When He Finally Told His Long-Term Client the New Rate

He had been working with Marcus for three years.

Marcus was a good client — engaged, thoughtful, applied the work between sessions, and produced real results from the coaching. He referred two or three people per year to the practice. He’d once written a testimonial that the practitioner still used in his marketing.

He had raised his general rate to $1,200 for new clients six months ago. Marcus was still paying $650, which had been the rate when they started working together.

The conversation had been deferred, in the practitioner’s mind, for the entire six months.

The Reasons the Conversation Hadn’t Happened

He would have said, if asked, that the timing wasn’t right. Marcus was in the middle of a significant business challenge; raising the rate in that period felt inappropriate. Then Marcus came through the challenge. Then Marcus was in a new launch period; raising the rate during a launch felt disruptive. Then the launch settled.

Each deferral had a reason. The reasons were real, in the sense that they were real circumstances. But there was always a real circumstance.

He told his peer accountability partner about it in month four of the deferral, describing it as a timing question.

His partner asked: “If Marcus weren’t a client — if he were a new prospect calling today — would you offer the engagement at $650?”

“No. New rates are $1,200.”

“So you’re offering Marcus a 46% discount because he’s been working with you for three years.”

“When he started, the rate was $650.”

“But you’ve raised it since then. Are you raising it for him?”

A pause. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

He said the first thing that came to his mind: “Because he’s invested a lot in our work together. And he refers people. And I don’t want to change how our relationship feels.”

His partner was quiet for a moment. “That last one — tell me more about that.”

What Was Underneath the Deferral

The conversation with his partner surfaced something the timing reasons had been covering.

Marcus wasn’t just a client. Over three years, the relationship had developed warmth beyond the professional transaction. Marcus had shared significant personal information in their sessions. He had, on a couple of occasions, reached out to express genuine gratitude for the work they’d done together. The practitioner felt genuine affection for him.

And the practitioner had come to associate that warmth — the quality of the relationship — with the implicit current arrangement. The arrangement in which Marcus paid $650 and the practitioner showed up fully and consistently, including taking calls on short notice occasionally, extending sessions when the work required it, and responding to between-session emails with some length and care.

Raising the rate felt like introducing a transactional element into something that had become more than transactional. Like money would make it colder.

His partner said: “Do you think Marcus doesn’t understand you’re running a business?”

“He does. He’s a business owner himself.”

“Do you think he’d be surprised that your rates have gone up?”

“No. He’d probably expect it.”

“So the warmth you’re protecting — is it his, or yours?”

The question landed quietly.

The Preparation

He decided to have the conversation in their next session. Not a big production — just clarity, at the start of the renewal conversation that was coming up anyway.

He prepared what he would say. Not a speech, just three things: that he’d raised his rates significantly since they’d started working together, that he wanted to bring Marcus’s engagement in line with his current rate, and what the new rate would be.

He ran it by his partner. His partner pointed out that the version he’d prepared contained five sentences of context-setting before the rate was named. “You’re explaining before he’s responded. What if you just said: my rates for this engagement are now $1,200 per month, effective at renewal. And let him respond?”

He compressed it. He practiced saying it out loud, which felt strange.

The morning of the session, he noticed the familiar quality of bracing. He wrote in his journal: “Going to tell Marcus the rate today. Imagining he’ll say it’s too much. Then I’ll have to decide whether to hold or go back to $650.”

The Conversation

At the renewal point in the session, he said it almost exactly as planned: “Marcus, my rates have increased since we started. Going forward, this engagement is $1,200 per month.”

Marcus said: “Okay. That’s fair. You’ve gotten much more skilled over these three years, honestly.”

He said: “Thank you.”

Marcus said: “Can we do an ACH instead of the card? The 3% fee has been adding up.”

That was the entire negotiation.

Afterward, he sat in his car for a few minutes before driving home. Not because anything dramatic had happened — nothing dramatic had. Because of the specific quality of anticlimax. Three years of association between the relationship warmth and the $650 rate. Six months of timing-based deferral. And Marcus’s response had been that the rate increase was fair.

He sent his partner a message: “Told Marcus. He said okay, it’s fair. Asked to switch payment method. That was it.”

His partner responded: “Write it in the evidence log. Exact words.”

What the Story Reveals

Long-term client rate conversations are among the most charged in conscious practice settings, because by the time they happen, the relationship has accumulated meaning. The practitioner isn’t just risking a business transaction — they feel they’re risking a relationship with real warmth in it.

The conditional belonging template runs especially hard in these moments because the relational stakes feel highest with the clients the practitioner cares about most.

What often happens: the conversation, when it finally occurs, is less catastrophic than expected. Not always — some clients do leave when rates raise significantly. But the clients who leave over appropriate rate increases are often clients for whom the rate was the primary basis of the relationship rather than the work itself.

Marcus stayed because the work was real for him. The warmth was about the outcomes and the quality of the relationship, not about the rate being held artificially low. The rate increase didn’t change what he was paying for, and so it didn’t change the relationship in the way the practitioner had feared.

This is not a guarantee. It is one story. But it is one that practitioners who have deferred the long-term client conversation for months or years will recognize — in the deferral, in the imagined catastrophe, and in the actual response when the conversation finally happened.

The Abundance GPS Skool community helps practitioners prepare for and debrief the conversations they’ve been deferring. Come take a look.