By Craig Weiner, DC
I would like to begin with the notion that there is no right or wrong fee when it comes to what to charge for your work as an EFT practitioner. You support transformation of people’s lives and that is an invaluable service.
You might give away your services or charge $500 per hour and that is your prerogative. As EFT business coaches, Alina Frank and I have seen it all. It’s not what you charge, it’s why and how you do it that matters.
Here are 7 critical issues you as a practitioner need to consider when deciding how much to charge and how to ask for your fees:
1. Are you trained/certified?
While going through your EFT training, different training organizations have different regulations with regard to whether and when you can charge for your services while in training. Ethically, of course, you should communicate to your client both verbally and in writing that you are in training. During training, your experience is limited and your fees, whether they are by donation or reduced, should reflect your experience level.
Personal integrity and training organization rules dominate the decision-making at this level.
2. Are you already charging fees as a professional or licensed provider with another skill set?
This discussion may be different when you are already, say, a therapist, coach, acupuncturist, hypnotherapist, acupuncturist, etc., receiving payment for those services and are now adding EFT as another tool in your practice. There are no black-and-white rules here; adjusting the fees demands a heartfelt examination of what holds integrity for you. I see practitioners maneuver through this process of how to integrate and charge for EFT in their existing practices in their own unique ways. In my chiropractic practice, patients that seek me out for chiropractic care get just that.
But often I feel that EFT would benefit them and so I may do an introduction or perhaps the Chasing the Pain technique with them. If they then wish to do a full EFT session, I schedule them for a separate session at my home office. That is but one way to handle this.
3. How much experience do you have and how comfortable and confident are you in your EFT skills?
This is a significant issue. We’ve trained and worked with coaches who are brilliant practitioners but don’t “feel” confident. Other practitioners are very confident but are not ones we would feel safe or comfortable referring people to. So confidence in your skills is a tricky question and, certainly in my experience, plays a large role in the setting of fees. This issue of not “feeling” confident, worthy, or deserving of charging what you are worth is a critical one for most practitioners and very amenable to tapping. For every person I encounter who charges “top of the bell curve” fees, I find 20 who are on the bottom of it due to fear of clients’ reactions when they tell them their fees or dread of asking clients for money.
These, of course, are all tappable issues and, as such, wonderful opportunities for digging out and healing the wounds that led to apprehension in asking for what your services are worth.
4. Do you offer set fees or sliding scale?
There is no right or wrong answer to this. Just know that people will tend to choose the lower end of the scale and you need to decide if that works for you financially and what your real motivation is in offering it. Is it to be liked or is it truly to help those who could not otherwise afford your services? The need to be seen as “the nice” practitioner will surely offer challenges and is bound to create uncomfortable situations in which you feel taken advantage of (as you see your client drive away in her new Porsche).
5. Do you offer packages?
Do you require new clients to commit to more than one session? This is confronting for most new practitioners we work with. Let me ask how realistic it is for a client to be done with their issue in a single session. While great work can be accomplished in a single visit, how often have you seen a client exit a first appointment and then go home and have related memories/intense emotions emerge a day later that could make them feel like EFT made things worse? Without the pre-frame or commitment, the client might not return and may think EFT doesn’t work.
There are many ways to construct a package that includes flexibility, but of critical importance is keeping the client’s best interests in mind and knowing that your resistance to requiring a commitment (fear of them saying no, fear of what they will think of you, etc.) is a tappable issue!
6. Do you offer pro bono work?
This can be one method to manage not always reducing your fees. By charging your full fee, whatever that is, this will afford you the income that will allow you to donate your time for free when you feel called to. I recommend to my coaches that they choose a maximum number of client hours per month that they will offer, and when that number is reached, they do not offer any more until one of their pro bono clients graduates from their care.
7. Do you charge for missed appointments?
Again, this is up to the practitioner, but your time is valuable and last-minute cancellations are nearly impossible to fill. In order to implement a cancellation policy, three points are critical. First, communicate your policy both verbally and in your client written agreement form, which should be signed and returned in advance of the cancellation window (a common window is 24 hours). Second, having your clients pay for their sessions in advance of the 24-hour cancellation window makes things much easier for you. Third, you may need to tap on how you feel just thinking about their reaction when you have to tell them they are responsible for payment of their missed appointment.
Can you be flexible with this? Of course, you can. If a mother got called to the playground because her child was hurt and she had to take the child to the doctor, well, that’s an obvious reason to waive payment. But what if it happens a second or third time? Then there is a bigger issue, which requires renegotiating the relationship.
When you have an EFT business, of course, there may be other issues regarding charging clients that you have thought not of until they occur. We think it is better to consider issues in advance whenever possible.
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Craig Weiner, DC, and Alina Frank are EFT Universe Trainers and directors of the EFT Marketing and Business Academy. The next EFTMBA program begins May 1, 2016.
