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No matter how great your coaching skills are if you don’t know how to market your coaching business you will starve. Having sales skills and strategies is essential to become a successful coach.
This article will show you 8 strategies and marketing tips to attract paying clients for your coaching program.
First things first:
Many coaches have negative associations with the words “selling and sales“. All you want to do is help your clients and not to talk them into your coaching programs. There’s no need to have any negative associations with the word “sales” because you have to offer something truly valuable which will make the life of the other person better, haven’t you?
1.) What are you offering and what do your clients need?
When you’re selling your coaching you should focus on one main problem or pain your clients have. Tell them as clearly as possible HOW your coaching will help them to solve this problem.
Ask yourself (and potential clients):
- What is the biggest problem they are facing at the moment?
- If you could change one thing about your life right now, what would it be?
- How can you help them as a coach?
Answer these questions on your website, your social media accounts, and your welcome sessions. Give clients the feeling you get them.
2.) Coach Marketing: Don’t offer free coaching sessions
Do lawyers, doctors, or mechanics give away their services for free? No! So why should a coach? Instead of coaching a client for free you could use a specific series of questions that will help them find out if coaching is the right thing in their situation. We created a list with 33 powerful questions to ask potential clients – It’s part of the Coaching Starterkit.
A professional discovery session with the right (interview) questions will help your prospect find out why she/ he needs your coaching program. The client sells the coaching to herself with her answers.
-> This article includes 6 tips for a successful discovery / sample session
3.) The lack of confidence and experience. Don’t you believe you’re a great coach?
We all start somewhere, and your lack of experience and confidence may make it hard to ask someone to become a paying client. Selling your coaching is selling yourself. If you believe you can help this person to achieve their desired outcomes don’t rob someone of the opportunity to become your paying client. Work on your confidence! You don’t have to be perfect to help someone and make a difference in their life!
Want to boost your self-confidence? -> Check out this toolkit
4.) Marketing yourself as a (life) coach: Create an appealing coaching program or package
Hopefully, you’ve already defined exactly what problem or pain you are solving for your clients. Create your coaching package around the exact results that your clients will get from working with you.
The more specific you are the better. Tell them also how long it usually takes your clients to see these results. Although everyone is different defining a time frame leaves your prospects with a clear picture of when they can expect to reach their desired outcome.
Tell your potential clients exactly what they can expect during your coaching program:
- How does a typical session look like?
- Will you be meeting weekly or monthly? Live or Online?
- Will you provide additional support between the sessions to reinforce their progress (e.g. with CleverMemo)
5.) What’s the price of your coaching? People want solutions to their problems!
If your prospects hear the price for the coaching is $200 per session or $1000 per month they are often more uncertain than convinced. Many people have never worked with a coach and have no idea how long it will take them to accomplish their desired outcome. You’re asking the client to commit to you financially and with no end date. This vague information about the total financial and time commitment can make prospects feel discouraged and in the end, they don’t become clients.
Try to create a package instead. Yes, it’s impossible to know in advance how long it will take a client to accomplish their goals. Every client and every situation is unique and different.
But you can take a look at your previous clients and how long it took them to see some real results. If in the end, they need less time to accomplish their goal – perfect! If they need more time than expected you can always prolong the coaching.
If you can offer your potential client a concrete solution to their problem in 10 sessions, or 3 months for the amount of X$ they are much more likely to commit to becoming a paying client.
As we stated before every client is unique so you should be 100% honest and tell your potential client that sometimes things take longer than expected and that they can always prolong the work with you.
6.) Establish Yourself as the Go-To Expert
You’ve already found that one problem or pain your clients have and that you can help them solve with your coaching service. Try to establish yourself as the go-to expert for exactly this topic! Write a blog with useful tips and how to’s, create a podcast around this topic, join relevant Facebook groups and forums, try to network with people who offer another service to the same target group.
One of the most sustainable ways is to create a blog and write helpful articles around the problems your prospects have. Whenever they start to research online they should find a useful resource created by you. This will take time and effort, but it’s worth it!
7) How to market your coaching business: Demonstrate results!
Nothing speaks like bottom-line results to your potential clients. Find out what bothers them and where they need support and detail what your coaching has done for others with the same problems or objectives. Results talk!
8) Offer more value than your competitors!
Let’s be honest, being a coach means you exist in a saturated market. To stand out you have to provide more value and demonstrate why your coaching is better than all the other offers out there. There’s a huge trend of automating programs and making coaching more and more hands-off. So why don’t you offer your clients more than that?
Use a professional tool like CleverMemo to provide personal support of their process and progress between sessions. Your clients will feel more valued. The results will be much better. And you could even charge a premium fee for this premium service!
These 8 strategies will help you to get more paying clients for your coaching program or service. Everything we spend money for helps us achieve a certain feeling. Give your prospects the feeling that you can help them solve their problems or accomplish their goals and you’ll become a successful coach with a thriving practice!
The Coaching Business Starterkit includes 33 powerful resources for your coaching. For example, the 6 tips to convert every lead into a client with effective comp sessions. You can find it here.
