Professional Coaches » Coaching Tips

The Tipping Point To Acquire New Clients

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:13:15 +0000

In the journey that a prospect takes towards becoming a customer, they are in control and receive free information to help them make a decision. But there comes a point in this timeline when the prospect hands over their money to you, the coach, and entrusts you to do your job and deliver what you say you are going to deliver. I call this the tipping point. The point where a prospect tips into being a client. It’s a difficult decision to make. Just think about the last time you made a major purchase like a house or a car. House hunting or car shopping was fun: You saw new things and you dreamed about the possibilities. But it felt like there was an invisible hand holding you back from handing over your cash!

That tipping point is a difficult one to make for new clients because it represents a major commitment on their part: A commitment of time and a commitment to part with the money they’ve worked so hard to earn.

One of the ways that you can get more clients is to ease that tipping point for them. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Provide a free trial. You need to show people that the service you provide is high value. You can do that with a free trial. Offer the first hour free or the first 3 sessions free (or whatever is appropriate for your situation).

2. Provide a guarantee of some kind. For example, provide a full refund within the first 30 days of your coaching/client relationship if the client is not completely satisfied with the results to that point. This tends to scare off coaches because they’re afraid that people will take advantage of them, but it can work and fewer people will take advantage of the guarantee than is thought.

3. Give them limited access. If your coaching is in a group over the phone, such as in a mastermind group, provide your "tipping point" client with limited access: To listen in on a call but not participate, for example.

4. Provide bonuses. People love free bonuses and, ironically, are willing to pay more to get free bonuses. So, create plenty of free bonuses and offer them to new clients. This might include pre-recorded teleseminars or webinars, or it might include ebooks or print books. It might even include a coupon to purchase your book for a limited price on Amazon.

5. Create smaller purchasable segments so they don’t have to commit to as much all at once. If you normally coach for 3 hour sessions, why not offer special half-hour introductory sessions. These seem less daunting to your new client. You don’t have to offer them to everyone; just offer them as special introductory offers. Either make the first session or the first 3 sessions a half hour each, with all other sessions the full 3 hours if the client finds those first sessions useful.

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Manage Your Business When Things Get Hectic

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:16:30 +0000

I don’t know about you, but most days my daily activities move along at a nice steady clip. But some days it feels like the task fairy backed up a dump truck and unloaded a more work than I can handle!

When that happens, it’s easy to get stressed out and to become overwhelmed. In fact, many people ironically procrastinate when they are too busy. It’s not that they are lazy; it’s usually because they don’t know where to start! In this blog, I’ll list a number of ideas that you can use to help you manage your business (and your sanity) when things go crazy.

1. List everything but don’t prioritize yet. Go for a 5 minute walk – just a mental break. Let your subconscious work for you while you’re thinking about something else momentarily.

2. Come back to your desk and prioritize your work. I can’t write much here about that because everyone’s priorities will be just a little different; but in general, give them priorities A, B, and C. As a coach, it’s likely that your schedule is more than a list but also includes daily appointments that are revenue generators. So those are "A" priority but time-specific.

3. Look at all of your "A" priority work that isn’t time specific. You probably have a long list. Pick something that will be fast to do and do it first. Then, pick something that is the next fasted to do and do it next. Then pick something else that is third fastest to do and do it. The purpose of this action is to start generating some action on your list of work. If you can develop a critical mass then you’ll find procrastination much harder to do and your productivity will rise.

4. Set goals for yourself periodically through the day. When you reach that goal, go take a break.

5. If your list is really long and still overwhelming, try asking yourself this question: "I’m feeling stressed now about my high amount of to-dos. At what point will I feel like I’m on top of my workload?". Rarely is it when everything is crossed off your list. More often, it has to do with capturing a bit of down time.

While you’re working on this list, keep a piece of paper beside you where you can capture any ideas or thoughts that come to mind while you’re working. On other days you can follow these rabbit trails but on busy days you can just write them down to get them off of your mind.

You’ll also want to make sure that you eat a balanced meal and that you’re rested. If you need a short nap, there’s a chance that you’ll actually get more done if you take the nap then come back than if you try to push through your fatigue.

A hectic schedule is not pleasant! It can stress you out and rob you of your effectiveness. But if you follow these steps, you’ll be more likely to keep your sanity and get back on top of your game quickly.

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

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Getting Referrals

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:08:22 +0000

Chances are, a lot of your new clients come through marketing efforts that you’ve done – perhaps advertising or social media or something like that. It’s important to have new clients but these clients are, in a way, "expensive". You spent time and energy and money on the marketing to get the new client in the door. So the profit you earn from that client is determined only after you subtract the marketing spend you make. (If you spend $1000 on marketing in a specific period and you bring in 5 clients as a result, your marketing spend per new client is $200).

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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Something We Can All Use a Little More Of

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:39:13 +0000

Over a year ago, a client came to me with a problem. He had four businesses and he was looking for help with starting a fifth one.

One of his businesses was over 5 years old and had been successful in the first few years. However, its success diminished recently as it funded the start-up of businesses #2, #3, and #4. Then, this fifth business was being investigated and the client needed some help with some of the ins and outs of the business.

We sat down to look at his business plan. It seemed sound; it was based on research; the projections were realistic. All projections but one: When was he going to spend the time on this business? I asked about the other business he ran (which he had started before coming to me so I wasn’t as familiar with them). He admitted that they were all struggling. He made a livable 5 figure income each year, which came in primarily from 2 of the businesses.

So I asked him: You have 2 businesses that earn you 5 figures; 2 more businesses that earn next to nothing and you want to start a fifth business? He also talked excited about a sixth business as well. To make matters worse, these businesses didn’t share anything in common; they were spread across 4 (soon to be 5) different industries.

This client lacked focus. Focus is something we can all use a little more of sometimes.

Focus is about identifying just a few things we want to do and then eliminating everything else
Focus is about working within a methodology that is the best we have and ignoring other options even if they seem good
Focus is about excelling at something and accepting that you won’t excel at other things

In business, for example, you might be tempted to try all kinds of marketing channels but you’ll be more successful when you stick to a handful. Or, in your coaching practice, you might be tempted to offer a variety of services but you’ll be more successful when you focus on just a couple.

Focusing does mean giving something else up. And what makes it challenging is that we often have the "grass-is-greener" mentality about the thing we’re giving up! But when we lack focus, it steals our attention and energy and our ability to get a good amount accomplished on one thing.

Now, of course it’s okay to try new things. After all, we’d never get anywhere if we didn’t. But we just need to be careful that we’re not adopting new practices without first testing them and giving thought to how they might benefit us.

One of my favorite books on focus is Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt’s book The Power of Focus. Pick up this book; it is well worth the investment for your business and for you to help your clients to focus!

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Generate More Coaching Business

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:18:58 +0000

Finding the right clients and getting them to hire you is the constant quest of every coach. Some do it really well and all coaches aspire to do better. After all, the more effective you are at finding clients, the less you have to focus on finding them and the more you can focus on helping them. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

There are plenty of techniques out there that coaches can use to reach out to potential clients and work with them to see if there is a fit for your services. We talk about many of those techniques right here in this blog.

One coaching expert has recently produced a powerful and compelling resource that can help to transform your coaching business and make your marketing far more effective. Her name is Hannah McNamara and her book Niche Marketing for Coaches will guide you through the process of discovering who your niche market is and why you want to work with them. At £14.99, it can earn you tens of thousands time it’s value.

No, I’m not kidding, it’s that good. If there was a school of coaching, this book would be the required textbook. If someone wanted to start up a coaching business from scratch, having never worked as a coach before, this is the only marketing book they’d need.

Bold claims, but you should see this book!

Hanna McNamara will help you choose your niche and then she’ll show you how to position your business so that the niche can’t help but respond. She’ll walk you through numerous marketing techniques that have been time-tested and proven practice-builders.

Hannah is well-qualified to be talking about this stuff. As a coach to coaches she applies her years of experience to answer the question "How can I get more clients?", which is a question that every coach asks all the time.

Hannah’s extremely useful book is a valuable addition to your coaching library. (I know because I’ve added it to my own library). Not only that, but for a limited time you also get thousands of dollars worth of highly practical, business-building bonuses. Twenty-one of them to be exact.

Now, I admit that I’m a little biased. After all, two of the bonuses are bonuses that Contemporary VA (the creators of this very blog) are offering to those who buy the book. You’ll find that there are TONS of other bonuses that are worth having, too – bonuses that people pay hundreds of dollars for. And what’s crazy about Hannah’s offer is that coaches get thousands of dollars of free bonuses for the price of the book.

So visit the site and check out the book. You’ll have a chance to review some sample content, look at the table of contents, and inspect each of the twenty-one bonuses to decide for yourself.

Contemporary VA

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Why Niche Marketing Works

admin — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:11:27 +0000

A niche is a small segment of the marketplace. Coaches that know what their niche is will spend less time, money, and effort on marketing with greater return. Not only that, their customers will be a better fit, they’ll be far happier, and they will be more likely to refer their friends to the coach.

Fledgling business owners who want to be successful quickly will try to avoid becoming stuck in a niche and will often claim that "everyone" is their customer. But this is inefficient and can become costly. After all, serving "everyone" is impossible.

Let’s look at an example of a (fictional) productivity coach who thinks that everyone is her customer: By only speaking English, she effectively eliminates billions of potential customers. By charging for her services, she effectively eliminates millions more who do not have the money to hire her. By being a productivity coach, she automatically excludes babies, children, and perhaps even retired people who have less of a need for enhanced productivity. By being located in New York, and by working face-to-face with clients, she eliminates potential clients who live outside of the area. So, in this short paragraph, her client base of "everyone" was narrowed down from billions to a few hundred thousand. And if we went on, you’d see that it gets narrowed down even more.

By identifying a niche and focusing on it, you are admitting that you cannot possibly serve everybody so you might as well serve a few people well. This helps you to become an expert in the specific needs and challenges of that niche. For example, perhaps our productivity consultant from above might consider focusing on C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies, whose problems and opportunities for productivity look very different than those of the middle manager or of C-level executives in small and mid-size companies. The amount that she could charge would be different, too.

And, by identifying a niche and focusing on it, your marketing can become more effective. Rather than marketing to "everybody", which requires an expensive broad reaching advertising plan, targeted advertising to the niche will help convert more prospects for less marketing investment. Our productivity coach, hoping to reach C-level executives, might skip certain marketing methods: scratch billboards, television, and radio from the list. She might consider advertising in Forbes and Inc. as two examples of targeted marketing.

By working with a niche, you’ll be able to address the specific needs and challenges of that niche which makes for a better coach/client fit. You’ll address your client’s needs and challenges more effectively. And, because people spend time with people just like themselves, your customers will be more likely to refer your services to their friends… who likely fit your niche. Our productivity coach from above can address the productivity challenges of C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies and can have the confidence that they are rubbing shoulders with other C-level executives of other Fortune 500 companies.

So, how do you determine your niche? Start by looking at your client list.

Who do you serve most frequently right now?
Who do you prefer to work with?
How quickly can you get up to speed on the niche-specific needs, opportunities, and challenges inherent in that niche?
Are there marketing opportunities that are apparent?
How do your rates compare with the niche’s payment expectations? (Hint: you’ll often be able to charge more by specializing).
Does your personality mesh well with your niche market?
How would you feel about working with that niche market for a decade or more?

Niche markets are the key to successful coaching practices. Find your niche and start reaping the rewards.

Contemporary VA

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The Conundrum of Busyness

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:11:16 +0000

Every coach, consultant, and mentor wants to be busy. When you’re busy with paying clients, you are earning revenue. It feels good to have that full schedule! Unfortunately, this also creates a problem. In this post, we’ll talk about what the problem is and what to do about it.

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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But I’m a Coach

admin — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:43:25 +0000

The coaching profession is a helping one. In many ways, it’s like a psychologist or a medical doctor: A client comes to you for help on a particular issue and you "diagnose" the problem and work with them to resolve it.

But there’s a problem with these helping professions that doesn’t get enough attention. The problem is this: They are businesses but it is almost taboo to call them businesses. Businesses generate leads and convert prospects into customers and they earn revenue and try to earn a profit. Helping professions, though, don’t like to be associated with those business / sales / marketing terms because it seems less helpful. In this blog, we refer to these business terms without apology because we believe that helping professions and business are NOT diametrically opposed.

With that in mind, we now turn our attention to an important business topic that is bypassed in the coaching profession: metrics.

Metrics are measurements. In other businesses, there might be a metric measuring inventory turnover or profitability or prospect-to-customer conversion rate. But these are rarely measured in coaching because of the anti-business taboo. Yet, your job could be so much easier if you spend some time thinking about your metrics.

With so little attention focused on metric in coaching, it is hard to determine what to measure. After all, how do you measure a customer’s success at overcoming their fears or dealing with their obstacles?

You may not be able to measure those but you can measure other things:

You can measure the number of leads you get from your website
You can measure the number of people who agree to a free initial consultation
You can measure the number of people who have a free initial consultation who go on to sign up for a series of sessions with you.
You can measure what is the number of sessions people have with you
You can measure how much revenue you earn per person over their lifetimeYou can measure your profitability each month
You can measure your profitability each month

What is your first reaction at reading this? Does the thought of measuring these things repel you? It’s possible that some coaches might even be offended by the thought.

On the other hand, the coaching profession is like every other business – it needs to earn a profit to stay in business and by paying attention to these numbers, you can help more people and increase your likelihood of staying in business. You don’t have to focus on the numbers or obsess about how to earn more per-client profitability, but thinking about the metrics listed above can help to know how your business is running.

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Online Tools for Professional Coaches

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:30:38 +0000

In recent years, the need for coaches to meet clients face-to-face has largely diminished. There are still many coaches who prefer or even insist on meeting clients in person and in some coaching situations, that is the right choice. But today’s web has opened up the possibilities to allow coaches to work with clients online. We’re not just talking about the telephone, there’s so much more.

Skype. Face to face can still happen, even when separated by oceans. Skype is a web-based telephone service that works through your computer and allows you to talk, video conference, instant message, and share files. It’s an excellent communications hub enabling professional coaches with the ability to meet clients no matter where they are.

GoogleDocs. GoogleDocs is a free online word processing application. If you use Microsoft Word, GoogleDocs feels excatly the same. Files are stored online in your own secure account and you can access them from any computer. But GoogleDocs offers coaches two additional advantages: You can share documents with others so that both of you can work on the same document at the same time without overwriting the other person’s work. For example, that means that your client on the other side of the globe can sign into a document that you’ve shared with them and the two of you can work on their goals. Together, at the same time. And the other benefit to a coach: GoogleDocs allows you to create custom forms that can be posted on your website. New clients can fill out the form online, click submit, and all of their answers are entered into a GoogleDoc for you to review before their first session. Why not have one form for new clients and another form for your regular clients to fill out before each session?

Mindomo or Mindmeister. These are web-based mindmapping software that allows you to create mindmaps online. Like GoogleDocs, more than one person can edit a map at once, making it the perfect tool for you to work with your clients no matter where there are. (I’ve listed both of the ones that I’ve used here, and there are others, but I prefer Mindmeister).

Blogs. Blogs aren’t just for you to promote your business so that the world can see. Blogs can come with limited access for only certain people to view. A coach might have a client create a blog as a personal journal of their progress, and set the viewership permission so that the only people who can see blog are the client and the coach. This allows the client to keep the coach up to date, and the coach can add comments to encourage or direct where necessary.

These are just four tools that can empower coaches to meet with clients anywhere, and to collaborate with them in real time, all the time.

Contemporary VA

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Do I really have to sell?

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:48:38 +0000

Professional coaches offer meaningful services to people — services that can have a powerful impact in their client’s lives. Unfortunately, GETTING clients is one of the biggest problems in professional coaching because many coaches are skilled at working WITH clients but have less skill (and interest!) in selling their services. So consider this a sales 101 lesson specific to professional coaches.

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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