Price the series, not the single session

A client asks the price of one session because that is how a hairdresser's price list works. The problem is that pigment removal is not one service — it is a series whose length you do not know at the first appointment. Quoting per session says: I do not know how long this will take, and I would rather not discuss it.

Work out what actually goes into one session: time in the room including consultation and paperwork, single-use materials, equipment amortisation and servicing, the cost of the follow-up visits that are usually free, and the risk that somebody does not turn up. In most of the studios that have worked this through with us, the real cost of a session was 30-50% higher than they assumed.

Add the things that never appear in the calendar: the phone call after the treatment, the follow-up photographs, writing up the notes and answering messages between sessions. In studios that measured it, this came to twenty to forty minutes of work outside the appointment for every session. That is not customer service in the background — it is part of the service and part of the cost.

Then work out the series. For a typical tattoo that is four to twelve sessions at six to eight week intervals, so a project lasting a year. If you price a session at 250 złoty and nine are needed, you are talking to your client about 2,250 złoty — except she does not know that until she pays the third instalment.

So we quote a range for the series and a range for the number of sessions, based on an assessment of the pigment, rather than a single figure. It is a harder conversation at the first appointment and a far easier one at the fifth. A client who knows from the start that we are talking about a year and about a band of cost does not feel walked into an expense nobody showed her.

The range has another advantage: it lets you say honestly what moves the upper end. Pigment colour, depth, previous removal attempts and how the skin responds after the first two sessions all shift the number of treatments. When a client hears that at the start, an extra session is information rather than a surprise.

The side effect is commercial: pricing the series filters out the people shopping for the cheapest session in town and leaves the ones looking for effective removal. The second is the service you want to sell, because it is the only one where you have time for a protocol.

The simplest test of whether your price list is honest: work out what you earn across one client's entire series, and divide it by the total time you will spend on her including consultations and follow-ups. If that comes to less than a rate you would consider sensible for an hour of your own work, the problem is not the price of a session. The problem is that you are selling sessions.