Setting the Right Price: A Guide for Independent Educational Consultants, College planners,  private College Counselors

Key Factors Influencing Your  Educational Consulting Fees

Several factors play a significant role in determining your IEC fees:

• Demographics: Consider the cost of living in your service area and adjust your fees accordingly. Align your pricing with the economic conditions of the families you serve.

• Competition: Research what other educational consultants in your area are charging for similar services. While it’s important to be aware of competitors' pricing, focus on your unique value proposition rather than directly comparing your services.

• Experience: Emphasize your experience, including client recommendations, professional development, and training. Highlight your counseling certificates, internships, volunteer work, webinars, and conference participation.

Key Factors Influencing Your  Educational Consulting Fees

Several factors play a significant role in determining your IEC fees (continued from above):

• Reputation: A strong reputation will generate word-of-mouth referrals and become a valuable source of revenue. Focus on delivering a repeatable process so you deliver on clear expectations to build a positive reputation.
• Services Provided: As a new consultant, it's wise to focus on one core product, typically a comprehensive college counseling package. Define your services clearly, create a repeatable process, and track your progress using tools like CounselMore. Specify your delivery model, availability, and any limitations on application/essay assistance. Checkout the CounselMore toolbox for a Template Contract that includes different critical expectations every educational consultant should consider.
• Supply and Demand: In areas with limited competition, you might need to educate your market about the value of educational consulting. Think about the return on investment (ROI) versus the return on experience (ROE) when setting your prices. An example of this might be putting in the college readiness curriculum a focus on building the students skill set as well as their application profile.

CounselMore offers different types of billing profiles to support various business models:



• Package: For clients paying a set amount, not based on hours.
• Hourly: For clients paying an hourly rate.
• Block of Hours: For packages that include a set number of hours, allowing you to track time spent. For instance, you can create a "10 Hour Block Package" and track the remaining hours as you log time.

Initial Consultations: Should College Planners Charge for Initial Consultation? To Charge or Not to Charge?

• Most educational consultants do charge for initial consultations, it is becoming a standard practice.
• Some offer free initial consults, particularly when starting out to attract clients, build confidence and minimize imposter syndrome.
• Charging for initial consultations can help you qualify serious clients.
• You can also charge for the initial consult but deduct the fee from the total cost of a comprehensive package. These are things that great Peer Mentors teach you. This works as an incentive to sign a contract, but there should be an expiration date for this offer. When you know your Market you will know when it is best for offers like that to expire or if that will work for your target audience.

Invoicing and Payment Tracking for Educational Consultants with CounselMore

CounselMore is a powerful tool for managing your educational consulting practice, especially when it comes to billing and invoicing. Here’s how you can utilize its features:

• Billing Profiles: Set up billing profiles within CounselMore to define your different service packages or hourly rates. These can be packages, hourly, or block of hours.

• Time Tracking: Use the built-in stopwatch feature to track time spent with each student. This auto-populates into the student's accounting tab as a line item that is fully editable.

• Adding Line Items: You can add line items to a student's accounting tab that include date, miles (if tracking travel), hours, and billing profile.

• Invoicing: Use CounselMore's tools to preview and send invoices.

• Customizable Notes: You can customize notes on invoices to include payment instructions or legal terms.

• Payment Links: You can also set up a payment link within the CounselMore software. This way clients can pay directly through their invoice.

• Recording Payments: CounselMore allows you to record payments, track balances, and send payment confirmations.

• Automated Invoicing: Set up automatic monthly invoicing within CounselMore.

• Accounting Tab: The accounting tab is only visible to the counselor in the basic plan.



• Time Tracking Reports: Generate reports on "Time per Student" to make informed decisions and track time for grants or funding opportunities.