Coaching Tools to help Coaches Get More Coaching Clients. Suzan Schmitt: The Coach Marketer

Coach Marketing: Bringing in The Clients and Signing Them Up

September 22, 2008

OK, So Now I have to Get These Folks Signed Up for Caoching

This speaking thing is great!  I get in front of a lot of people, I get to be the center of attention, I have a great time, I get to tell people what they can do, and best of all I get to use a microphone!!!!!  COOL!!!  That is all good but I have to pay the rent on my office so I have to figure out how to turn the folks in the audience into paying clients or this whole speaking rock start thing only benefits my poor little ego.  Coaching is getting more familiar to people yet there are still many who are not exactly sure what coaching is or how it can help them.  I discovered that if I make an offer of 10-15 "FREE Life Balance Coaching Sessions" to be drawn randomly from the forms I collect at the end of the workshop…I get a lot of free sessions and a lot of information for my contact list.  You should know that my contact list is growing rapidly now but it began with about ten names of friends. 

What do I do In a Free Session.  I Don't Want to Give Away Coaching Because that Makes it Hard to Pay the Office Rent.

I had several free session where I was determined to WOW the clients with my  amazing coaching skill knowing that after they saw how great I was they would surely want more!  In fact, I helped a couple of them so well they resolved their issue and never came back.  At least that is what I choose to believe.  Anyway, after this happened a few times I decided that the FREE session should have a specific purpose to get people to see how coaching can help them.  I want the person to get value from the session and I want them to know that coaching will help them achieve their goals and improve their life.  I developed a specific format for this session that leads the client to discover what they want to change, how they will benefit when they change, what is preventing them from making these changes, how they will feel when they make these changes, and to understand the it is all possible.  WOW, has that made a difference!  I would say that 70 percent of the people I see decide that coaching with me will help them and they sign up.

Sign 'em up and take the payment

This is the perfect time to go over the coaching agreement and collect their credit card information.  I collect the credit card information and put them on a recurring billing system through my merchant account.  The recurring billing is great because it keeps the clients from having to pull out a wallet every month so the don't feel that pain and it keeps me from having to keep track of who has paid and who has not.  Wonderful, it all happens automatically!

What I Learned

1)  Offer a free session at the end of each speaking opportunity and collect contact information.

2)  Use the free session as a way to sign up new clients and make sure their is benefit for the client in the session too.

3)  Get the coaching contract signed, set the next appointment, and collect payment.  Nobody can benfit from coaching until they start coaching.

Related posts:

1. Coach Marketing: Starting a Coaching Business Ready, Set, Go!!!!
2. Coaching Tools: Do You Know the Secrets to Signing Up Coaching Clients?
3. Websites and Coach Marketing: What is My Website Doing For Me?
4. Coaching Business: Marketing and Making it Grow
5. Coaching Business: Getting new clients and how they pay

Filed under: Free Sessions and Getting New Clients

Tags: coach marketing, coaching business, getting clients, getting new clients, selling coaching, suzan schmitt