Good-Better-Best Pricing for Coaches: Designing Tiers That Sell the Middle

Offer one price and you ask the buyer a yes-or-no question. Offer three and you ask a different one: which of these is right for me?

That shift is worth more than almost any wording tweak on a sales page. A yes-or-no question invites "let me think about it." A "which one" question assumes they are going to buy something and asks them to choose. The more I look at coaching offers, the more I see people agonizing over a single perfect price when a well-built set of three would sell more, and sell it more honestly.

This piece is about simultaneous tiers, offered side by side, not a ladder you climb over time. Here is how I would design them.

Why do three tiers sell better than one price?

Because people compare options more than they evaluate them.

Harvard Business Review's Rafi Mohammed wrote that companies often crimp profits by discounting to attract price-sensitive customers and by failing to give high-end customers reasons to spend more, and that a multitiered offering can address both problems.¹

That sentence describes a lot of coaching businesses. One price means the premium buyer has nowhere to go up, and the cautious buyer has nowhere to go down.

What the research says about choice

Two classic findings are worth knowing. Huber, Payne and Puto showed in 1982 that adding an asymmetrically dominated alternative to a choice set can make consumers more likely to choose the item that dominates it, the decoy effect.³ Simonson's 1989 work found that brands tend to gain share when they become the compromise alternative in a choice set, and that these effects are stronger when people expect to justify their decisions to others.⁴

Read that second point again. Your buyer often has to explain the decision to a spouse, a partner or themselves. A middle option is easier to justify than either extreme.

What is the job of each tier?

Think of the set as one product with three doors.

The anchor

The anchor is your highest tier. It sets the frame for what the work is worth and makes the middle look reasonable. It also needs to be real: you should be happy to deliver it, and it should be priced to protect your capacity. A few buyers will choose it. That is a bonus, not the point.

The target tier

This is the offer you want most people to choose. It should deliver the result the buyer came for, with a level of support that makes success likely, at a price that works for your margin. Design it first, then build the other two around it.

The entry tier

The entry tier is for the buyer who is not ready for the full commitment. It should be genuinely useful on its own, with limited access to you, so it costs you little to deliver. The goal is not to give away your best work cheaply. It is to let a careful buyer get started without making your calendar a charity.

Ali Abdaal, looking back on growing his business past $5 million a year by his own account, said in a video posted on March 1, 2024 that he "did not appreciate that you could do a high ticket offer that had customer success baked in."⁵ He added that it did not have to be tied to his own time. (The video is sponsored by HubSpot, though the point is his own.) That is the top tier done right: support built into the price instead of taken from your calendar later.

How do you price tiers around delivery cost?

Start from what each tier costs you in time, and work up from there.

Watch the hidden cost of the top tier

High-touch tiers have a way of expanding. More messages, more exceptions, more "quick questions." If your anchor includes unlimited access, price it as if the client will use it. Otherwise your best-paying customer becomes your worst-margin one.

What makes tiers different enough?

Differentiate on how the client gets the result, not on how many extras you can add.

Bain's Eric Almquist, John Senior and Nicolas Bloch argue in Harvard Business Review that customers weigh perceived value against price, and that value is harder to manage than price because what consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down.² That is why a list of random bonuses does so little. A buyer cannot tell what they are worth.

Four honest dimensions

• Access. Group sessions, direct messages, one-on-one time.
• Speed. How quickly you respond and how fast they move.
• Depth. How much you do for them versus teach them.
• Support. Reviews, accountability, escalation when they are stuck.

If you can name which dimension changes between tiers, a buyer can name which one they need.

What mistakes ruin good-better-best?

• Too many tiers. Choice overload. Three is a starting point for a reason.
• A fake decoy. The decoy effect is real in the research, and misuse is a trust problem. If a buyer feels tricked, you lose them and the reviews.
• Tiers that differ by one feature. Buyers cannot see why the next one costs more.
• Hiding the prices. Comparison is the whole mechanism. If people cannot compare, the tiers do nothing.
• Never revisiting. Your costs and capacity change. Review the set at least twice a year.

How do you test it?

Change one thing at a time and watch what people choose, not just whether they buy.

Track the mix: what share of buyers picks each tier.

Those numbers are made up to show the shape, not a benchmark. If almost nobody picks the target tier, either the gap is too wide, the description is unclear or the anchor is doing its job too well. Adjust a single variable, then look again after enough buyers have chosen to tell you something.

Pricing is one part of the whole path from lead to cash. Offers and pricing your business can actually deliver are what I help experts design.

Keep building.Ekai