that for themselves. Okay that's helpful thank you so much Cora for sending in this question, if you are not getting my practitioner notes every Thursday in your inbox I would love to have you join us there I send them out once a week it's different material than what we cover here in the podcast and you can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com I'd love to send them to you this coming Thursday, all right thank you so much for listening I hope you have an amazing day and I really appreciate the work that you do.