How to price dog training packages (without leaving money on the table)

Most trainers I talk to in New Zealand and Australia price the same way: a number per session, maybe a small discount if someone books a few. It feels fair. It's also quietly costing you money and handing you a second job you never agreed to.

Here's the case for packages done properly — and the honest catch nobody warns you about.

Per-session pricing punishes the work that matters

A dog that's reactive on lead doesn't get fixed in one session. You know that. But per-session pricing makes the client decide, every single week, whether to keep going. Every week is a fresh chance for "we'll leave it for now" — usually right before the bit where it actually sticks.

You end up rewarded for booking slots, not for getting results. That's backwards. The trainer who gets the dog over the line should earn more than the one who runs a tidy calendar of one-offs.

Packages sell the outcome, not the hour

A package reframes the conversation from "what's an hour cost" to "what does it take to fix this". That's the conversation you want, because it's the one you're actually an expert in.

Three things change the moment you sell a programme instead of a session:

• Commitment. Someone six sessions in behaves differently to someone deciding weekly. They do the homework. They get the result. They refer you.
• Cash flow. You're paid for the work before you've done all of it, which smooths out the quiet weeks every training business has.
• Fewer gaps. A booked programme doesn't evaporate because it rained or the kids had sport.

How to actually set the price

Skip the spreadsheet that multiplies your hourly rate by six and shaves 10% off. That just makes you do more work for less.

Start from the outcome. What's it worth to a household to have a dog they can walk past another dog with? It is not "six times forty-five dollars". It is a year of walks that don't end in apologies. Price closer to that.

Build two or three tiers, not ten. A focused programme, a fuller one, and a "we'll get there however long it takes" option. Most people pick the middle — so make the middle the one you'd genuinely recommend.

Don't discount to nothing for booking ahead. A small "thank you for committing" is fine. A 25% bulk discount tells people the work isn't worth much. You don't believe that, so don't price like it.

Charge for your scarcity. You have a finite number of working hours and you're in this two-to-seven years deep. A package isn't just sessions; it's a held place in a calendar that other people want.

The catch nobody mentions

Here's the part that sinks trainers who do all of the above correctly: packages are an admin trap.

The moment you sell programmes instead of one-offs, you've signed up to keep count. Who's got two sessions left. Who paid for six and has done four. Who's been "meaning to rebook" since March and is sitting on money you've technically already taken. Whose package quietly expired.

This usually lives in a spreadsheet, or worse, in your head. It works until you've got thirty-odd dogs on the books, and then one Sunday night you're cross-checking a bank statement against a Google Sheet trying to work out whether someone owes you a session or you owe them one. That's the bit that eats the week the packages were supposed to give back.

It is genuinely not worth pricing well if the tracking quietly costs you the margin in unbilled hours and Sunday-night reconciliation.

Price it like it matters; track it like it doesn't

The pricing is a decision only you can make — it's your expertise, your market, your reputation on the line. The tracking shouldn't be a decision at all. It should just happen.

That's the part we built PupManager for: your packages and payments sit right on the schedule as you deliver sessions, so "who's owed what" is a glance, not a Sunday-night audit. You set the price. The admin stops being the price you pay for charging properly.

Charge for the outcome. Hold your line on the discount. And don't let the spreadsheet quietly claw back everything good pricing earned you.