Andrea Nordling 00:00
Has this scenario happened to you, a potential client who would be perfect for your process
says to you, Well, I would be ready to start if you offered blank payment terms or this particular
payment plan. If this has happened to you, and there was a moment of freeze up, or you
quickly considered if you could, or should or would offer that payment scenario. You know what
I’m talking about, regardless of what you decided that person probably didn’t become a client
anyway. But why, why does this happen? And why don’t they ever take their own terms? That is
what we’re getting to the bottom of in this episode, my friend, specifically, number one, my
philosophy on payment plans and how to know if you should offer one to your clients, to how
I’ve changed my approach to payment plans over the last seven years. And three, three
mistakes that I see many holistic nutritionists and health coaches making in regards to
payment plans that cost them a lot of money. And when you follow the three step guidelines in
this episode to decide on whether or not to offer a payment plan to your clients, and then of
course, what terms to consider if you do you’re never going to second guess yourself or get
surprised by payment plan requests. And bonus, your clients are much more likely to say yes
and actually follow through. This episode, by the way, is brought to you by a student in the
profitable nutritionist program who posted the following question in the lounge, which is our
private community where the support coaches and myself do written coaching in between all of
our live coaching calls. This is the question she posed. She said my very first three month client
last January said she’d be able to start only if she was able to pay in two installments at the
time I had zero clients. So I said yes, we agreed on a set date for the second installment to be
paid. And I sent her a reminder two days ahead, and again on the day of and she still didn’t pay
until two days later. And a third reminder, since then, I’ve said no to any requests for payment
plans. And I’ve been resisting any discussion on the topic. Until this week, when Andrea
surprise me by offering a new 12 month payment plan for the new TPN enrollments. My first
thought was how much more accessible the program would be for so many more people. And
then I had to question my own decision about payment plans, I began to wonder whether or not
I should reconsider offering a payment plan to potential clients. I’m wondering if having a
payment plan would help bring in more clients sooner, which would perhaps bring in less
money at one time, but more often, and then also provide me with more client experience and
results in testimonials and referrals? What is required to have an automatic payment system in
place? So it was a long question. And there’s a lot of questions within the question. I love that
A
she set the stage with the scenario that she had someone who requested a different payment
arrangement than what she had initially given. And so she had to do reminders, and then this
person actually did pay. But what we see most of the time is people don’t that’s when they
ghost, which is really interesting. And we’ll be talking all about that. So this episode is inspired
by this question, I was already planning on talking about the payment terms that I offered in
December of 2023, which I’m going to tell you all about in a second. Because there was a lot of
thought that went into altering payment terms. And I know it’s something that a lot of my
listeners think of as well and are considering so first of all, just a little shameless plug for the
profitable nutritionist program, you want to be in the program and have access to the lounge,
which is our community where that question was posted, so that you can ask your questions
like this when they come up. Now not only do you have me in there doing coaching, but you
have the TPN support coaches also weighing in and giving their coaching they are trained in the
method that I teach and how to coach due to the program. And then you also have successful
colleagues sharing their experiences and how they structure their payments. So there were
over 10 comments on this post by the time I started outlining this episode from the question,
and I will just say that there is no resource in our industry that even compares to the TPM
program and the lifetime access to support and knowledge and tools and collaboration that you
get when you join. So like I said shameless plug enrollment is next opening up February 29. To
march 6, we open once per quarter. So this will be the q1 enrollment February 29 to march 6, make sure you are on the waitlist for the program by signing up at the profitable
nutritionist.com/join J o i n. And if you’re listening to this episode, after the 29th of February
when enrollment is over, you will always be able to go to that page the profitable
nutritionist.com/join and find the next enrollment dates and join the waitlist at that time. We
always keep the next upcoming enrollment posted on that page so that you always know what
it is. All right. Let’s get into should you offer payment plans to your clients? It is such a meaty
topic, but actually pretty straightforward answer. So to give a little context from 2015 to 2020
in my nutrition business and then into my business coaching business, I would pretty much
entertain any way that someone wanted to pay me. If you were gonna pay me for your help. I
was going to take your money pretty much no matter what. Now that was messy on my end as
the business owner, and I’m sure to be clear, it was confusing and raspy to people. I’m sure
their experience of me was like I was a little raspy and disorganized on their end, because it
was it was disorganized. I was like, if you’re going to pay me, we’re going to make it work. So I
had done that I had done that for years. And I appreciate that past version of me that was
scrappy, and that made it work. I’m not saying that was wrong. I’m just saying it. There were
some Pros and Cons. I did get paid. It wasn’t super organized. And I’m sure it was confusing to
a lot of people. So when I changed the offers that I had had in my coaching business, okay, just
in case you don’t know anything about my story, and you probably don’t. I had a holistic
nutrition coaching practice from 2015 until 2019. In 2019, I closed on my nutrition coaching
practice. And I went full time into business coaching, which I had been doing part time at that
point, helping other colleagues that were having trouble getting clients and making money in
their business. But they knew that I was having a lot of success with that. So people were
asking me, How do you do it? How do you do it. And I had been coaching business coaching on
the side to other nutritionists and health coaches, I was loving it, obviously, because I’m still
doing it to this day, I love it. So I knew that the time was going to come for me to shut down my
nutrition practice and go full time into business coaching, which I did. So I started from zero in
2019, June of 2019. With zero people on my email list for business coaching brand new email is
brand new website had no audience whatsoever and started from scratch. And I did that with a
new way of structuring my business. And I talk I feel like I’ve talked about this in a broken
record many times. So if this is way too much information, I’m sorry. I feel like I talked about it
all the time. I had really burnt myself out in my nutrition practice with doing all of the things
having all of the offers all of the payment plans, all of the payment terms. Did you want to pay
$1 today? Do you want to pay $1 a week for the rest of your life? I’m kidding. But not really.
There were a lot of options available, which just had really burned me out for so many different
reasons. I was selling a lot of different things. My marketing was all over the place. I had lots of
different funnels, I had lots of different blog posts and ads, and email sequences, and I was
selling different offers. And there were upsells and there were down cells, and there was just all
of the things. Does that work for some people? Yes, did it work for me, truth be told that did I
had a six figure practice, but I was very burned out. And I was very tired. And I’m sure there
were so many people that would have loved to work with me. But they were so confused about
how to even do that, because there were too many options. So that is the world that I was
coming from in 2019. When I shut the doors on that nutrition practice, I had learned a lot about
online business, I learned a lot about what worked and what I what was working. But what I
didn’t want to continue to be doing and how I was going to do things differently. So in 2019 of
June of that year, I started officially with Build a Profitable practice. And that was my brand.
Until I mean really until the trademark for the profitable nutritionist came through in 2022, I
believe so that’s when we rebranded Build a Profitable practice as the profitable nutritionist as
you know it now, all that to say that I decided when I consolidated my business coaching offers,
which had consisted of a couple online courses, a couple different memberships, some VIP
coaching like little of this little of that there was once again, a lot of offers and a lot of different
payment terms, I consolidated all of that into one offer. Really, I kind of took a lot of it away,
and re imagined how I was going to better serve my clients in one of those premium
memberships with what is now the profitable nutritionist program. So that happened in March
of 2021. And when I did that, I decided I was not going to offer any payment plans. So you were
wondering if there was a point of the story there actually is, actually is a point, we’re getting
back to payment plans. But I wanted to give a little bit of context and frame of reference here
that I have done all of the payment plans and I have had all of the offers and it made things
really hard. Then I decided to go the total other end of the spectrum and have a $3,000 offer
pay in full only no payment plans. This is what it is. I really at that point wanted to work on my
belief that my people would pay $3,000 for what I had to offer coach myself and sell myself on
the value of that offer. And that my clients were resourceful. They were grownups they knew
how to figure out a credit card if they needed to. And that I was a one woman show at this
point. And I didn’t want to deal with collecting miss payments because I had been doing this. So
my decision was I’m going to simplify this for all parties and have one offer and that needs to
pay in full offer and if you want to make payments, make whatever payments you want to your
credit card company. That’s wonderful. And I coached myself on those thoughts and I truly felt
like this is the best decision for my business. So I did that. I made the decision. I did not revisit
the decision for over a here and I knew that that was going to be my plan. I said, I’m going to
sell it this way and learn how to sell this offer for at least a year before I even think about
changing the payment terms and offering a payment plan. I love past 2021 me that did that.
Because I got really, really clear on how to sell my offer. I truly believe in my offer in the
program, the program results, were the forefront of my mind not any drama about payment
terms, or should I change this? Or should I change that I just made the decision, and I
executed. That was wonderful, has been great. The result of that is people did really interesting
things to afford the program, I have had people that have sold cars and tried to send me cash, I
said, No, that’s not going to work. You need to figure out a different way. But I didn’t indulge in
my people pleasing tendency to want to make it work for them and make it easy for them and
offer separate terms. I was like, Nope, this is how I sell. This is the price. These are the terms,
you can figure it out, you’re very resourceful, you can figure it out. And guess what people
figured it out. They borrowed money, they liquidated retirement funds, they figured out how to
join the program. And I didn’t make it a problem that they were getting scrappy, and doing
these things. So I am really proud of myself that I was working on my mindset. And I have
coached myself a lot on the fact that people are grownups and make their own decisions, I
have nothing to do with that I am just here making an offer. And they can choose to accept the
offer or not. If that is valuable for you, I would highly suggest taking that thought and borrowing
it and not trying to accommodate every person because you can’t, all right, you just can’t. So
when it comes to everything that we’re going to talk about here, with payment plans, just know
that there is no option that you are going to land on whether it is no payment plan or payment
plan or five different payment plans, there’s no option that is going to make everybody happy,
just isn’t. So make yourself happy. And then sell yourself on why that is the best way to go.
Okay, because our clients are always going to reflect our beliefs. So if we believe that they’re
resourceful, and they’ll figure it out, they’re gonna be resourceful. And they’re gonna figure it
out all that to say, for the first year, I offered the first year of offering the profitable nutritionist,
it was $3,000 painful only, it was actually a little bit over a year before I introduced a three
month payment option. So in May of 2022, I decided to offer three payments of 1050. So it was
3000 pay in full or three payments of 1050. And initially, I decided to just test that for one lunch
and then evaluate afterwards, if I felt like I should keep doing it or not. And really what I was
evaluating was how much back end follow up was there for me to have to track people down
for their payments. Because obviously, or maybe this isn’t obvious, I should say, I am setting up
the payment plans to be automated. So when somebody goes through the checkout page with
my offer and signs up for the three monthly payments of 1050, I’m not actually invoicing them
or tracking them down three times for payments, those payments are automatically being
charged to their credit card 30 days after the initial payment. That’s all automatic through my
payment processor. So I wanted to know, but I shouldn’t, but like really have to go back to this. Make sure that if you are doing payment plans that you are doing it that way. And that is
automated, it is an absolute nightmare, to try to remember to be invoicing people and having
to manually send out invoices, there’s just no reason that your time should be spent that way.
Don’t do that. Take a few hours and set up automatic payments through stripe or Paypal or
whatever. Whatever website you’re using, there’s the capability to do that. So get it set up. Yes,
you are going to need to have your ducks in a row with a business bank account, and probably
some other things, but you should do that anyway. So make it happen. make your life easier if
you’re gonna offer payment plans and even if you aren’t, make sure that you have those
automated capabilities. Okay, so I was evaluating how much of those automatic payments was
I still having to follow up on because the truth is people get their cards stolen, and they have a
new card number or their cards expire or their cards declined because they’re past their limit,
whatever the reason is, there are failures with credit cards, when you have automatic
payments, the payments won’t go through and you will have to do follow up with people to
remind them to change their card or put in a new payment. It just it’s just the way that it is
okay, it happens. So even when it’s automated, there will be some upkeep on the back end.
And what I was trying to figure out was was it going to be worth it for me to be accepting the
monthly payments through payments of 1050? Or was there way too much upkeep and then if
it wasn’t working are there were a ton of failed payments and was taking a lot of my time, I
would have reevaluated and not continue to offer the payment plan. But as the case may be, it
was not a big deal. There really wasn’t taking a ton of my time in recouping the payments that
weren’t going through and I figured out how to automate that pretty well. Anyway, so I kept the
payment plan. So since May 2022. There have been two payment options for the profitable
nutritionist program. There’s the $3,000 pay in full and then there’s three payments of 1050 My
friend, have we connected on LinkedIn, in my opinion that LinkedIn is the platform for
professional networking and getting client referrals hands down. If you’re already spending
time getting the word out about your business over there, I would love to connect with you just
search Andrea Nordling and then connect. And I’ll confirm so we can share our networks. But I
had a plan that I wanted to offer a different payment plan when we launched in December of
2023. So I’m recording this in January 2024. So this was last month. But I had known that I was
going to do this payment plan for six months before I did it. It was it was sitting there, it was
marinating I was coaching myself on it, I was figuring out for sure if I wanted to do it, this is
kind of something I’ve learned in my business about myself and just about business in general
is not to make any decisions and act on them right away and like to let them marinate for a
while. So this had marinated for six months, I still loved my reasons for it, I decided we were
going to do it. And what I did was I did a 12 month payment plan. So in December 2023, when
we launched, I offered 12, payments of 275 to join the program. So there had never been any
payment terms like that whatsoever. I loved my reasons for testing it. Again, it is completely a
test. And I have a very clear Evaluation Plan, which is once again the amount of time that my
team because it’s not me now recouping payments, I have a team that’s doing this, but how
much time my team has to spend managing failed payments. So I’m going to be looking at that
over the next 12 months and decide if that’s something that we ever want to offer. Again, it is a
work in progress. It’s a test aren’t all things in our business tests like that. Yes, they are. So that
is the backstory and the 12 month payment plan that was mentioned in the initial question
about should we offer payment plans. Remember, she said in there that she had seen me offer
a payment plan that she hadn’t seen anything of the likes before, and it made her consider if
she should be offering something like that. So here are what I consider to be my three
guidelines for payment plans. I when I coach people on this, these are the three things that I
want them to consider when looking at how to structure something like this, or if you even
should structure payment plans. Number one, make sure that your business can sustain itself
during the payment plan timeframe. I know that there are definitely times in my business a few
years ago when having a payment plan would have been a terrible idea because my business
couldn’t have survived. I mean, if the if the money wasn’t coming in up front, I wasn’t going to
be able to survive for the months until money was coming in again. So if that is true for you
don’t even consider a payment plan. Or you can follow one of the suggestions I’m going to
make in a second about getting paid up front. But if you need to get paid upfront, then you
need to get paid upfront. So that is just something you need to know and be honest about.
Don’t think that because other businesses offer payment plans that you need to do that if you
need to get paid upfront, especially if you are offering something where there’s out of pocket
expenses, you have to make sure that those expenses are going to be covered. I know a lot of
people listening to this podcast, offer lab testing, or supplements or actual physical products as
components of their offer in some way, you have to get paid for that upfront. So make sure that
it pencils out, make sure it makes sense for your business model to even take payments over
time. And if it does, then you can do that. And we’ll talk about that. But if it doesn’t, if you do
need to get paid up front you can offer different payment terms like through Pay Pal financing,
for example, or after pay, which are two commonly used platforms that do this where they will
actually finance the payment plan but they will pay you up front. So with Pay Pal financing, and
I have many students that use this for their clients and their clients use it to pay them but then
they get paid up front, they pay through PayPal, but when they check out through PayPal, they
pay it through PayPal credit not like with their actual credit card. So what PayPal does is it we’ll
do a quick credit check with them. And I think that this might be only available in the United
States by the way. So little disclaimer there. But if you’re in the US you can look into this and
using it for your clients many of mine do PayPal financing is PayPal credit so they will checkout
through PayPal they will use the little toggle next to PayPal credit instead of putting in their
credit card or using their pay pal balance or whatever. And then PayPal does a quick little credit
check. And if they are credit worthy, which usually takes about 20 seconds to figure out then
there will be terms to finance the purchase through PayPal credit and that means that they
don’t have to pay anything that day or if they do it’s very, very small amount. Then the
payments are actually small, tiny little payments over six months to PayPal and if the balance
isn’t paid off over the six months then they are charged interest on that full amount starting at
the six month mark. So clearly Pay Pal credit understand how this works makes their money on
the interest of people having the best intentions to pay in six months and then not doing so and
then you pay a lot of interest on the back again after that, but if you pay it off in the six
months, then there’s no interest and Pay Pal pays you as the vendor upfront. So for me, when
people do this, when they buy my program, I get paid $3,000 up front, but they are spreading
out those payments over six months, and PayPal is financing that deal. So many of my clients
use this for their clients, I should say my students use this to give as a payment option to their
clients if they don’t want to be personally or their business personally, funding the payment
plan. So there are options like Pay Pal financing, where you get paid up front as the vendor, but
your clients are actually able to spread those payments out after pay is another option that
people use for this, which is spendy. So Pay Pal financing actually is going to pay you the full
amount they have, I think 2.7 or 3%, whatever the standard fee is for running payments
through Pay Pal, you do get deemed that but that’s just a cost of doing business really, whether
it’s through stripe or PayPal, or wherever. So that is going to come out of the proceeds from
your transaction. But after pay actually takes a much bigger chunk than that I think it’s around
6%. So anyway, something to consider, you could use either of those options, and set them up
in your checkout software, your payment software, where you get paid up front, but it is a
payment plan in terms of what your clients are actually doing. So their their payments are
spread out. I don’t feel like I’m saying this very well. But I think you know what I’m talking
about. And in that situation, you as a business owner don’t have to finance the payment plan
internally, you get paid up front. So if your business cannot sustain not being paid upfront for
the services that you’re going to be rendering, that is a way to structure it. Alright, so first
guideline, make sure that your business can sustain during the payment plan timeframe, or
offer a payment plan through a third party where you still get paid upfront. Number two, don’t
give too many options. And for goodness sake, use round numbers. What I have seen is people
having very strange numbers that they use nothing with the decimal, nothing at seven, like 870
and 73 cents, no, no, no, not just use round numbers make it simple for everybody and don’t
get too many options. The reason for this is just straight up decision fatigue, and confusion, and
unnecessary complications just don’t do it. So for example, my payment plan is $3,000, or
three payments of 1050. It’s very simple and clear. When I introduced the 12 payments of 275.
I also just decided on a number that was a very easy round number very clear, I would never
offer more than three payment options. By the way, I think that even that is pushing it, it
works, it’s fine. But I would never go more than three. And I even think that three might be
pushing the envelope there. But as an experiment, I did three, three work just fine. I will say
though, that in December, when we launched the 12 payment option, it was either pay in full or
12 payments, I think there were maybe one or two people that took the three payment option.
It was very, very clear that the other two were the winners. So that was really interesting. But
this is the data that you get when you try things. So by all means don’t be afraid to try things,
which I’m going to get to in a second. But that’s my second guideline is don’t give too many
options and use round numbers. And then third, don’t offer a pay in full or a cash discount. I
hate this I hate feel so strongly about this. The the I think our words really matter and the
words around this a pay in full discount or a cash discount presumes that everyone wants or
needs a payment plan in the first place. And that it’s a windfall to you as the business owner if
they pay in full upfront. That’s what it feels like to me. I just don’t like it. I think the
subconscious vibes there are not ideal they don’t. It just puts you at a disadvantage in some
psychological way. I don’t like it at all. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. No pay in full or cash
discounts. The price is the price. The payment plan is financed on top of the price. It’s not just a
little bit higher by the way make it enticing to pay in full. And don’t call it a discount if they do
that. Okay, so so the price is the price for the TPN program example is $3,000 price is $3,000
There’s not a cash discount. If of 2981 If you pay cash just like looks like no this is the price you
pay the price. Now if you would like me to finance your payments for three months, it’s going to
cost you $150 More, and honestly I should be charging more for the payment plans and that is
something I probably should change. But for now three payments of 1050. It’s it’s $150.
Basically for me as the business owner to finance the payment plan, there isn’t a cash discount
to not do the payment plan. This might sound like six of one half a dozen or the other but
psychologically it isn’t this is important. The price is the price and then finance charges are on
top of that for you to finance the payments that’s on top of it. It’s not a bonus or a Fuji thing. If
they pay the cash price, so don’t ever have a payment in full or cash discount that you offer, or
that you advertise, it’s just no, no, it’s just a no, it’s just a no. No many people do a 10 to 20%
finance charge, and you can’t call it a finance charge unless I mean, there’s like, I’m using the
word finance charges, you shouldn’t use the word finance charge, by the way, I should say that,
but 10 to 20% of a an additional charge for extending the payment plan. Okay. Like I said,
Don’t model your numbers after mine, because I probably should be charging way more for my
payment plans, but they are round numbers, it just, I don’t know, it’s just what I chose. It’s been
working, it’s fine. If we had a ton of upkeep on the back end of people defaulting on their
payments, and there’s some of that, but it’s not a lot. And we keep a really close eye on that
and evaluate that as a team. If that got really out of hand, I would have to charge more than I
do to have people that are having to chase down payments. Luckily, that is not something that
is a problem. But if it was, we would definitely change that. Okay, so just to go back through
the three guidelines for offering Payment plans are make sure that your business can sustain
during the payment plan timeframe, or choose a payment plan option that you get paid up
front as the business owner. And that’s if you decide to offer a payment plan, which you don’t
need to do. Number two, don’t give too many options and use round numbers. And number
three, don’t offer a pay in full or cash discount, the price is the price. And then they’re going to
pay more to have the payment plan option. There’s pros and cons to both payment plans and
no payment plans. And there’s no right or wrong to this. Your thoughts about the payment
plans and the no payment plans and your beliefs about your clients and what they believe
about the payment plans are not being plans and the results that they’re getting when they
work with you. That’s what matters in terms of success either way, I’m sure there are people
that say if you’re leaving money on the table, if you don’t have a payment plan, I’ve heard that
many times. In fact, I think that there’s a case to be made, that it’s really a solid business
strategy to not offer a payment plan for reasons I’ve already outlined as well. Both are good,
both are right, both are wrong, it’s really doesn’t matter what your thoughts about them, your
conviction about it being the right decision for your business right now is what matters in terms
of success in offering it and selling it to your people. And just like with everything else, you can
change your payment plan policy at any time. The important part is that you have a policy and
you know what it is either you offer a payment plans, or you don’t. And if you do know what
those terms are, love your reasons for them so that you don’t get caught off guard by a
potential client that’s trying to have you create special terms just for them. That never ends
well, because it isn’t actually the reason that they are or are not going to work with you is
because of the payment terms. It’s just a way to end the conversation. And to buy some time to
not have to make a decision. That’s really what that is most of the time. So know what your
payment terms are, know what you offer, have this figured out ahead of time, if you are going
to offer payment plans that you’re going to finance as the business owner, know what those
prices are, what those terms are, and be solid on it. If you are only going to offer a pay in full
option, be solid on that. And maybe in your back pocket have something like PayPal credit that
you can offer to people that need different terms or request different terms where you as the
business owner still get paid up front, but they have more flexible terms. I don’t see any reason
why you shouldn’t do that. Just good to have resources, right. But have that set up ahead of
time, what you don’t want to be doing is trying to scramble and figure out how to hook up your
PayPal account in the 11th hour and that’s not professional. So make this decision. Love your
reasons, and decide when you’re going to reevaluate either way. That’s what you want to know, What are my choices here? What am I offering, not offering and why and then just just go with
it. Don’t agonize over this. Don’t try to figure out what is the perfect payment plan. There’s no
perfect payment plan. There’s no perfect non payment plan, none of that exists. It’s just you
making a decision and sticking with it. And last but not least, I will make one more plug for you
to join the waitlist for the profitable nutritionist program at the profitable nutritionist.com/join
so that you don’t miss the next Enrollment Dates February 29 to march 6 of 2024. Remember
the doors only open a few times a year, this will be one of those times and we would just love
to welcome you into our business network, the premier industry leading business network that
is for holistic nutritionist and health coaches who are making big money and creating big
change in the health of their clients. You will be party to lots of discussions on how people are
using payment plans, what payment processors they’re using. If part of this discussion, has you
scratching your head a little bit on how do you do this? What software does everybody use to
structure their payment plans? How do you automatically do that? How are you sending
invoices? All of those are things that we talked about all the time in the program. And I highly
recommend that you be surrounded by people that are successful at doing what they’re doing
like in the TP program because you’ll actually be getting suggestions from people that are
making money and that it’s working for not people with best of intentions but who aren’t
actually successful in what they’re suggesting, if you know what I mean. All right, I’m feeling a
little sassy today I’m going to land this plane on no matter what you’re doing with payment
plans or no payment plans, go make offers to your people. Tell them the words I can help you.
Go help them and have a wonderful week my friend
