#95. Adding Packages to Your Client Offers Can Help Your Practice. Here's Why.

Packages are often misunderstood in our industry, but the truth is, they can really make a difference for your private practice.

In fact, learning how to strategically add pricing packages to your work can boost profits, enhance the value of what you offer, and make life easier for your clients – all  at the same time.

What’s not to love about that?

So let’s talk about this. Today, we’ll explore 3 types of packages you could create, and how they could help.

We’ll talk about what each of those types are, and I’ll share several examples of how they can be used.

I’ll also tell you about the time that being able to put together the right kind of package for the moment helped me make a BIG transition in my own practice without losing a single client.

Yeah - this is a skill worth learning.

Give it a listen.

~Wendy
  Xoxo

P.S. Are you already using packages in your practice? If so, shoot me an email and tell me about it. How has that been working for you??

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THIS WEEK’S HOMEWORK:

Play with this. Based on the concepts I shared in this episode, sit down and sketch out a messy first draft (or second) for what a possible package might look like in your practice.

Then - want some feedback? Send it to me in the body of an email (not as an attachment!) and I’ll send some notes back within 48 hours.

No, there’s no charge for this. My gift to you… Send your notes to Wendy@WendyPittsReeves.com.

I’ll be looking for it! 👀

_______________

FREE RESOURCE

Are you cramming client hours into a packed day? Working hard but feel like you're still not making any money? With decades of experience, I’ve found a LOT of ways to boost your bottom line, and I’ve pulled some of my favorites together into a free guide for you.

Download this today, check out what’s inside, and tell me which one you’ll try first. :)

31 Practical Ways to Increase Cash Flow In Your Private Practice

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode number 95. So I've been talking about different ways to add various revenue streams to your practice, right? Well, let's talk about packages, y'all. What are they? How do they work? How do you fit one into your regular services? Or even can you? Is this kind of a crazy idea? I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's what we're going to talk about today, so stay tuned.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered, but people forward. This is the Ideal Practice Podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Ideal Practice Podcast. This is Wendy, wendy Pitts Reeves, your host, and I'm so happy to be hanging out with you guys today.

Speaker 1: 1:22

We are heading into my favorite time of the year, so I'm going to be talking about that, I'm sure because I am so much happier with warmer days Now. I was just this morning on a call with one of my team members, who is in Australia who is complaining because it's really hot where she is, and I thought you know I'm excited because things are warming up. But gosh, we are on different ends of the world and our experiences are different, which I love, by the way. I never, ever, ever get tired of that. I have folks who I work with literally all over the world in different ways, and it is still like I'm old enough that the magic never leaves that I can hop onto a call and see on camera in live time someone else's face and have a real conversation when they are literally on the other side of the planet. It is amazing to me. I never get tired of that. And I have team members who are scattered out from the Philippines to the Netherlands, to Australia, to Hawaii and Gali. It's just fun. I love that. How about you? Do you ever find magic in your practice these days, or just in what it means to run a business? We have so many opportunities now that just were not even imaginable back when I started my practice. It really is a whole new world and I never, ever get tired of that. I really just can am kind of always amazed. Well, let's talk about. Let's talk about something else that's going to make a difference in your practice, and that is the addition of packages or the concept of a package.

Speaker 1: 3:04

There have been lots of ways that this has played a big role in my own business over the years, and over the coming months I'm going to actually come back to this topic a few times because there's a lot of different ways that we can look at it. But today I'll tell you just one quick little story you guys have heard me talk about when I made the decision to step away from an insurance based counseling practice to a self pay based counseling practice. That's hard to say. There was a particular day in a particular moment when I had had enough and I sort of drew a line in the sand. And today's the day I'm not doing this anymore. And when that happened, when I reached that point and made that decision, one of the reasons I was able to make that transition as smoothly and successfully as I did was because I already had. No, I didn't have, but I knew that I would be creating packages for my counseling clients. I actually didn't have it in place at that point, but what I did that very day? That like it was literally first thing that morning, on a very full day, when I had a very full week of clients, 99% of whom were insurance based.

Speaker 1: 4:19

When I said today's the day, I'm not going to do this anymore, I began telling clients about it that day and one of the things I said was don't worry, it's going to be all right. There's lots of ways we're going to make this work, and one of them is I am going to have packages available where you can make some. You have some options about how you would like to pay for services that are going to make things easier for you. I'll explain all that to you later, but I want you to know that's coming Now. What that did was that set things up where I did indeed have to create that. So y'all know I have this whole framework for how to take action on a big idea or something that you're sort of nervous about.

Speaker 1: 5:00

One of the hallmarks for me is when I always say dream, decide, declare, design, dream, come up with the idea, make the decision. That's what I did declare your intentions to the world with your words or your wallet, and then design. And that is indeed what I did here. I told everybody what I was gonna do, and then, of course, they had to go do it right. But telling my clients that I was going to be offering them packages, options for how they could pay for services, immediately helped a little bit to calm their fears. Okay, so, and then for the next couple of weeks I had people asking me so do you have that yet? Do you know what that looks like yet? Have you got that figured out yet? No, but I'm working on it. It took me a little while. It takes a little while.

Speaker 1: 5:52

This is not something you can do quickly, but once you've got it, you've got it. So why does this help? There are lots of reasons about lots of ways that this helps your practice. First of all, well before I talk about why that helps, let's talk about why this is a problem. Why not having this as a problem? If you don't have some kind of a package option for your practice, you really are limited to how people pay, to dollars per hour, to chasing the dollars day after day, week after week. It really kind of like hamstrings you and what you can do, because you are making money as you go in the moment and a lot of you, especially if you are in a practice that does allow third-party reimbursement. You're having to wait weeks, sometimes months, to get paid for the work that you've already done.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Packages help all of that. There are so many ways that this can make a business make a difference for you. First of all, packages give you a way, guys, to get paid a larger amount of money in full upfront when some no, it doesn't have to be this way, but one way that a package can work as that folks buy, for example, a number of visits with you in return for perhaps a slight discount. Or maybe they don't get a discount, but they get some kind of extra bonus or extra level of service or extra attention, extra access. There's lots of ways to structure it, but one way the packages make a difference you get paid in full upfront. It's lovely.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Another way is that your life just gets easier when someone buys a package of a service. There's less administrative activity that you have to do on your end. You don't have to worry about sending out statements or about collecting payments every week or after every session. But it also makes it easier for your clients. They don't have to bring a card, a checkbook or cash every time. They don't have to worry about how they paid you. Yet there's no having that sort of angst about paying for a session or a service after it's delivered is gone, because it's already taken care of.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Here is a hidden benefit that a lot of folks don't think about, and that is that no shows or late cancels are already paid for. If you add that as part of the package, that's counted as part of the package. Now, in this context I am specifically talking about packages for a service-based industry and I'm gonna come back to this in more detail in a future episode. But just kind of thinking about that idea, when someone is seeing you week after week or month after month, whatever, and a late canceled visit or a no show is a real problem, you can count that as like this is, if you missed, this is one of the sessions that you paid for in your package, and then there isn't anything to collect. You've already got it.

Speaker 1: 8:54

But here's the biggest benefit to me of a package at all is that therapeutically, clinically, from a healing perspective, your clients are so much more likely to show up to do the work, to access the service, to do the homework, to get whatever it is that you offer to them because they've already paid for it. So you get paid upfront, which is lovely. There's less hassle factor along the way but really ultimately and this is why I love this so much it actually helps your clients. They've paid for it. They might as well come, and anything that you do that gets them in the door means they get the help that you offer, and you guys know this. There are so many ways that we get in our own way when it comes to getting healthier right. Whether it's going to the gym, whether it's going to work with your energy healer, whether it's following through on the physical therapy exercises that you know you need, whether it's attending yoga classes or working with your physical trainer or showing up for counseling, whatever it is, there are lots of reasons why that stuff is uncomfortable. Or just you know I got it. It's hard to make myself go, but if I had paid for it and I'm going to lose that because I by not going, well, I'm going to go and when I go, I'm going to benefit from it because, after all, it's good for me. So adding some kind of a package in different ways to your practice is not only good for you, it's good for your clients.

Speaker 1: 10:41

So for today, I thought what I would do to kind of introduce this topic. I'm going to talk about what this might look like, what this could look like, and in my mind there are three different types of packages. To keep this simple, I'm going to call them service, a service package, a signature package and a select package. And the kind that you might want to create and how you might implement this in your practice is going to vary depending upon who you serve and how you serve them. There's lots of ways that this can go, but let's just walk through these three ideas to kind of introduce the concept.

Speaker 1: 11:21

All right, so a service-based package works best when you have a type of service business, a practice, where you provide a service that they are going to be accessing long-term, or where there's a chance they're going to want to buy this package over and over. All right, so, for example I mean the counseling one is the easy one to talk about. If somebody is coming to see you weekly and they see you weekly for a year, you may sell them literally an entire year's worth of service, but you may sell them six months' worth or three months' worth or eight months' worth, but if you do that they're going to be buying that over and over and over again. It's kind of like buying counseling sessions in bulk, right? This is a little bit like going to Sam's right? You're buying in bulk. So when you have that type of a service, someone's going to be repeating that, they're repeating the usage over time. Well, a service-based package works best for that, and later on we'll talk about what all is involved in that. But for now I'll just tell you one way to think about it is by bundling sessions. But you could also add things like certain bonuses, like premium scheduling, or maybe they get one free late cancel, one free no show, whatever one free cancellation. Whatever you do with a service-based package, I would encourage you to come up with probably two or three different levels, like a low price, a medium price, a higher price. Maybe that's based on the level of commitment that they make, maybe that's based on what you add to it, what the extra sort of extra services or extra access to you or extra little goodies that they get as a part of it. But a service-based package which is fairly simple this is the simplest kind works best when you are working typically one-on-one with people, but some kind of a business, where you're repeating your service over time.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Now a signature package is a little bit different. A signature package is a little bit more complex. It's going to have more bells and whistles Again. Later on I'll go into that in more detail. This is almost more like a program. A signature package is something special that showcases your work and serves your clients at a higher level.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Now, this is something that may be something that they only do once or they do a couple of times. It may include various elements, such as additional access to you through office hours or an extra support call. You may provide trainings of some sort, like video trainings or modules or curriculum of some sort where you're teaching them something. It may very well cover a longer period of time, like three months, six months a year, something like that. It may have an extra layer of, for example, accountability right when you are holding them accountable towards taking action in some way towards an outcome that they desire. It may include lots of free tools or resources or little extra goodies that you give them, but it is a complete sort of comprehensive package that is meant to meet a particular goal. So, for example.

Speaker 1: 14:48

So a service-based package. I do have that in my counseling practice. That is an easy way that people can buy in bulk to pay for counseling up front. That's what we do. But my signature packages I don't have one now on my counseling side. I have in the past. I mostly use this on the coaching side and that is you guys are familiar with my Evolved program, which is a group coaching program that is typically a six or seven month long mastermind that I do. That's an example of a signature program. It's really a package that has a lot that comes with it.

Speaker 1: 15:27

The third type of package that I was talking about, a select package. This is like your VIP level of service. Now, this is basically an up-leveled version of one of the others. All right. So in a select or a VIP level of service you're gonna throw in special things like, for example, maybe they have after hours access to you or access to you on the weekends through Voxer or WhatsApp. Maybe they get premium scheduling whatever the most popular time is in your calendar, they get to reserve that first. Maybe you provide services on site like in-home services of some sort.

Speaker 1: 16:06

I worked with a behavioral therapist at one point that came up with an $8,000 package that was strongly based on helping parents get their kids to school. She was working with parents who had I think there were kids on the spectrum. If I remember right, there was something like that. There was something like that where they were working with kids where it was especially difficult to get them up and going in the morning. She came up with an $8,000 package that involved literally they could call her and she would go to their house and help get those kids up and going. Now, there was lots of structure to it, so don't think that this was this terrible. That sounds kind of terrible to me, like, oh my gosh, do I have to get up every day and go help everybody else with their kids? It was actually a structure that worked. That served her as well as her clients.

Speaker 1: 16:51

But that's an example of a select type of package. For me, this would be my one-on-one coaching. When someone works with me, as in my role as a business coach, one-on-one for their practice, that's very much a VIP level of service. There's a lot more contact. They get a lot more hand-holding and a lot more support from me. That's a VIP level. So you've got your services package, you've got your signature package and you've got your select or VIP level package. All of those have different aspects to them that we'll be covering in the future, but I wanted to kind of get that out there for you now so that you can start playing with some ideas around this.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Now one tricky thing about packages if you do indeed design a package that has different pricing levels, let's say you have sort of a foundation level and then that is sort of a lower cost, and then you have a mid-level, then you have a higher level, which is very common, very common and perfectly fine to do Just be careful about your pricing to make sure that it works for you. Don't compete against yourself. This is especially important if you have different tiers I guess that's a way of saying this of how you offer your services. You essentially want to reward your clients for paying more, right. You want to incentivize them to invest at a higher level, of course, so that they get more help and so that you are paid well. But be careful about how your tiers compare to each other and make sure it really does it really does work to their benefit to pay more, that it helps them and also serves you.

Speaker 1: 18:35

I've had some lessons about that over the years, so let me give you a couple of examples I already talked about, like as a service example, talked about in my own practice how I handle that. But another example I think I may have shared this with you before when I did a brief coaching exchange with a therapist who had her particular practice, her niche, her area of focus was with clients who had chronic pain and so no shows and late cancels were a real problem for her. We came up with a service-based package where they could pay for one month at a time, like a flat rate per month. They paid a standing fee and for that standing fee they got up to so many sessions a month I think it was four, might've been five and they could use all of those or none of those or two of those. It was up to them how many of those sessions they could use, but they had up to a certain amount. So they paid a flat rate and her income was stable because that was predictable. Their budget was also predictable, but they had some flexibility because they could cancel or re-adapt their schedule based on how they were feeling during the month and she had a whole structure around how to manage that too from a logistics point of view so that it worked for her. But that's a great example of an unusual service-based package that was an ongoing monthly payment.

Speaker 1: 20:03

I already talked about a good signature example, but for you, for example, it could be like a six week program where maybe you provide some kind of a specialized service, like perhaps maybe you work with people about phobias and you've got some extra experiential work that you want to throw in. Maybe you're working with people on how to stop smoking and there's an extra layer of accountability or just support that you want to provide. Those kinds of things could be a signature type program. And then the select. I already mentioned the idea of perhaps you could provide services in home. But, gali, what if you are some kind of a somatic therapist or you are a massage therapist or you do some kind of body work? What if you included some kind of like spa type of service that was part of your VIP, your select level, your select package? See how this can work Like. There's so many different ways that this could play out and it's fun like be creative with this.

Speaker 1: 21:01

I'll tell you about what I mentioned at the beginning today, about how, when I made the decision to go to self-pay in my counseling practice that this is what made a difference. Well, you know what was really cool about that? It did take me a couple of weeks to map out that first version of those packages and they haven't changed much since then. And when I raised my prices I had to go back and re-figure out the math, but the basic structure hasn't really changed. Well, when I did that, a lot of my clients did indeed buy packages, and what that meant was that next, after I gave them a certain amount of notice in advance, but once we reached that threshold and it was time to switch over, today's the last day we're doing insurance, tomorrow this new system starts. What that meant was that next month I had this huge influx of cash. That was kind of cool because everybody paid upfront, it was great and because it was one big change at one time, that all happened at one time.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Now, over time, what happened? That sort of began to those rolled out a little bit, so people would renew at different times. So in the beginning I thought, yikes, what if this happens? And it's always like this. And then I had to make sure that this income lasts me for a while. I had to sort of budget myself with that. But what happened was people were renewing. I had new clients coming in all the time, so that schedule kind of evened out over time so that new packages were happening all the time, and that has been the case ever since. But I'm telling you, boom, that worked. That was a game changer. Adding packages really did make a tremendous difference in my business and I've never looked back. I've done this lots of different ways personally and I've coached a lot of people too, in different ways to add this to their work.

Speaker 1: 22:52

So here's my little bit of homework for you. I encourage you. If you are listening to this and your mind is kind of like, well, I don't know what could I do with that, sit down with a notebook and sketch out your first version. Sketch out some ideas, fine tune it a little bit, polish it up, type it up, make it pretty, make it something you might actually share with a client. And, goodness, send it to me, email it to me. I'll be happy to give you some feedback, guys, for free, I'm not charging for this.

Speaker 1: 23:20

If you want some feedback about your very first package, I do not mind doing that. As long as there's not like hundreds of you, I don't mind doing that for y'all. So if you will send that to me my email address is wendy at wendypitsreevescom. Just shoot it to me in an email. You can send it as a PDF attachment or you can actually write it in the body of the email. I will be glad to give you feedback. Not even kidding.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Here's what I see here that's gonna work. Here's where I think you might wanna tweak this a little bit. Here's the suggestion. Y'all. You should take me up on that, because I don't usually offer that, but that's free support that I'm happy to give you. So that's what I've got for you today. I hope that you will take action on this and really think about a way to add this to your practice. Whatever kind of work you're in. There's no one out there that's got a service-based business or a healing arts kind of practice that couldn't use this, I guarantee it. So have fun with this and then have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next time right here on the Ideal Practice podcast.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Bye now, hey guys, real quick before you take off. How are you doing in your practice? Could you use a little bit of a cash infusion, or are you just feeling a little bit stale. Whatever it is, I've got a solution for you. If you're looking for creative ways to add to your income, I want you to check out the fun, free little ebook that I've put together for you. It's called Get this 31 Practical Ways to Increase Cash Flow in your Private Practice Without Becoming Salesy or Sleezy or someone you don't even like.

Speaker 1: 25:05

In this little ebook, you will find 31 ways that I have done this in my own practice.

Speaker 1: 25:11

Now, some of them are things that you have to clean up. Sometimes it's about plugging in the leaks and stopping losing money. Sometimes it's about stepping into a whole new way of offering your services or packaging your services. Every single thing you'll read in this little book is something that I have used successfully in my own practice, and there might be something in that. In fact, I know there's something in there you could actually implement as soon as tonight, easy peasy.

Speaker 1: 25:39

And then there are other things that you're going to have to work on and prepare for that take some time. I can guarantee you you're going to see a couple of things that are just right for you, and you can get your free copy over at windy pits, reeves, dot. Com. Forward slash cash flow. Wendy pits Reeves dot com. Forward slash cash flow. Download your free copy, pick out one or two that you want to try right off the bat, and let me know which one they are, and I will support your success and cheer for you along the way. Have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next time. Bye now.