By "time lag" I mean: you need to determine the time lag between when a potential client first contacts you for more information and when they call you to schedule an appointment; and you need to determine the time lag between when you have your first appointment with a client and when their payment appears in your bank account.

Now, we all have different situations but for me it was two weeks from first contact to first appointment and another two weeks from first appointment to payment. (In my circumstance, I offered an initial consultation for free – the first appointment – and then required up-front payment for a set of future appointments).

What’s the value of knowing these time lags? There are a couple benefits:

First, I can schedule my time. I may not know the exact number of people who will be scheduling an appointment, but I can estimate it based on the number of people contacting me for more information. Chances are, if that "first contact" number doubles, then the first appointment number may double, too… and it fairly consistently happened two weeks down the road which would allow me to work my schedule appropriately.

Second, I know when I’m getting paid! Coaches may love what they do but they still need to be paid. And if someone contacted me for more information, I knew that if they became a client, I’d see the money in about a month.

Third, I can "ramp up" and "ramp down" my marketing based on what I know my schedule will be like two weeks from now.

Of course it’s not a perfect system. Sometimes a few more or a few less people will contact me for more information which will have a trickle-down effect two weeks later for appointments. And sometimes those people take slightly longer or slightly shorter to schedule. And sometimes they take slightly longer or slightly shorter to pay. But we’re talking averages and generalities here and that’s all you need.

Now, I’ve been using the two weeks from first contact to first appointment and two weeks from first appointment to first payment as my time lag numbers. You might have a different business model (i.e. you need to measure the time lag in a slightly different way) and/or a different time period (i.e. it may not be two weeks for you).

When you know these numbers, your coaching practice will thrive!

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It’s helpful to gaze into the mirror occasionally and think about how you do things. That doesn’t mean you need to change, but this mirror-gazing can help us to leverage our strengths and mitigate our weaknesses.

The director. You tell people what to do. You listen to their situation and then you outline what needs to happen and you pass the list back to them. You may provide ongoing director-style coaching as they follow your list (or you may not; I’ve seen both). This kind of coach is in demand because people like to be told what to do (even if they don’t think they do).

The peer. You sit on the same side of the table as your client. You nod understandingly and share from your own experiences. You tend to prefer referring to your work as "collaboration" rather than "coaching". You coach your client with a "let’s do this together" attitude that often helps the client to feel like they’re not alone in the effort. People respond well to this kind of coaching but there are times (like during payment) when you need to be professional so it can get challenging.

The bucket. You see each client as a deep well of potential and your job is to draw the answers out of them. Your coaching style includes plenty of probing questions and invitations to "explore those thoughts further". Clients explore their situations and use discussion with you to uncover the answer within themselves. This is a very client-centric model and can be quite empowering to clients. However, they may one day decide that you aren’t actually giving them "advice".

The librarian. You have a vast list of resources and tools at your fingertips. As soon as a client explains their challenge to you, you pull a book off your shelf and call up a list of websites to give them. This kind of coaching can be very empowering for clients but you may find that your clients are "spinning their wheels" because they are overwhelmed with information and lack the ability to act on it.

Each of these coaching styles presents opportunities and challenges. And it doesn’t hurt to think about who you are and how you might bring in aspects from other styles into your coaching.

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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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1. High school students seem to be always just one Facebook Wall post away from a crisis: Sam was seen with Brenda, what could that mean? Or, Joe didn’t say hello to April, it’s the end of the world. The same holds true for some of our coaching clients: They are in a potential state of near crisis. I do mean this humorously but not disrespectfully. Our clients don’t know the stuff that we’re working with them in. It is a big deal with them. Our job is to navigate the situation with some sanity.

2. High school students need to balance dreams with reality. They might aspire to be a teacher or cop or rocket scientist but they also need to face reality. Do they have the marks to make it? Do they have the dedication? You don’t want to crush their dreams but you also don’t want them to run down a futile path. Again, that’s like our job as coaches. We need to help our clients understand their dream of (for example) creating the next Twitter with the reality that (for example) they have no social networking experience. Our job is to help them find a real path that will take them close to their dream.

3. There are a lot of things competing for the attention of high school students: Their school work, an after school job, a budding romance, friends, and all that kind of stuff. These take on a priority in the student’s mind and it’s hard for the lower prioritized stuff to get the attention it needs. It’s the same as a coach: We can give plenty of advice and guidance to our clients, but we’re only speaking into their lives for an hour or two a week. The rest of the time they’ve got work to do, family life to live, the dog to walk, and the garbage needs to be taken to the curb. Our job, then, is to help them follow through on the advice we give (obviously we don’t want to do the work for them) but to make it easy for them.

4. Fashion is a ridiculously important element in high school. (I guess it’s important outside of high school, too, actually, but it seems to be more critically urgent in high school because of the impact that it can have on peer relationships). This kind of "cool" also appears in our work, too. I don’t know about you, but I often get clients who come to our sessions with the latest, most fashionable flavor of marketing idea to implement in their business. My job, in these cases, is to help them weigh the value and determine whether or not it’s truly going to help their business. As mom said, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s right.

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Recently, I found a blog post that talked about succeeding by listening. To be honest, I almost missed this post all together because it appeared on a website that helps people as they work at improving their careers. The particular post in question was written to help employees increase their likelihood of a new job and / or promotion by listening.

So, since it was on this career site, I just about missed it. But I happened to click on it and was really impressed with the content for two reasons:

First, the article can be read by anyone, anywhere to help them become better listeners (and more successful people as a result).

Second, the article could be used as a tool for coaches to help their clients to become better listeners. I don’t care if you’re an executive career coach, business coach, a productivity coach, a family coach, a lifestyle coach, a relationship coach, a religious coach, a dieting and wellness coach… it doesn’t matter. Listening is a relevant and valuable exercise that EVERYONE can be better at doing.

The blog was written by Andy Robinson, a career success coach and personal branding specialist. It’s called "Listen Up! 10 Ways to Use Your Ears to Advance Your Career". His gems include:

• Listen for ideas
• Judge content, not delivery
• Concentrate and resist distraction
•   … and more. Read the full article here: http://www.careerealism.com/listen-up-10-ways-to-use-your-ears/

Read the article and think about how it applies first to you and second to your clients.

Ask yourself: Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my clients? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my market? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my employees? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my family? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to myself? Apply the skills you learn in the article to each group of people listed in this paragraph and watch how your life will be completely transformed.

Then, bring it into your coaching sessions. Ask your clients similar questions: Are you listening as effectively as you could be?

Take yourself and then your clients through each of the ten points (or alter them slightly if it’s more appropriate for your clients.

If your clients are responsive to this type of study, take one of Robinson’s ten points and cover it during each of ten sessions. By the end of those ten sessions, your clients will be expert listeners and they’ll HEAR huge opportunities and greater success as a result.

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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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"… I used to be a procrastinator. I admit it. As someone who is connected to the web all day long, it was easy to surf. I had friends who sent me links to funny news stories, hilarious videos, humorous pictures, etc. And I shared back with plenty of things. I had a list of blogs that I read faithfully every day. I browsed social networking sites incessantly. If Twitter was around then (this was a couple of years ago now) I would have been on it constantly, too. Email was always open in front of me. And I had bookmarked a number of magazines whose online editions I read diligently.

In short, I would end a busy day with the realization that I had done very little. My busy day was just a façade. It was busy, but not with anything truly productive. I had little to show for each day. I still earned pretty good money and I did run a successful practice, so it was hard to notice.

But slowly, that procrastination eroded my effectiveness. It’s hard to believe now but I slowly and imperceptibly marketed less; I slowly lost clients; I slowly started to erode my business. It never got to the point where I was in dire straits, but in retrospect, my practice diminished.

I’d like to point to a time when I woke up and said "enough is enough" but it didn’t happen overnight. It was over the course of a few months when I realized that I had let things go and I needed to get back on track. I can’t point to a single catalyst but I can point to a few months in which I came back from the brink.

That was about 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve made dramatic changes: I limit my time on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I culled my blog reading to just a few minutes a day and only AFTER I’ve accomplished a pre-set list of tasks. I picked 3 favorite magazines and I read them when I’m not at work. While those were helpful strategies, the most effective thing I did was to make a covenant with myself that I would not become distracted during my work hours.

And it worked. I haven’t been this productive in a long, long time. It’s a good feeling to be focused again.

It seems to me to be a lot like a garden I once kept. It was a beautiful flower garden at the side of my house. But then I went away on vacation and when I returned I had a family emergency that took my attention away for a couple of weeks. When I finally returned to my garden it was a bed of weeds and it took a long time to work through those weeds and take control of the garden again."

Contemporary VA

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One way that many coaches can find new clients is from businesses. Of course, for some of you, like executive coaches or business coaches, this is where you look first. But many of you are coaches who work in some other aspect of life and the business world might not be your go-to place to find clients. Some examples include: transition coaches, productivity coaches, career coaches, parenting coaches, time management coaches, etc. For you, clients are often found from other sources.

However, by approaching businesses and telling them about your coaching topics, you might find an entirely new source of clientele.

Find a few medium-to-large organizations that have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees. Talk to their HR department and tell them that you are a coach in your specific field. Then, tell them why their business will benefit when their employees get coached with you. Productivity and time management coaches might coach a client on productivity in all aspects of their lives and the business would receive the spin-off benefit. Parenting coaches would help employees who are also parents through the challenges and pleasures of parenthood. Transition and career coaches can help new employees to make the right first steps in their career, and can help retiring employees to leave a positive legacy that others can build on.

The nice thing about approaching it this way is that it’s a "soft sell". You’re not asking the business to cover these expenses. You’re simply suggesting that they recommend your services to their employees. If you present yourself effectively, they might be willing promoters because businesses like finding ways to improve the lives of their employees… especially if it doesn’t cost them anything. This makes for happier employees (and happier employees are more productive and more likely to stay with the company) and the company wins without having to life a finger.

If the HR department is interested in your idea, offer to start with a free seminar for their employees over lunch hour. You can gauge interest from the employees, you can tantalize them with some helpful general tips, and you can show HR that you’re an expert who can deliver happier employees to them.

Here’s a bonus tip: If you have any industry experience (either from a previous work experience or because many of your clients happen to be in one industry), start there. Approach several businesses in one industry and tailor your coaching to that niche. For example, a time management coach might create some marketing around: "Time management for oil & gas middle management" or a parenting coaching might focus on a niche like: "Parenting skills for retail employees". This will help you to show the HR department that you know the precise needs of their workers, and it will help you to hone your coaching to attract more clients.

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Moments later, the individual who was outside of the store walked in, pointed a gun at my friend and demanded the money in the cash register. Not interested in letting things get worse, he handed the money over and the thief ran away.

He says: "I can’t tell you what was wrong in the situation but I knew something was wrong. It was my instincts telling me from clues that were not visible. I trusted my instincts to a point and locked the staff entrance, and I often wonder what more I could have done to follow my instincts further. Obviously, locking the front door or calling the police was out of the question because there was no evidence to suggest that I was in danger. And yet, my instincts knew it."

Fast forward nearly two decades later: He is a business coach who helps small businesses and start-ups. And this time, he has learned a lesson from his instincts.

He says: "I follow my instincts all the time. If something’s not right, I know it and I obey what my gut tells me".

He goes on to tell other (thankfully less dramatic) stories in which he trusted his instincts: "I have plenty of colleagues who give me advice about how to run my business. While I appreciate that they care, and I do sometimes take their advice, I always run it through the filter of my instincts and ask myself, ‘does this feel right?’. One colleague keeps recommending that I offer a newsletter. It might be good for business, and it might even be good for my business, but my instincts are telling me that I’m not ready to do it yet. I have it on a backburner and I’m thinking about it, but it’s not the right time."

And, you may recall that we recently wrote about firing customers and strongly recommended that you follow your instincts about which customers to keep and which ones to let go.

But this has an impact for your clients, too. If you’re a coach and you’re working a client who seems strongly compelled to do something or not to do something, explore why they feel that way and ask yourself: Are they following habits or trends or pressure that are prompting them (in which case, you might have to work with them to resolve the situation) or are they following their instincts (in which case, you might have to work with them to obey their gut).

Unfortunately, clearly identifying the difference is NOT easy. In fact, one of the only ways that you’ll be able to draw out from your clients whether or not it’s their instincts that they are hearing is to be like eccentric doctor in the TV show House (except maybe less cantankerous). Each episode, Dr. House is given a challenging medical dilemma and he spends the entire episode eliminating the possibilities until he is left with the one and only problem that it could be.

In a similar way, you’ll want to talk to your clients and try to narrow down if they are listening to outside peer pressure or following old habits or responding to market trends… or, if they are in fact following their instincts.

Contemporary VA

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