A two-hour session for up to 25 people at your office is £400. You did not have to ask anybody for that figure, and you will not have to ask for any of the others either. Everything this practice charges is on the rate card: the five sessions, the bands for larger groups, the travel charge, the supplement for bespoke scenarios and the 25% discount for charities, CICs and social enterprises. I decided before the site was built that no price on it would be replaced with "get in touch", and this piece explains the thinking.
What is on the rate card
There are five sessions and each has a fixed fee. The Taster is £400, the Half Day £650, the Experience £800, the Programme £1,400 and the Management Lab £750. Those are launch rates, held for the first six bookings. The standard rate that follows is printed beside each one, so you can see what the price will be later as well as what it is now.
Group size sets the price, because group size is what changes the work. Groups of 26 to 50 bring a second facilitator and groups of 51 to 100 a third, and both bands are priced on the same page rather than left to a quote. Travel is free in Glasgow. Beyond Glasgow it is 45p a mile from Glasgow and back, which comes to about £40 for Edinburgh and about £25 for Stirling. Scenarios built from your own documents are £250. No VAT is charged, so every figure on the page is the total you would pay.
Why a published training price helps you
Most people who book training are not the person who signs it off. You are usually checking whether something fits a budget before you put it in front of somebody else, and you want to do that without starting a conversation with a seller. If the price has to be asked for, that means a form, a call, and somebody trying to find out what you can afford, all before you know whether the thing is even possible. If the price is on the page you can rule it in or out in the time it takes to read one row of a table.
It also lets you compare. Two hours for 25 people costs £400 here. Whatever else you are looking at, you now have something to measure it against, and you can do the measuring without me involved.
The first conversation goes differently as well. Because the price is already known, the fifteen-minute call can be spent on what you want the session to change, and that is the question that decides what gets built. Neither of us spends the call working out whether the other side can afford it.
Why it helps a young practice more
This is a new practice. I say that on the site rather than let it come out on the call. Until there is a track record, I think the fair arrangement is that I carry the risk, and a published price is one of the ways I carry it.
If I only gave the price once I knew who was asking, I could charge different people different amounts for the same two hours. I don't want that option. A number on the page is a number I have to stand behind whoever reads it. A buyer who cannot see the price has no way of knowing whether they are being quoted the same as everyone else. A practice as new as this one has not earned the benefit of the doubt on that yet, and I don't think it should ask for it.
“A buyer who cannot see the price has no way of knowing whether they are being quoted the same as everyone else.”
The guarantee is part of the same thinking. If the session doesn't land, you tell me within seven days and the fee comes back in full, deposit included. That promise is easier to make when the fee was known before the session rather than negotiated after it.
The one price that is quoted
One line on the rate card does say get in touch, and it is for groups over 100. Above that size the room, the number of facilitators and the shape of the day all change enough that a fixed figure would be a guess, so I quote it once I know the details. Travel outside Glasgow is the other figure that varies, and the exact mileage goes on the quote before you book anything. Everything else on the page is fixed.
What fixed in writing means
Once you have told me the group size and roughly when, you get a written quote within one working day. It sets out the session, the price, the date and what I have built in from what you told me, and nothing is held until you have agreed it. A 50% deposit holds the date and the balance is due within 14 days of the session. If your finance team needs a purchase order number on the invoice, send it with the booking and it goes on. The price on the quote is the price on the page. It does not go up on the day, and once you are a client you keep your rate for twelve months after any price rise.
If you cannot tell from the page which of the five you need, put the group size and what you want to change on the enquiry form. I will tell you which one on the call, and the price will be the one you have already seen.
Applied Improv Scotland
Communication training for teams across the Central Belt. Sessions from £400, refunded in full if they don't land.
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Get a price and a date.
Tell me the group size and roughly when. You'll have a written quote back within one working day, and the fee is refunded in full if the session doesn't land.
Ask for a price