Choosing the right target coaching niche is essential to the success of your coaching business. Experience in a particular field alone is not enough of a reason to choose that area as a target coaching niche.
Continue Leave a Comment September 6, 2009
Coaching products allow coaches to reach many more people than is possible coaching one on one. However, to get people to purchase and consume those products we must become master motivators. The word motivate is critical to writing good sales letters so it is essential that we understands what motivates people.
Most people are more motivated to avoid pain than they are to seek pleasure. However, studies also show that people are more willing to spend large sums of money to reach a goal. That is why people will spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on education.
The point is that both types of emotions, positive and negative, play a huge part in our motivations to take action so we must think about how to use those emotions the goal is to cause action. Let us take a look at the some of the positive emotions as described by Napoleon Hill the author of “Think and Grow Rick”.
Love
We all have the desire to be loved. When you motivate with love then you have hit the tap root of human nature. Look at all the things we do to ensure that others love us. We buy billions of dollars worth of perfume and cosmetics to be attractive to love. We give to others because we love them or we desire that they love us. We make huge sacrifices for others that we love. Love is probably the single most powerful motivator of human kind next to fear.
All of this means that people are motivated by the desire to have the love of others and to express our love for others. Touch on these desires and get straight to the heart of the matter.
Show people how they can love or be loved by using coaching to reach their goals. Remember when we do something to increase our self-esteem we are also loving ourselves and there is no greater boost to self esteem that reach a goal.
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm can sell all by itself. We have all gotten wrapped up in the pitch of an enthusiastic person. Enthusiasm is contagious and is a strong motivator. I know you have been swept up in the enthusiasm of another person and based on their enthusiasm you have taken on and accomplished a task or goal that you may not have achieved without that motivation of enthusiasm from the other person.
People are most authentic and enthusiastic about their passions so make sure that you are coaching in a niche that you are passionate about. Your enthusiasm will be contagious and will attract clients with little effort on your part.
When you know that you can serve your target coaching niche and help them to overcome their challenges and achieve their goals and you can communicate that certainty and enthusiasm then you will see clients flocking to your coaching business.
Loving people, helping them love themselves, and passion for your coaching niche are an unstoppable attraction force. If you can communicate those emotions in your sales copy then you will have a powerful tool for getting new coaching clients.
Leave a Comment September 1, 2009
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.
Leave a Comment September 22, 2008
Got Clients, Got Office, Need Payment! Doesn't anyone use cash anymore?
Alright, got an office and clients are coming in for coaching. So here we sit at the end of a coaching session and it is time to pay. How weird can that get? No one carries cash anymore and I have clients paying by the session so what do we do? They scramble to get cash to pay me each time or they dig out a checkbook from some deep storage area and use the antiquated means of payment know as a check. How shall I put this…PAIN IN THE ASS!!!!! Plus every time they have to pay it becomes an opportunity to think about how much it costs and if they should continue. Amazingly, I get the idea this is not optimal!
Now it is time to tell my clients that we are about to have a change. After a great deal of thought, I decided that I should ask clients to coach for 6 months as a minimum and that I should be able to accept credit cards. I would like to set up a monthly credit card charge that automatically bills their credit card once a month. I figure that way I don't have to play bookkeeper. Great thinking Suzan…now how the hell do I do that?
How cool is the Internet? I explore to discover that there are companies, who for a small fee, will allow me to do everything I want and more! I found a couple of these Kick Start Cart and Practice Pay Solutions. The first step is to get a separate bank account for my business. Then I can open a merchant account with one of these companies. This process was pretty easy and painless. Now I can get my client's credit card information and have them on recurring billing! That means every month their credit card is automatically charged my monthly fee and I don't have to do anything!
Now all I need is more clients.
I know…I should join ICF locally! They want an annual fee and a meeting fee to join so I will go to a few meetings first and decide if I want to do that. So I go to a few ICF meetings and figure out that I am only going to meet other coaches and this is not going to help me get clients. Next move. One of my clients tell me about BNI a national referral group or as some call it networking group. That sounds better because it is comprised of people in different business categories who help each other with referrals. I think I will go to a meeting. Gotta love the Internet again…I go and find that there are about 25 groups of BNI in my city. How do I pick one? I know I will just go to a meeting and see how I like the group. I go and this seems like a good thing and it seems like I could get some business this way. I try several groups and pick the one that is most comfortable to me and join it. Not real cheap but I figure two clients will more than cover the cost.
Someone suggests I start doing speaking events to get clients. Aaaahhhh! Public Speaking?
After the initial flood of fear…I realized that new clients are not just going to come knock on my door so I decide to think about this idea a bit more. I could speak but that leads me to the question of what the heck am I going to talk about? I start to think about what my clients talk most about because I figure if there is something they all have as a common issue then many other people would have the same issue. Gosh, I am a smart one!!!
It seems that everyone of my clients is too busy and feels overwhelmed in life. Great topic for a workshop or presentation, Life Balance. Now it is time to start writing and thinking about how I can help people during my presentation and still make them want to become my clients as well. I have to give them some value and get across a sales pitch at the same time. I was in advertising for many years so I should be able to handle this.
What Have I Learned?
1) It has to be easy for your clients to pay you
2) Clients should know that they will be working with you for several months.
3) You have to market and network to get clients.
4) One great way to get new clients is through public speaking.
5) Workshops and seminars have to provide people with some value and learning rather than being one big fat sales pitch for coaching.
6) Here is a way to start a merchant account so you can take credit cards.
Practice Pay Solutions delivers personalized, convenient, and affordable credit card, electronic check, and e-commerce processing solutions. I endorse them because of their integrity and dedication in delivering these business services to professionals and entrepreneurs like us. To learn more about their services go to http://www.profcs.com/app/
aftrack.asp?afid=864954.
Leave a Comment July 30, 2008
