Package deals and prepaid credits, done properly

A package is one of the few offers that helps both sides. The client gets a better price and a commitment they will actually keep. You get cash up front and the next several visits locked in before anybody else can compete for them.

It is also the offer most likely to be priced by feel, which is where the trouble starts.

What you are actually buying

When you discount a block of six sessions, you are paying for three things. Certainty of the next six visits, the cash arriving now rather than over four months and the fact that a client who has prepaid does not shop around.

Those are worth real money, which is why a package discount is justified in a way that a general discount is not. The question is how much.

Pricing it

Start from the individual price and work out what the block is worth to you. A block of six removes five separate rebooking conversations, five chances to drift and five chances for a competitor to be closer that week.

A discount somewhere between 5% and 15% is the usual landing zone. Below 5% and nobody bothers. Above 15% and you are giving away more margin than the certainty is worth, unless the package is deliberately being used to fill dead capacity.

The exception is a package that only runs at quiet times. Discount that harder, because the alternative is an empty chair.

Prepaid credit is a liability

This is the part that gets forgotten. Money taken for six sessions is a debt of six sessions. If your costs rise, if the client comes back in eighteen months or if a member of staff leaves, you still owe the work.

Track the outstanding balance in sessions and in value, and know the total across all clients at any moment. A business that has quietly sold £9,000 of unredeemed packages has £9,000 of work to do that will not appear as revenue when it happens.

Expiry, and being reasonable about it

Packages need an end date, otherwise the liability is open ended and the urgency that makes them work disappears.

Set the expiry to a realistic multiple of the intended interval. Six weekly sessions should not expire in three months, because one holiday and one bout of flu will use that up and you will end up making an exception anyway.

Whatever you set, put it on the receipt, in the confirmation and in the reminder, and warn people before it lapses. An expiry that is enforced without warning generates a complaint that costs more than the sessions.

Refunds and the awkward cases

Decide these before somebody asks, not during.

• Client wants to stop halfway through. The fair method is to charge the sessions used at the full individual rate and refund the balance. State that on the terms and nobody argues.
• Client moves away. Same rule, and be gracious about it.
• Course of treatment that turns out to be unsuitable. Stop, refund the unused portion and do not let a package pressure anybody into treatment they should not have.
• Transfer to a friend or family member. Allowing it is usually good business and it should be a decision rather than a surprise.

Where packages work best

Anything with a natural course. Six sessions of a treatment, a block of personal training, a set of grooms, a series of lessons. The client already understands that one is not enough.

They also work well as the mechanism for a genuinely better price. Rather than discounting your headline rate, keep it and offer the lower effective rate only to people prepared to commit. That protects the value of the individual session and gives you something to sell.

The thing that makes it all work

The client needs to be able to see how many sessions they have left without having to ask, and you need to be able to see it without checking a spreadsheet. If the balance lives in a notebook, you will get it wrong at least once and it will be in front of somebody.