‘What should I charge for my workshop?’ is a question that I’ve been asked several times this month and many, many times over the years.

It’s a tough decision to make, because you will have spent hours and hours creating great content to develop a workshop that’s going to make a real difference to those that attend. So how do you set a realistic price?

Here are some of the questions I would ask to help you come to a decision that you are happy with.

What’s the format?

Just so that we are clear, there is a difference between a seminar and workshop.

To me a seminar is generally a larger audience and you’re there to listen to a speaker or two; there’s very little interaction. You may take notes but there’s no working on an exercise, apart from possibly a chat to your neighbour. Seminars are often the forum for a promotion of some kind, perhaps a product launch or to raise awareness of a service for which you might want to book an appointment afterwards to find out more. It might even be a taster session to encourage you to book on a workshop. I always expect to be ‘sold to’ at a seminar!

A workshop means exactly that; your delegates work! Whether it’s a ½ day, full day or a number of days the attendees are gaining a more in-depth knowledge. There’s time to work on exercises and apply the learning to your own business or personal situation, whilst getting direct guidance from the person who’s running the workshop.

So the format will depend on what your objective is.

What’s your objective?

If the event is to raise awareness of how you help your customers and to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, attracting a larger audience may be the result you are looking for. If the event is a ‘stepping stone’ to guide your prospects to the next stage and nearer to becoming a customer, the format is likely to be a seminar.

You might decide that your seminar is free to attend or perhaps a nominal fee to encourage people to show a bit of commitment and not just turn up for a free coffee.

If the event is a revenue generator your objective might be to at least achieve your daily rate and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be achieved twice over.

There are likely to be fewer people because of the format so the numbers will have to be ‘crunched’ to meet your financial goal. Your costs may be higher and need to be taken into account. But the price for your workshop must reflect the value that your customer is rightfully expecting.

Your workshop could still be a ‘stepping stone’ to the next type of relationship with your customer, which could be as a 1:2:1 client, purchase of a ‘packaged’ service or a retained and on-going client.

And of course once the workshop has been designed you can run it over and over again, with just some minor tweaks.

Who’s your target audience?

The type of people that your workshop is intended for has the biggest impact on the price you set.

The ‘size of wallet’ or marketing budget will vary from a private individual, a solopreneur, a small to medium sized company or a corporate. This is an odd one because the value that you are delivering could be exactly the same, but with such a wide range of people the price could conceivably be anywhere between £X0 and £X000.

Of course you wouldn’t be falling into the trap of promoting the workshop to ‘everyone’, especially if you’ve been reading my marketing tips over the years!

Be clear about who should attend your workshop

Expectations need to be managed. A couple of months ago I spent the day at a ‘Marketing Masterclass’. When I looked at the bios of the speakers they all had impressive backgrounds. However it was rather disappointing for me. It may have been a ‘Masterclass’ to the audience they were pitching it too, but for someone with a marketing background it was most definitely elementary. Add to that the fact that the whole day was speaker after speaker it fell short of my expectations. Of course you can never stop learning and be reminded of things that you might have forgotten and I met some very nice people, but I was expecting something entirely different.

It’s really useful to state ‘This workshop is perfect for you if……….’, then there are no misunderstandings and you’ve helped the right people to make the right decision in attending.

Being clear doesn’t have an effect on your price, but I don’t want you to make this mistake so wanted to include this point!

Everyone loves a deal

The decision to attend should not be based on cost. You want to provide every reason for cost to be neither here nor there in the mind of your prospect.

To do this you need to provide stacks of benefits and compelling reasons to make it a no brainer and get them reaching for the ‘book now’ button.

Add as much information and detail as possible (without giving too much away) so that all possible questions a prospect might ask are covered and they are able to make the decision to attend.

What else can you offer that packs your workshop with extra added value? As well as a bit of homework to get them focused, I always offer pre and post workshop 1:2:1 telephone calls. You might want to offer group webinars to follow up or a special Facebook page where questions can continue to be posed and answered in the following weeks.

Everyone likes a deal and early bird prices get the bookings started.

You may have seen some people offering money back guarantees  if delegates feel as though they haven’t gained value from the workshop. Of course that should be highly unlikely!

You may have seen free workshops advertised. That could be a bit confusing after everything I’ve just said, but it might be that it’s a one off special promotion.  I could be an interesting way to kick start a series of workshops to gain some great testimonials for promoting the next paid for workshops 

Testimonials and videos provide ‘social proof’, which builds trust and satisfies your prospect that if they book they too will have a great experience.

Make it easy to pay by using PayPal, Eventbrite or similar, so that the decision to book can be acted upon instantly.

Tell me about your Workshop

If you were expecting me to set the price here for your workshop, I’m afraid I will have disappointed you! But, as you can see, there are a number of factors to take into consideration. I hope I’ve been able to provide some food for thought to help you set a price for your workshop that is appropriate and you are happy with.

Please use the comments box below to tell me about your workshop and feel free to add a link.

If you would like to chat through pricing your workshop or help promoting the event you can give me a call on 07565 382803 or email me.