If you want more profitable clients, or if you want to save money and time by marketing less, you should work on generating more referrals from your existing clients.

Referral clients are great clients to have. They take very little marketing effort on your part to become clients. (That’s because they’re responding to word-of-mouth from a trusted friend, which is the most credible form of marketing that we all respond to). And, once they are clients, they are more likely to be loyal clients because they come to you fully trusting and understanding what you do (rather than clients who showed up through a marketing channel who might not totally trust you or who might not fully understand what you can do for them).

Better clients at less marketing cost? That is a great combination! Here’s how to develop more referrals:

Get into the habit of asking your current clients if they know of anyone else who they might refer. Now, a word of warning is important here: Obviously, you don’t want to hassle your clients so you need to find a tasteful way to do it, and perhaps after every meeting is too frequent. You’ll need to decide. You can invite them to refer others simply by saying, "Phil, I’m enjoying our time together. I have a space open and rather than fill it with a brand new client, you’re welcome to recommend someone who you think might benefit from my services."

Consider a group session or a luncheon in which they invite friends. This will need to be low-key (so the friend doesn’t feel that you’re going to pitch to them throughout the session) and the friend should obviously get a tremendous amount of value out of it. If you’re confident that you can deliver great value and win a client’s friend to your service, consider saying something like this: "Pam, we’ve been talking about your friend Teri for a while. I’m interested in meeting her and hearing about her business first hand. I think she can help you with your business, too. Instead of the two of us meeting in my office for our next session, why don’t you invite Teri to meet me for lunch? We’ll talk about your business plan and see if there’s a way that she can help you."

Consider creating an invitation-only webinar or teleseminar and telling your clients that they and their friends can participate. This content should be highly valuable but, at the end, can include a short pitch about your services.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

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He described his efforts in great detail. They included a number of very good practices including Twitter, website work, blogging, and more. In frustration he pointed out that he had done all of this sales and marketing work and was getting new clients. He was getting so many people coming to his site and his blog from various sources and they were calling his office to ask questions but none of them had become clients.

That’s when I broke the news to him: He had done a good job marketing his work. However, he was missing a critical component – sales. Marketing is an activity that involves positioning, branding, broadcasting, and announcing who you are and what you do. Selling is an activity that involves taking people who have responded favorably to your marketing and "closing the deal" so that they become clients.

For most people, marketing is a fun, energizing activity that is easy to do a lot of. It feels like you’re very productive. Selling, on the other hand, can feel demoralizing to many people and is an activity that is often low on the list to-do list. Selling doesn’t have to be the negative effort it feels like, but it often is.

As soon as we discovered the situation for this new coach, we outlined a regimen that balanced marketing AND sales. He could continue doing the excellent marketing efforts that he performed, but he needed to have a series of steps that followed up with those who came to him through a marketing channel.

First, he needed to understand what ground they had covered through is marketing channel and what questions they still had. So we outlined some of the most frequently asked questions he received on the phone.

From those questions we were able to put together a profile of the person who was inquiring. This helped us to know where they were in the process. Since many were asking about rates and availability, for example, we could safely assume that his marketing was doing a good job of convincing them of the value he offered. But since some people were asking more about what he offered, we had to also build a profile for those who wanted more over-the-phone information.

Knowing those two profiles helped us to know what needed to happen next to convince them to become customers. The first profile – those who were asking for rates and availability – needed to be prompted to try out the service and see the value of his coaching. The second profile – those who were asking about his services – were contacting him a little earlier in the process and needed assurances that his services were a good fit for them.

Then we created a bit of a phone script. Nothing elaborate or "mechanical" to deliver, but rather a few bullet points that he would definitely want to cover, depending on which of the two profiles called him.

And, most importantly, I encouraged him to ask for the appointment. This might seem strange to coaches who have never been in sales but if you ask any salesperson they will tell you that ASKING for the order (or the appointment) is a key to getting the sale. Failing to ask will result in lost sales. That’s because potential customers need to be taken by the hand and guided through the interaction and asking for the appointment is the way that guides them to the sale.

In your coaching practice, are you marketing yourself aggressively but lacking customers? Perhaps it’s because you aren’t selling enough.

Contemporary VA

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When I say that clients cost you money, I’m referring to how much time, effort, and money you had to put in to get them into that seat. Take a look at your marketing and your networking and your sales activities and figure out your overall costs and divide that by the number of customers you have. That is what it is costing you to put a client in the seat across from you. (Okay, it’s just a rough estimate and some MBA somewhere in the world will point out that there are other considerations as well, but let’s just stick with this number as a rough guideline).

Let’s use some really approximate numbers to give you an example of what we’re talking about. [LOUD AND CLEAR DISCLAIMER: Of course I know the following numbers don't represent real prices or rates, they're just an example to show you how I've calculated the cost per client].

Let’s say that you advertise in the phonebook for $1000/year and you advertise in a newspaper for $6000/year and you spend 48 hours of billable time (at $100/hour) in networking events every year. So: $1000 + $6000 + $4800 = $11800. Now, if you have 10 clients because of that effort, it cost you ($11800 divided by 10) $1180 per client to attract them to your business and turn them into clients.

So, if a coach wants to get 2 more clients, they could expect to pay an additional $2360 ($1180 x 2). But you don’t run a charity, you run a business, so profitability is a consideration. To that end, you need to think about ways of getting more clients into the chair across from you without spending that amount.

Here are some ideas:

• Revisit your marketing expenses. Is that phonebook ad really working for you? Do you think it would impact your business by getting a smaller ad?
• Ask your clients how they heard of you. What they tell you will give you a hint as to what marketing works for you and what doesn’t. (Note: they may have heard about you in several different ways and only mention one, so don’t act rashly. Ask everyone.)
• Spend more on targeted marketing. Yes, spending more seems to run counter to the above tip but the right message to the right market in the right media will cost more but deliver more customers.
• Ask for referrals. Referrals are an amazing way to generate more business because they cost nothing but a moment of your time to ask. Really really successful and profitable coaches who never need to advertise get their business this way. The more you ask for referrals, the less it will cost you per client.
   

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Remember those thrilling days when you first started your practice? You were fresh and bold and excited about the future. You relentlessly marketed. What else could you do? There wasn’t anyone sitting across from you in the office to pay your bills so you went out and grew your practice by telling people what you offered.

Fast forward a couple of months or a couple of years. What’s happened? All of your marketing paid off and you became busy serving clients. Then suddenly – ZAP – everything disappeared. Your busy business faded. Things slowed down. Your schedule opened up.

With coaches, it’s often feast or famine. The reason is because marketing and serving clients are two elements that compete for your time, but, because serving clients generates revenue and marketing does not, guess what gets unintentionally deprioritized!

Think of it like a set of scales weighing clients on one side and prospects on the other. When there are a lot of prospects (because you’re out marketing) and there are no clients, the marketing side of the scale tips. But your marketing will slowly generate clients and the scales will begin to tip in favor of the revenue-generating client side. Soon, without realizing it, there is little or no marketing because your schedule is full of clients.

Many coaches would be all smiles when this happens because it seems to be the optimum use of time: 100% revenue generation. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The optimum use of time is less than 100% revenue generation, with some time spent on marketing. To revisit the illustration of the scales, you need to find the balance between serving clients and marketing. It won’t always be 50/50 (the exact balance depends on your business and your ability to market and your niche and a thousand other factors). You might need to spend 25% of your time marketing and 75% of your time serving customers.

The bottom line is that you can’t aim for 100% client service and ignore marketing because that will create the feast or famine situation that every coach should avoid. Instead, schedule time each day to market your business. If your balance between clients and marketing is 75/25 then schedule 6 hours of your day with clients and 2 hours of your 8 hour day on marketing. Once you’ve scheduled your marketing time in, treat it just as you would treat a client appointment and don’t let anything eat into that time.

You can also consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you with marketing, or even help with some of your other business tasks that don’t have to be tended to by you.

Being busy is good. But being business to the point where it sacrifices marketing time will be good for now and then will hurt you in a couple of weeks or months. Striking the right balance between marketing and client serving will eliminate the feast or famine problem and keep a steady stream of income in your practice.

Contemporary VA

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That’s what makes seminars such a good option for professional coaches. They can draw the right people and they can effectively position you as an expert. Seminars are a huge opportunity and if you don’t have plans for seminars this year, consider adding at least one to your schedule.

If you haven’t done a seminar before, don’t start too big. Keep it manageable! Advertise locally, hold it in a library or coffee shop. Give a few smaller talks in a more intimate setting to test your comfort level.

Make sure your subject matter is closely aligned with your area of expertise (of course!) and give people real solutions to their areas of concern.

Create a small hand-out, just a single page, for people to take notes on. Make sure it has your contact information and (if appropriate) some kind of promotional coupon. A free initial consultation might be a good promotion.

Starting small like this gives you a few advantages aside from easing you into a life of public speaking. It can also help you to hone your topic: Maybe you’ll find that a broad topic like "time management" doesn’t draw people in as much as something far more specific, like "eliminating procrastination". Starting small allows you to make mistakes without costing too much: If you accidentally advertise the wrong day, time, or location and no one shows up, you’ll lose less money (and credibility) if a dozen people get it wrong than if hundreds of people get it wrong. You’ll also learn about your own delivery style and preferences – do you need a whiteboard? Do you like to walk around? And lastly, starting small will help you to know the details before you step up into a larger venue. All presenters will remember to set up chairs but not everyone will remember to bring paper towels with their donuts and coffee.

Prepare a seminar plan just as you would prepare any marketing plan: Include goals, target audiences, and long term vision.

Have your seminars recorded and (with the permission of your audience who might appear in the footage) posted on your website.

Seminars might not be right for everyone, and they might not interest you, but by starting small and honing your seminar skills, you can generate clients and position yourself effectively as a problem solver. And if you enjoy the experience, you can join the thousands of others who supplement (or entirely replace) their coaching income by providing seminars and earning back-of-room revenue on books and resources.
 

Contemporary VA

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Part of the problem lies in the misconception that sales is about pushing people into making a decision that they aren’t comfortable with. The truth, however, is that sales should be about helping people figure out what they need and then showing them how to get it. Not that different than what you do as a coach!

Once you’ve met someone who may have a need for your services, your first task is to highlight that need. You don’t have to push them into anything. Ask questions that draw out their own thoughts and feelings on the issue. Talk about the issues they’re facing as a result. And talk about the consequences of continuing in the same way that they always have.

By doing this, you are helping yourself understand the need and, more importantly, you are helping them to realize just how great in scope their need really is.

Once you have helped them see their current state, talk to them about how much better it could be. Don’t talk about what you can do for them. Don’t talk about how you can solve their problems. Instead, focus on helping them see an image in their minds of how life could be improved when they address their issue or challenge. In sales speak, you’ve probably heard of selling the sizzle, not the steak. Helping them to see that ideal in their mind is the sizzle. Don’t worry about your services just yet — that’s the steak.

Once they have seen the ideal image of themselves living with their issue completely resolved, then you can ask the question: "How can you get there?"

They might suggest some ideas of their own. That’s fine. But then the conversation will reach a point when you can offer that they come and talk to you. Point back to that image that they just pictured. You will want to rephrase it for your situation, but you’d essentially say something like: "You know how you pictured a life that was highly productive and free from procrastination? I’d like to help you achieve that."

And then ask when they would like to schedule an appointment. Don’t ask if they would like an appointment. Ask when they would like an appointment.

This is a basic sales presentation, customized to the professional coaching industry. Of course you will want to modify it slightly for your own needs, but this method works — proven over and over through decades of sales experience in all industries. Of course you won’t book appointments with everyone you use this method with, but it can help create some structure and direction around your pre-coaching conversations.

And do you notice something else? It’s not pushy. It’s not forceful. What’s more, it probably is not that different than what you do now: help people see the problem clearly, help people see the solution clearly, and help them get from the problem to the solution. The first step is the SALES step — to get them to see you professionally.
 

Contemporary VA

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Today’s current economy opens even more doors for professional coaches to be of assistance in the areas of business strategy and growth, and to assist individuals with the expansion of skills and flexibility for the job market and other goals.

In today’s age, many people and businesses are utilizing the Internet to find resources, including coaches.  It’s important to expose yourself so that when they reach out they can find YOU. You can’t just sit in some corner on the web and hope they find you.

Every business needs to create an online presence and be active in its’ marketing.  It’s no longer just about being a name in the phone book.  Businesses are working with coaches and other businesses across the country, and even across the world.

So what do you do to expand your exposure?  A number of things.  You can reach out to resources that can assist you in your marketing efforts like a Virtual Assistant Firm (who can also help you with other key elements of your business) or you can undertake your own marketing efforts.

Marketing online requires the maintenance of a website and/or blog and actively promoting the same.  Social Marketing and Networking should definitely be part of your strategy.  Learn about online marketing strategies and tips to help you along the journey. The key is to put yourself out there.  If you don’t, and someone seeks your service, they may just find your competitor instead of you.

Karen J. for ProfessionalCoaches.com

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