Today, we are going to talk about how to package and sell your high ticket consulting retainer fees. Who doesn’t like a retainer? It gives you stability, you don’t have to hunt for clients all the time. So I will teach you what I personally do and what I advise other experts and consultants do. Currently, CEOs pay me six-figure a year to advise them an hour a month. I easily do seven-figure in consulting fee working with clients one-on-one on a very part-time basis. That doesn’t include sales from our digital programs. It doesn’t include our high ticket advisory group. It doesn’t include our coaching division. I’m just talking about one-on-one.

So to package and sell high ticket consulting retainer fees, what you want to do is this. You always want to offer one year, a minimum of one year. You always offer that first. Why? Because, you want that effect, you want to think about, “Hey, in order to produce the long term results.” And it takes at least a year, if not two, to produce any significant results to solve any major problems. Now, depends on what you do, one year. If you are getting resistance from your clients, now you can then down sell them and say, “Hey, instead of one year, why don’t we start with six months?”

And if you are still you getting resistant to say, “No, no, no, no. I don’t want to go for six months.” Then you go for three months. So you’re following this path. You offer them one year, first, then six months and then three months. Instead of the other way around, “Hey, let me offer you three months. If you like it, I hope you like me. I hope you like what you do. Maybe you will renew.” That’s a horrible idea. You set the tone, you set the expectation up front. I work with clients on a yearly basis.

“You’re not ready. You’re not quite there yet.” “Fine, I will make an exception. I will do six months.” “You’re still not ready.” “Okay, let’s get you started with three months. Get you some results. But the goal is after three months, if I deliver what I say, I’m going to deliver. If I get you the results that you want after three months, can we talk about a one year agreement?” See, you are setting up the stage. You are setting up the sale. You’re setting up the retainer fees. So one of the ways you can structure your fee is, you give them a little bit of a break, if they pay the whole thing up front. Let’s say you charge 10,000 a month for retainer, $120,000 a year. So they could pay you on a monthly basis, $120,000 a year, or they could pay you $100,000 dollars up front and save basically two months. They get two months “for free” if they pay the whole thing upfront.

So then you have a number of clients, they would say, “Hey, you know what? I want to save $20,000. I want to save a little bit of money. I would prepay the whole thing up front. It’s good for your cash flow.” And then you have some clients they’re like, “I don’t know. I would rather do a monthly retainer.” That’s fine. On a monthly basis, you just make an additional $20,000. And depends on what you’re consulting on. I have clients and mentees, they are consulting in the B2B space and what they do is what I teach them. They charge a retainer plus a percentage of revenue. If you are in the business of helping businesses, make more money, save money or improve efficiency, you can see if you can negotiate that type of deal.

So it’s a base, a retainer, plus a percentage of sales. It could also be a percentage of increased sales. Let’s say the business doing $10 million a year, you negotiate if you could take them to 12 million, 13 million, 20 million, you get a percentage of their additional bump. You could do that as well. I also have clients in the B2B space, in the software space, where they charge a retainer fee plus advisory equities. So in the future, when there’s an exit or any kind of liquidation event, so now my clients, they would be able to get a piece from that as well, from the work that they did many, many years ago.

So you can structure that way as well. Remember, as an expert, you don’t get at what you want, you get what you negotiate. You don’t want to sell your time, you want to sell value. You want to sell the outcome. You want to sell the result. When you are delivering value on a consistent basis, when you help them solve a major problem, that’s when you don’t get the yucky feeling of you and your client. The client is thinking, “Why am I paying you every month?” No, you should structure the deal in such a way that, “Hey,” you are on the same page. Your values are aligned, your interests are aligned. So they gladly pay you your retainer fee every single month. Does that make sense? Until then, go high ticket.