If you’ve ever sold a package that includes multiple services or products, you know exactly how powerful it is to get paid that way. Whether it’s a package of multiple personal training sessions, life coaching or therapy sessions, or dog training sessions – the upfront cost is usually high because it includes multiple services and/or products, which makes it a wonderful way to make money and build client loyalty as a business owner.
For this reason, in this article, we’ll be covering how to use packages in your business, how to sell them to clients, and also how to market them online.
HOW TO USE PACKAGES IN YOUR BUSINESS
If you sell a service that can be packaged into bundles, here are some advantages of doing so:
- Higher up-front payment
- Guaranteed income from each service
- Opportunity to deliver a full program or specific results to clients
- More client loyalty
HIGHER UP-FRONT PAYMENT
When you receive up-front client payments, you’re essentially pulling forward cash in your business.
“Why is this important?” You might ask.
Cash flow is important for your business because it allows you to pay for all of your expenses, including marketing, which is an important for attracting new clients.
In other words, the more cash flow positive your business is, the more you can re-invest in your business, and the faster it will grow.
Selling packages is an important part of having strong cash flows, which will keep your business healthy.
GUARANTEED INCOME FROM EACH SERVICE
Another positive benefit to offering packages in your business is that you guarantee the income from each service that you offer in the package.
For example, if you offered the services individually, the following things could limit your income:
- client’s credit card is declined
- client cancels the appointment
- client no shows and you can’t charge them
Since the client has pre-paid for the package of services that they’ve bought from you, you won’t have any billing or collections challenges or setbacks.
CLIENT LOYALTY
According to research by Bain & Company, it costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new client than to keep an existing one, so increasing your income per client and getting them to repeat their purchase should be a very high priority for any business owner.
Sadly, this statistic is often ignored and most businesses still aren’t really focusing on their existing clients to grow their income.
Don’t let this be you!
Utilize packages to increase client loyalty by increasing how often they book you and making using your service a habit – part of their weekly or monthly routine.
This will really create stickiness and make them feel more comfortable renewing their package in the future or better yet converting them into a subscriber and regular paying client.
Compare this to selling services a-la-carte – with only 1 service, it may not be enough to convince a skeptical client with plenty of options to stick with your business.
To avoid losing clients to competitors, sell packages to lock in your client base, expose them to how great it is to work with you, and keep them loyal.
HOW TO SELL PACKAGES IN YOUR BUSINESS
The easiest way to sell packages is to use software that can help your clients buy them easily and conveniently with just a few steps to purchase and track their usage.
Let’s take a look at two popular fitness training packages that are great revenue-drivers:
- Fixed term transformation packages – choose price, length of time, and the transformation (translation: result) that you’re offering. Make sure your description and terms specify exactly what the client needs to do in order to achieve the result
- Monthly recurring packages – choose price (which will be billed regularly), frequency of billing, and the services and/or products that you’re offering. The beauty of these recurring packages is that once your client puts these expenses into their budget, they’re likely to stick around for quite a while. They’re also used to paying for things monthly, such as their phone bill or utilities bill.
Another thing to consider is adding extras to your packages.
For example, here are two examples of packages for a dog training business. Which one would you choose for your pup?
- 10 dog training sessions
- 10 dog training sessions, eBook about Best Practices for Teaching your Dog Tricks, access to a mastermind Dog Training Facebook group where others can share their experiences and lessons learned after their dog graduated from training, weekly emails and video training, a weekly plan for continuing education for your fluffy friend, and a custom plan for your dog specifically based on the sticking points noticed in the training
I’m sure any rational dog parent would probably opt for option 2. Wouldn’t you?
See below examples of packages that client’s love for your industry:
Here’s what it looks like:
If you’d like your very own version of this just like above, simply click on the link below and then click File-> Make a Copy once the sheet comes up:
Package Examples:
See all of the industries that we have included package examples for in the above list. Download it today!
So make sure you sweeten the deal for your clients by including loads of extras to encourage them to buy your package of training sessions.
Moving on, which software can you use to easily set these types of packages up? There is one that comes to mind, and it starts with P…
For example, use PocketSuite to package up some of the services and products that you offer and then sell them as a bundle to your clients.
Simply add any packaged product or service that you’d like to offer, choose how many sessions you’d like to include and the overall price, and set an expiration date. That’s it!
Tap the ‘Show Online’ slider if you’d like to include this package on your online booking form.
Alternatively you can keep the package private and offer it as an exclusive deal to your clients when they’re booking in person or over the phone.
From here, PocketSuite makes it so easy to track your client’s sessions using a simple display.
You can see how many sessions are left, the time left until expiration, and options to request payment.
You also have the option of offering prepayment in exchange for a discount – it’s a win-win for your small business and your clients.
You’ll get a convenient notification when your client pays for a package, or you can mark it as ‘Paid’ manually if you’re accepting cash or checks from your client.
You can swipe left to schedule package sessions, or do it from your PocketSuite calendar.
Here’s a great video explaining in-depth how Packages work in PocketSuite.
It couldn’t be easier to manage, sell, and track your packages, all from 1 app.
HOW TO MARKET YOUR PACKAGES ONLINE
So now that you’ve set up your packages in PocketSuite, how do you market them to your clients?
If you’re in the top 5% of fitness and health trainers operating on PocketSuite, you sell over 5 new packages each month.
They also all share 1 thing in common – they all put their PocketSuite online booking widget onto their website, Facebook, and Instagram, so clients can book them directly from their website and social media.
This is important for several reasons, but the numbers speak for themselves – the top 5% PocketSuite Fitness pros get on average 17 new bookings per month from this simple practice. Not bad!
In order to attract potential clients to your website and social media, check out an article we wrote about how to generate leads for your service business.
Here’s how to install the booking widget on your website.
We hope this guide will be impactful in helping you create and sell your packages in order to earn more income.
If you’re looking for an app to manage your entire business, check out PocketSuite’s free trial to get you started.
Here’s to your success!
Like this article? You’ll love these articles:
- PocketSuite Packaged Services
- PocketSuite Packages
- Promote PocketSuite Packages Online
- Our guide on how to generate leads for service businesses in 2022
- Our Frustrations with Square article
