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

@contemporaryva on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

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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

@contemporaryva on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

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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

@contemporaryva on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

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