I’ve been in your program for just 9 days. I just got back from doing my first four Complementary Coaching Sessions and great news!
The guy that I went to see on Tuesday signed up today for 25,000 euro and another one just signed for 8,000 euro. So that’s 33,000 euro so far!
I have been enjoying the group sessions a lot. I get heaps out of it. I have used the strategies immediately and have gotten the results. Even though I only got one deal on the spot, usually they would all ask for weeks to think it over, now it’s only 1 or 2 days. That is a huge improvement.
So I really want to thank you. This program with your coaching is by far the best investment I have ever made. The only negative thing is that I am so excited that I can’t sleep well at night! But the passion is driving me through the day.
The first 30-minute appointment you get with business coaching prospects–what we call a Complimentary Coaching Session–is a make-or-break conversation for you. Do it right, and you’ll be one step closer to landing a lucrative new business coaching client. Do it wrong, and you’ll be back to square one, searching for the next potential prospect to meet with.
That’s not to say everyone’s going to sign up for coaching with you. There’s an old sales adage I like to remember to keep my spirits up: Some will, some won’t, so what, NEXT!
Still, the best opportunity to close new business is the one that’s sitting right in front of you. The higher your conversion rates on Complimentary Coaching Sessions are, the more profitable and time-effective you’ll be.
And one of the most important aspects of the Complimentary Coaching Session is building rapport–a sense of camaraderie and trust that helps the business coaching prospect feel as if you understand them, are on their side, and can help them. The Complimentary Coaching Session represents the most important 30 minutes you’ll spend with prospective clients, and the first five minutes are the most important of the rest of the half hour!
So how do you do build rapport? Here are eight excellent questions you can ask to get the conversation flowing.
So, what exactly do you do?
This is a great way to begin to get to know your business coaching prospect. Listen carefully for pain points: they might struggle to articulate their core business, talk about being overwhelmed, or complain about managing different team members. All of these can help you gain insight into the struggles they’re facing.
The Complimentary Coaching Session represents the most important 30 minutes you'll spend with prospective clients, and the first five minutes are the most important of the rest of the half hour!
This gives you a chance to get a feel for where they might be in their business’ lifecycle and what they’ll need from you to move to the next level.
What sets you apart from your competitors; what makes you the best at what you do?
If they don’t know how to answer this question, or if their answer is generic, you know they need marketing help. On the other hand, a clear and passionate response to this question tells you that you’re talking to someone who has a good understanding of the market and their place within it–so they’ll need your help elsewhere.
What do you love the most about your business?
Here’s a chance to get the good news. Affirm them in what they’re doing. Assure them that you’re there to help them do more of that and less of what drives them crazy.
I usually work with businesses doing at least ____ per year in revenue. Does your business fall in that range?
This might seem like a strange question to ask in the beginning of a conversation, but it’s actually quite critical! If they fall outside your target range, you might want to move onto the next prospect before spending a lot of time attempting to close a deal that doesn’t fit your sweet spot.
What kind of business issues or challenges are you working on in your business right now?
At this point in the conversation, hopefully you’ve established enough of a trusting connection that they’ll be open and honest with you. This allows you use your Silver Bullets to show them exactly how you’ll help them overcome their challenges.
If I could help you overcome the number one challenge in your business right now, what would that be?
This is a way to more precisely pinpoint their priorities, so that you can tailor the rest of your conversation to addressing this key issue.
Tell me more about that…
Use this whenever you need more clarification–or you’re not sure what to ask next! It’s a great way to dig deeper into what they just said and more clearly understand how you can help.
Looking for more great sales techniques and strategies to turn your business coaching prospects into clients? Check out our FREE ebook, Secrets of a Business Coaching Rock Star!
Attention new business coaches: if you’re just starting out, struggling to build your business coaching practice, you’re in danger of making some rookie mistakes. (Heck, if you’ve been a business coach for 20-plus years like me, you’re probably still in danger of making some rookie mistakes!)
But none is more deadly than this one:
Losing sight of your dreams.
In the video below, I share why this is such a significant danger, and how you can avoid it.
Sometimes, in the stress and struggle of building a business, you forget why you started it in the first place.
You forget that you were looking for an opportunity to control your time and own your destiny.
You forget that ONLY business coaching allows you to work from home or from the road, raking in huge hourly rates–I’m talking about $250 to $750–just for knowing stuff.
The typical successful business coach has 10 to 15 clients, each of whom invest $1500 – $3000 per month. In return, the coach invests 1 to 2 hours of coaching per client, per week. That’s $10,000 – $45,000 in monthly cash flow for 20 to 30 hours of client work each week. Great cash flow, for sure!
Now consider your Effective Billable Rate. If your clients are investing $1,500 per month for 1.5 hours of coaching and related emails per week, your EBR is $250 per hour. If you’re more tenured, and your clients are investing $3,000 per month for 1 hour of coaching per week, your EBR is $750 per hour.
Now, in my experience working with hundreds of coaches over the past 10 years, most coaches will hover between $300 to $500 per hour…an effective billable rate that gets even the most high-powered doctors and attorneys salivating — because ALL of it is staying with you! And you’re doing it from the comfort of your home office, WITHOUT the cost and hassle of medical or law school! Not bad, eh?
And then of course there’s what you can do with that kind of income.
You can give generously to your favorite missions and charities…
You can take your family on vacation…get season ticket floor seats to your favorite sports team…and have the time to enjoy it.
You can have the house, the car, the lifestyle that you’ve always dreamed about…because business coaching is the best, fastest, and most effective way to get it.
It can be tough to remember this stuff day in and day out.
In my third year as a business coach, I pulled in over $400,000–and took 8 weeks off. I was cash rich and time rich, too.
You can do the same.
As long as you avoid this crucial mistake:
FORGETTING THAT BUSINESS COACHING IS YOUR TICKET TO THE LIFE YOU’VE ALWAYS DREAMED OF.
If there’s one piece of advice I could give you as we begin this journey together, it’s this:
Hold on to your dreams. Pursue them passionately. Because the common thread I’ve seen running through the lives of all the successful people I know is that they have a reason for doing what they do–a deeply personal, intensely powerful reason.
Keep your reason in the forefront of your mind, and you’ll achieve it.
Hold on to your dreams. Pursue them passionately. Because the common thread I've seen running through the lives of all the successful people I know is that they have a reason for doing what they do--a deeply personal, intensely powerful reason.
To help you with this, I’d like to give you one of my favorite resources for keeping YOUR reasons in the forefront of your own mind. It’s call the “Vision Book” and you can download a template of it here:
Go ahead. Download it. Customize it. And, most importantly, marinate in it each morning before you start your day and each evening before you go to bed. You’ll be amazed at how much faster you can pull your future into the present if you do this each day!
And if you’re ready to explore what it takes to become a business coach, check out our FREE ebook, How to Become a Business Coachfor a step-by-step guide!
One of the most powerful ways to help your business coaching clients succeed is to introduce them to the Five Steps to Freedom. (Hint: not only is this one of the most powerful ways to help your clients succeed, it’s the way you’ll build a business coaching practice that’s a freedom-producing asset for you, too!)
The Five Steps to Freedom is the “big picture”–the very definition of success in business. It’s a complete methodology for coaching small- to mid-sized businesses from the ground level to a hands-off source of residual revenue.
So what are they?
Let’s drill down and find out.
Step 1: CREATION
This is the step where you’re beginning as an unknown in the marketplace, researching a viable niche in your market, developing a working prototype of your business model, and launching the model. From there, you move to:
Step 2: CHAOS
This is the step where you push through the often bloody battle of becoming cash flow positive by investing heavily and driving growth like crazy to build brand awareness so you can grow and capture market share as quickly as possible. Sadly, only a small percentage of businesses make it past this step. Those who do move into the phase I call:
Step 3: CONTROL
This is the step where you convert cash flow into profit by stabilizing and organizing your operations, measuring your well-chosen performance metrics, and fine-tuning and adjusting the business model. This allows you to reach:
Step 4: PROSPERITY
The is the step where you solidify a position of dominance in your niche market by economizing and optimizing for efficiencies so you can continue to invest in growth and repay debt. When you’ve reached this point, you can start to enjoy the fruits of your labor as you head into:
Step 5: FREEDOM
This is the step where you begin to reproduce yourself and develop a strong core of leaders who will continue to grow the business through partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisitions. At this level, the business owner enjoys the fruit of his or her labor in the form of free time and free cash flow.
You can’t skip any steps. You move from one to the next, and each has different tasks. A huge part of helping clients grow their businesses is teaching them to understand the step they’re on, and what it takes to move through it. In the process, they’ll feel as if they have a roadmap for where they’re going, more confidence in you as a coach–and more confidence in themselves as business owners and entrepreneurs.
A huge part of helping clients grow their businesses is teaching them to understand the step they're on, and what it takes to move through it.
