Here’s some tough love. There are two types of business coaches: the struggle bunnies, who make some money sometimes, no money most of the time, and/or spend waaaaay too much time making way too little money; and the rock stars, who are absolutely crushing it, making more and more money, and spending less and less time doing it. What separates them? The ability to generate consistent, high-quality business coaching leads on demand.
In fact, if you can’t predictably generate and convert leads and coach those clients into raving fans, then you don’t have a business…and never will.
At the end of the day, the only things that matter are:
- Setting up Complimentary Coaching Sessions with prospects.
- Converting those prospects into clients.
The end.
So how many Complimentary Coaching Sessions did you do in the past seven days? What did you do in the last seven days to schedule Complimentary Coaching Sessions?
If you don’t know the answer to that question, or if the answer is “not as much as I should have done,” then sit tight. Below, I’ll reveal the exact formula it takes to generate consistent lead flow, month over month.
A Formula That Will Yield Two New Clients/Month
One thing I hear a lot from my business coach clients is that they don’t have any consistent metrics or targets to help them guide their lead generation efforts. Sometimes their efforts yield new clients almost accidentally; more often than not, there’s a lot of hand-wringing and throwing spaghetti against the wall, and very little to show for it.
Here at the Coaches’ Coach, we’ve worked with thousands of business coaches over nearly two decades, so we’ve been able to track the activity the average coach needs to commit to each month in order to yield two clients consistently.
Can you imagine the difference in your business if you knew that every month, you’d have two new clients signing up for coaching?
You wouldn’t have to panic over normal attrition. You could scale up the quality of your client base–that is to say, you could fire your problem clients as you replace them with better ones, and steadily and surely increase your rates and the financial stability of the businesses you work with. You could make more money while working fewer hours.
Can you imagine the difference in your business if you knew that every month, you'd have two new clients signing up for coaching? You wouldn't have to panic over normal attrition. You could scale up the quality of your client base--that is to say, you could fire your problem clients as you replace them with better ones, and steadily and surely increase your rates and the financial stability of the businesses you work with. You could make more money while working fewer hours.
Here’s what it takes:
Generate 50 Business Coaching Leads Per Month
Your first step is to generate at least 50 new leads per month. You do this using a combination of what we call the “Big 8” lead generation strategies:
- Referrals — tapping your existing network for people in need of your services;
- Networking — attending business meet-ups, conferences, or other opportunities to meet new prospects;
- Social media — creating an engaging social presence that includes targeted advertising;
- Content marketing — crafting compelling digital content that educates and inspires prospects to take the next step;
- Direct mail — yes, believe it or not, old school mail is still effective;
- Outsourced telemarketing — hire a firm to do the cold calling for you;
- Bold walking — physically walk into businesses and meet their leadership teams;
- Strategic partners — work with businesses that serve a similar market to your ideal clients to make your services available to their customer list.
Make 400 Dials Per Month
Next, you should make 400 dials to prospects per month. These are known as “warm calls.” These are calls to the new, warm leads you’ve generated (highest priority) as well as previous prospects and contacts. Don’t have enough leads to create that many dials? Do it the old-fashioned way–cold call. Cold calling isn’t anyone’s favorite thing, but it helps you get in the habit of making regular phone time a priority. As you continue to execute your lead-generation efforts, soon you’ll have to do less and less of it.
Hold 40 Silver Bullet Calls Per Month
Of the 400 dials you make per month, expect about 10% to convert to a 30-minute “Silver Bullet” call for about 40 of these per month.
These are short conversations that allow you to understand the needs of your prospective clients and begin to demonstrate your value to them. Don’t overstay your welcome here. Keep it short and sweet. Your goal is to set up a longer Complimentary Coaching Session with your prospect, with the agreement that at the end of it, you’ll mutually decide whether or not to move forward with coaching.
Conduct 8 Complimentary Coaching Sessions Per Month
Expect about a 20% conversion rate from your Silver Bullet calls to a full, 60-minute Complimentary Coaching Session. So if you have 40 Silver Bullet calls, this should yield 8 Complimentary Coaching Sessions.
This is where you and your client will decide whether or not to work together. As I mentioned above, these are the single-most-important meetings you can schedule if you want to grow your business. Master these and you’ll be well on your way.
Some prospects need a little more warming up; hold regular seminars and webinars you can invite your prospects to. You can convert Silver Bullet calls to webinars, and on to Complimentary Coaching Sessions; or you can convert prospects that are still on the fence after your Complimentary Coaching Session to your webinar and get another shot at them.
Close 2 New Clients Per Month
Most coaches can expect to convert at least 25% of their Complimentary Coaching Sessions into clients. (Actually, I’ve had months with 80%+ conversion rates, but I’m being conservative here on purpose.) If you have 8 Complimentary Coaching Sessions per month, this will yield two new clients.
So you see? Now you know what you need to do each month!
Generate 50 leads –> Make 400 dials –> Hold 40 Silver Bullet Calls –> Conduct 8 Complimentary Coaching Sessions –> Close 2 New Clients
Take this as your benchmark. As your conversion rates improve, or you want to scale faster, you can adjust these targets to fit your goals.
The important thing is to be consistent. Invest in your marketing and lead generation. Make it your top priority. It’s the only way to avoid being a struggle bunny and take your place among the ranks of the business coaching rock stars!
And for more incredible strategies and analysis like this, download our FREE ebook, Secrets of a Business Coaching Rock Star. You’ll be glad you did.
