Archive for March, 2007

Getting Coaching Clients to Buy – Reasons Prospects Refuse to Become Coaching Clients – part 2

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

3. Prospect considers the benefits to be greater than their cost

Sometimes the prospect may raise a cost objection, resulting in their declining the offered coaching service.  From our experience, with cost objections, a number of things may be true:

• Inappropriate benefits are being offered to your prospect.
• There is an unclear value proposition for the prospect. That is the key benefits of your coaching services are not valued by your target market. Or they cannot see the value of your service is greater than the cost to them.
• You have not been successful in explaining the benefits in your prospect’s language.
• They may be confused about how your coaching offering works.

Here it’s really down to you to explain the benefits to your prospect, and to ensure they are understood.  Whether this is face to face, via a sales page or during a presentation, you must present the benefits clearly to your prospect.

4. Prospect is motivated to buy now

Why, when they’re aware of your services and their benefits, would a prospect not be motivated to buy from you?  It may be that the current pain they experience from their problems is not sufficiently great to warrant gaining the benefits of your services.

It may be that they feel they don’t have sufficient time to dedicate to your services currently.

The only way you’ll know is to ask.

So what can you do?

1. Enter into a dialog with your current and potential clients and ask them what they most value from you.  Ensure that during these conversations you establish what their biggest problems are.

2. When you know what’s important to your market, make sure that your coaching services are oriented to resolving those problems.  There should be a clear link between what your market wants and the services you provide.

3. Communicate this link in your potential clients’ language, covering the resolution of their specific problems.

4. Use communications channels that are appropriate to your target market.

5. Maintain the dialogue and refine your services where appropriate.

Summary

In order to buy your coaching services, your prospect must be aware that your services exist, and must be aware of their benefits.  They must consider the benefits to be greater than their cost, and be motivated to buy now. 

This article has identified actions you can take today to get your prospects to buy.  Which actions will you choose to take?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with Alun’s free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

© Copyright Alun Richards 2007. All Rights Reserved.

You may freely post this article as long as you retain the copyright and author contact details.

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Getting Coaching Clients to Buy – Reasons Prospects Refuse to Become Coaching Clients

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Ever had an initial coaching session - or a discussion – with a hot prospect, yet they did not buy your coaching services from you?  “Why?” you ask yourself on the way home – “Why did they not buy?”

Well, there are many reasons prospects give, but they all boil down to a small number of situations.  Want to know what those are, and how to deal with them?

In order for a client to say yes to your coaching service, a number of things must be true.
The client must:

1. Be aware that your coaching service exists.
2. Be aware of the benefits of your coaching service.
3. Consider the benefits to be greater than their cost.
4. Be motivated to buy now.

Let’s examine these situations one by one.

1. Prospect aware that your coaching service exists

Some coaches get frustrated at prospects seemingly still not knowing exactly what coaches do.  Although it’s useful for prospects to be aware of what coaching in general is, it’s more relevant for them to be aware of YOUR coaching service. 

This means that your chosen communication medium must be capable of reaching your prospects, and that the message must be understandable to them.

Then your message has to be received and understood by your prospect. Ask yourself if you are consistently getting your message out to your target market.

2. Prospect aware of the benefits of your coaching service

Coaches tell us they often find it difficult to explain the value and benefits of coaching sufficiently to cause a prospect to convert to a client.  And when prospects are unclear about the offering, no sale will result.

But to become a client, your prospect must understand exactly what benefits they will see.  Remember WIIFM – what’s in it for the client?  What will they get, specifically, from your coaching services?

This article will continue with points 3 & 4 in the next post.

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Get Coaching Clients Now – 7. Not enough time

Monday, March 19th, 2007

We found that part-time coaches and those who are starting to build their coaching practice mentioned this issue most frequently.  However, even some experienced coaches have difficulty balancing the time they need to spend marketing and the time they need to deliver their coaching services. 

The issue here is insufficient time to deliver coaching services AND to market those services.  The good news is that this is usually indicative of a growing coaching practice!

While the statement of the issue is straightforward, there are several possible root causes, and a corresponding number of solutions.  The specific solution for you will depend on the root cause of your insufficient time.

Ask yourself the following questions.

1. How am I spending my time currently?

Here, examine how exactly you are spending your coaching week.  Include your coaching time and leisure time.

2. What stops me from undertaking more marketing activities?

And no, it’s not “time”.  Once you identify what you’re doing that’s preventing you from marketing, you can take action on it.

3. Prioritisation – what should I be doing?

Coaches tell us that they benefit from considering the priorities in their lives, and how much time they are able to spend delivering coaching services and marketing.
 
4. Delegation and Outsourcing

Others can benefit from establishing which activities in their coaching, their marketing and their lives have to be performed by them, and which could be outsourced to other providers.

Want more help?

For those coaches wishing to examine this area in more depth, I have an article in www.ezinearticles.com called “Finding Time For Marketing! – How To Have Time To Market As Well As Deliver Your Coaching Services”. 

Summary

In this article I have outlined the seven main problems coaches have in getting clients.  There are solutions for each of these problems, and I have covered several suggestions used by experienced coaches.

Which of these could you implement in your coaching practice this week?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with the free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

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Get Coaching Clients Now – 6. Your Personal Blockers

Friday, March 16th, 2007

In terms of getting clients, coaches mentioned a large number of personal blockers which ranged from self-sabotage, a lack of confidence to not knowing client needs.  It also encompassed being unclear on your proposition, and having a lack of personal organisation, a lack of appropriate systems or business processes.

These seemingly large variety of problems stem from two or three common causes.

Lack of Commitment

Some are related to a lack of commitment to coaching or to a particular target market.  This in turn may be due to not being clear on the reasons you are coaching in the first place.  The symptoms tend to include self-sabotage, procrastination, a lack of confidence, a lack of passion for either coaching itself or your chosen target market.

The remedy here is to have a target market that you are passionate about and to ensure that coaching is the right discipline for you.  When you’re passionate about your target market and what you can do for them, self-sabotage, procrastination, and a lack of confidence are unlikely to occur.

Lack of Personal Organisation

Other issues are more to do with personal organisation, and establishing systems for regularly occurring situations like billing, scheduling coaching appointments, sending out welcome packs and the like.  Symptoms here include a feeling of overwhelm, of not having enough time and being event-driven rather than being proactive.

The solution to these issues is the implementation of processes and systems that are appropriate to your coaching operation.  These needn’t be complex, and don’t all have to be computerised.  They do however need to be simple to operate.

You don’t have to invent all your own systems.  You can ask more experienced coaches what systems or procedures they use, or how they deal with specific operational issues.  There are several coaching forums online that are very useful for newly established coaches.  The one I recommend is the Eurocoach List .

Lack of Belief in your abilities

This frequently manifests itself as self-talk such as “I’m not good enough”.  This is much more common in newly qualified coaches.

The solution to this is to get out and coach anything that moves.  There is nothing like focused action to render beliefs such as this as meaningless.  Then when you get good results, make sure you obtain a testimonial.  Publicise these testimonials on your website, your blog, newsletter, PR, brochure and anywhere else that’s relevant.

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Get Coaching Clients Now – 5. The need to educate clients about coaching

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Although it’s true that there’s a growing awareness amongst clients about coaching, there are still clients who are unsure of what coaching involves. This can be more acute in specific niche markets, especially those where coaching take-up has been delayed.

And if there’s a need to educate some clients about coaching in general, there is more of a need to communicate precisely what your coaching will deliver.

The key here is to spell out to the prospect the relevant benefits of working with you in a concise form.

This is, in effect, your USP - your Unique Selling Proposition. The unique thing that you can offer your clients. The better that you can articulate this, and the more relevant it is to your prospects, the more clients you will get.

Some coaches prepare an elevator speech along the following lines:

“As a coach working in the ___________ market, I work with ________ clients who are having ________ problems and want to _________. In doing this, we typically cover ________ , _________ and _________ .”

This leaves the prospect with little doubt about your offering, and has hopefully established some client credibility, as they’ll recognise the typical problems mentioned.

The prospect is then able to make an informed decision about your services – and if you’ve established real value in their eyes, you stand a chance of being hired.

Does this mean some work on your part? Yes. And quite a bit, if you need to start from scratch with understanding your clients typical problems.

But does it pay off? Yes. Oh, yes…

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Get Coaching Clients Now – 4. Not explaining the value and benefits sufficiently

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Some coaches get frustrated at prospects seemingly still not knowing exactly what coaches do.  It’s true that the awareness of clients about coaching has increased substantially in the last decade.  But coaches still raise this issue.

Coaches tell us they often find it difficult to explain the value and benefits of coaching sufficiently to cause a prospect to convert to a client.  And when prospcts are unclear about the offering, no sale will result.

Sometimes the prospect may raise a cost objection, resulting in them declining the offered coaching service.  From our experience, if a prospect voices a cost objection, a number of things may be true.

  • Inappropriate benefits are being offered to your prospect.
  • The key benefits of your coaching services are not valued by your target market.
  • There is an unclear value proposition for the prospect.
  • The prospect cannot see the value of your service is greater than the cost to them.
  • They perceive your coaching services as just too expensive for them.
    You have not been successful in explaining the benefits in your prospect’s language.
  • They are confused about how your coaching offering works.

So what can you do?

1. Enter into a dialog with your current and potential clients and ask them what they most value from you.  Ensure that during these conversations you establish what their biggest problems are.

2. When you know what’s important to your market, make sure that your coaching services are oriented to resolving those problems.  There should be a clear link between what your market wants and the services you provide.

3. Communicate this in your potential clients’ language, covering the resolution of their specific problems.

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