Business coaching is a fantastic career choice if you love working with people. And NOW is the best time to consider a change.
Business coaching is a huge $2.4 Billion industry, growing at a blistering pace of 25% a year. Now YOU can join this booming industry.
With the right training, it’s possible normal to earn $100,000 to as much as $300,000 per year as a business coach, with billable rates ranging from $250-$750 per hour.
So how do you do it? Here’s how to become a business coach in three essential steps…
1. Find a Business Coaching System and Curriculum
If you already have experience and want to build your own training system, that’s great. Most people, though, want to piggyback on the experience of others and simply adapt an existing business coaching system and curriculum.
To do that, look around for effective, step-by-step programs that help you solve common business problems quickly and efficiently. You can learn about the Coaches Coach Business Coaching System HERE. This is absolutely critical.
Without this kind of methodology, you’ll never retain clients long enough to make an impact in your local market.
2. Market Your Way to Prosperity
The next step is finding clients — and it’s what scares new business coaches most. Don’t be intimidated; it’s not hard when you know how.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve raked in between $200,000 and $300,000 a year in fees. And the following 7 marketing strategies have brought me as much as 95% of all my new clients:
Networking. Here’s what you do. Make a list of your 10 most trusted friends and colleagues. Ask each of them for 10 referrals. These will be some of the warmest leads you’ll ever get.
Bold Walking. This is where you walk into places of business and meet and greet the owner. Say: “Hi! My name is _______ and I’m a business coach conducting marketing research on what successful business owners are doing to [boycott the recession (if applicable) and] grow their businesses. I want to offer you a complimentary coaching session where we’ll identify the hidden areas of profit in your business. So, can you tell me a little bit about your business?
Internet Marketing. Use your website as a lead-generation and sales tool. Give away a FREE report on business growth secrets followed up by helpful, educational emails. Then call the people who read your stuff. Offer your leads a complimentary coaching session and then go close the sale!
Direct Mail. Send postcards or letters in the mail to business owners. Invite them to contact you for a complimentary coaching session. Use emotional copy and messages. For example: “Tired of not seeing your family because your business can’t run without you? Here’s how to increase your revenues by at least 72% in the next 12 months.”
Telemarketing. Use the phone — love the phone! Talking to business owners for a few hours each day can make you millions of dollars. Hate cold calling? Hire a telemarketer vendor to book phone appointments for you, then call them back to conduct a mini “triage” calls to discover the areas of struggle. This call will lead naturally into a more formal complimentary coaching session where you can sign them up as new clients.
Referrals. Eventually, your existing clients will be your most consistent source of new clients. Always ask for referrals, then offer to pay them 10% of each new client they send your way.
Strategic Partnerships. Find other businesses and professionals who serve your target market — attorneys, CPAs, and so on. Set up a relationship where they recommend your services for a piece of the action. That makes it a win-win-win! If you do this right, these professionals will actually bring you into their boardrooms to sign their clients for $2,000 to $3,000 per month.
3. Systematic Execution of Your Plan
Do you have your business coaching system and curriculum? Great! Have you chosen a few of the marketing strategies above? Excellent! Now it’s time to execute.
Find an experienced mentor or your own coaches’ coach to make sure you stick to your plan and execute with excellence. Join a mastermind group and report your progress to your peers. Having people who hold you accountable will make all the difference in the world to your ability to be successful.
You can enroll in 30 days of totally FREE “Cash and Clients” Strategy Sessions with one of my highly successful, certified Coaches’ Coaches. You’ll get four, 30-minute, unbridled, uncensored, one-on-one coaching sessions during which your coach will review everything you’re doing to build your coaching business and answer all your questions. When you enroll, be sure to send us everything you’ve done so far, so that we can provide you with valuable feedback on what you’ve done — not to mention point you in the right direction for future Virtual Coaching assignments.
Do these three things, and you can establish a 6-figure business coaching practice in less than a year.
When Master Business Coach (and former pastor) Eric Dombach began his career as business coach, he had NO contacts, NO professional experience, and NO marketing or sales skills. Through hard work, dedication, and lots of trial and error, he grew his business coaching practice from $0 to $1 Million in 4 short years. Learn how he did it in his ebook: How To Become a Business Coach: A Beginner’s Guide to Reeling in $20,000 a Month Or More Working Part-Time Hours from Home.
Most business coaches have a love-hate relationship with sales.
They love closing the business coaching gig but hate the process of getting there.
The root cause of all this negativity is simple.
You’re making sales mistakes because you’re “winging it” — and that’s no fun! 🙂
Welcome to the second post in our three-part series on how to identify where you’re making unnecessary sales mistakes because you’re “winging it” in your business coaching sales process — and the simple steps you can take to use a business coaching systems approach to the sales process. You can find Part 1 here.
Here are 3 more signs that you’re winging it in your sales process and how to fix them.
SIGN #4. You Get Tongue-Tied When You’re Met with Objections.
Handling objections can be the most difficult part of the sales process. More than any other part, this is when you have to get it right…or your prospect will tune out, disengage, or even get angry. If you find that you have a difficult time handling objections with skill and ease, it’s because you lack a systematic approach to handling them.
The Solution? Learn my three-step process for answering objections to business coaching: AGREE, ASK, ANSWER. You can learn this process from our ebooks and also download our “Business Coaching Objection Buster Cheat Sheet” HERE. Do this wrong, and you will lose sale after sale because you fail to adequately address your prospects’ legitimate concerns. Do it right, and you can turn objections into a coaching opportunity that demonstrates your value and helps your prospects build confidence in your expertise.
SIGN #5.Clients Have a Hard Time Deciding at What Level to Engage You.
Does this sound familiar? You’ve done a good job in the sales process so far: you’ve built rapport, learned your prospect’s core pain points, demonstrated how business coaching can help them solve their problems. You’ve handled their objections, and now they’re ready to sign a contract. However, at the last moment, they either tell you they can’t afford you, or that they have to “think about” the level at which they want to engage your services! This happens because you don’t have clear, easy-to-understand program options.
The solution? Create a variety of coaching levels to offer your prospects. Not everyone will be able to become an inner-circle, platinum-level client…nor do you necessarily want every client to engage you on that level! When you offer coaching levels, you are able to sort your prospects into funnels and products most suited to their specific needs. Do this right, and you will walk away from the vast majority of your sales meetings with at least some new revenue pouring in. Do it wrong, and you will miss out on lucrative opportunities to get people in your pipeline and paying.
SIGN #6. You Don’t Know Why or When You Lose Sales.
Most of the time, when we speak about sales-related conversion rates, we’re talking about one conversion rate for the whole meeting: how many sales meetings do you have…and of them, how many turn into paying business coaching clients? But savvy business coaches know that there are points of conversion within the sales meeting itself, and they track these conversion rates just as religiously as the overall number. Until you do this, you won’t know where the gaps in your sales process are — let alone how to fix them!
The Solution? Understand the key points of conversion within the sales process itself: when you get the prospect to agree to make a decision at the meeting, when you begin discussing their pain points, when you’re met with objections, when you make the case for coaching, when you ask for the sale. Do this wrong, and you will be forever floundering, trying to figure out why prospects say no (or, even, why they say YES!). Do it right, and you will be able to determine with pinpoint accuracy what’s working and what’s not in your sales process…and plug the leaks.
Next time, we’ll talk about the final three signs you’re “winging it” in your business coaching sales meetings. In the comments below, sound off on what other common questions or problems you run into and we’ll discuss them together!
P.S. We invite you to enroll in a FREE 30 Day Trial of the Coaches’ Coach members only site! It’s our complete business coaching system, including customizable marketing campaigns, sales scripts, client training materials, business optimization modules, and more. One of our members recently closed $1,500 in recurring monthly revenue after just 3 days with our system…think what that could mean for YOUR business! Get your FREE 30-day trial.
Good morning, team! This week we kick off a new business coach training series on Social Media Marketing by Certified Coaches’ Coach Simon Meadows. Simon banks more than $20,000 USD per month and generates 78% of his leads from social media. In this seven-part business coach training series, Simon shows you exactly how he has developed his LinkedIn and Facebook accounts into his primary lead-generation strategy costing him just $350 per month and 3 hours per week.
As you’ll see, Simon’s training is meticulous in its detail with very clear actions you can follow to get results. You can’t afford to skip this training!
Remember, you can watch the entire 7-part course right now if you’re already a member of Coaches’ Coach — just log into our members only site from our home page. If you’re not a member yet, just enroll in a FREE 30 Day Trial of the Coaches’ Coach members only site. You’ll get access to our complete business coaching system, including customizable marketing campaigns, sales scripts, client training materials, business optimization modules, and more. Get your FREE 30-day trial here.
One of our members recently closed $1,500 in recurring monthly revenue after just 3 days with our system…think what that could mean for YOUR business!
People often ask me how to win at the high stakes game of business coach marketing. And they’re often surprised when I respond that one of the best tips on how to win at marketing can be learned from successful poker players.
Let me explain.
About a decade or so ago I got a bit obsessed with poker.
For an ex-mathematician like me who then went on to study business and psychology, it’s an alluring game, full of analogies and parallels with business coach marketing. And, as I look back, my knowledge of poker helped me immensely in my quest to win at the game of business coach marketing.
Although I haven’t played for years, I still have a huge library of poker literature in storage, including Brunson, Sklansky, Malmuth, Caro, Schoonmaker, dozens of them. Now I’m not suggesting that you run out and buy books on poker. I’ll save you the time by sharing this article with you.
I often think about the similarities between poker and marketing. Here’s a lesson that struck me recently.
Poker Lesson On How to Win at Business Coach Marketing: Stack the Odds in Your Favour
Perhaps the biggest difference between poker professionals and casual players – the thing that most results in one group winning money and the other losing it – is simply that the pros play fewer hands.
In the most popular form of poker, “hold-em,” there’s a saying that “any two cards can win.” And while that may be true in exceptions, following that advice and regularly playing any two cards is a sure-fire route to the poorhouse.
Instead, the pros stack the odds in their favour by only playing their best-starting hands. They sit out, round after round, and only invest their precious chips in starting hands they know have a positive expected value (i.e. if played often enough, they’ll make money).
It’s not a particularly clever strategy. It’s not a particularly exciting one. But it works. It’s the foundation upon which they build.
Now, if you were to watch poker on TV it wouldn’t seem that way. Every pro mixes up their game and plays cards one wouldn’t expect so that they don’t become predictable. And inevitably, the TV shows focus on those unusual hands, or on hands where a big bluff comes off or someone gets lucky.
But underneath all the fireworks, and the table talk, the pros know the odds and they play them.
Similarly, in business coach marketing, one thing that separates successful business coaches from those who struggle is that they stack the odds in their favour by focusing on prospects with a high chance of becoming clients.
It sounds obvious. But so few business coaches do it.
They don’t have a clear picture in their mind of exactly the sort of person likely to need their services.
They go to networking events filled with people unlikely to ever become a client or to refer one.
Their website offers nothing of value or interest to the people who would make the best clients for them.
When they ask for referrals, they say they’d be happy to get a referral to “anyone” or “small businesses.” Such broad definitions mean that they don’t get referred to anyone (or worse still, they get referred to people never likely to buy from them and inevitably waste their time).
If you want to win at the high stakes game of business coach marketing, invest your time and effort like professional poker players invest their chips–only in the very highest potential areas. Practically speaking, this means you should take a fresh look at your marketing list. Do you have the right sized businesses in your list? How about your marketing message. Is it geared perfectly to your ideal client?
For most of us, our time is a super-scarce resource. Yet so often we use marketing approaches that cause us to spend valuable face-to-face time with people who aren’t perfect prospects.
The result is not only wasted time for us – it’s also a painful experience for both sides. And it makes the journey to setting up a coaching business much longer and more arduous.
Don’t be like the poker amateurs who play any two cards and throw away their chips night after night. If you want to win at marketing, play your cards like the pros.
Ian Brodie is a marketing strategist, blogger, and author of the Amazon bestseller “Email Persuasion.” To get free access to his very best marketing strategies to win more clients, head over to his web site by clicking HERE.
P.S. To learn more about successful business coach marketing, download our FREE ebook: How To Become a Business Coach. When Coaches’ Coach Founder (and former pastor) Eric Dombach started his business coaching practice in 2001, he had NO contacts, NO professional experience, and NO marketing or sales skills. Through hard work, dedication, and lots of trial and error, he grew his business coaching practice from $0 to $1 Million in 4 short years. To learn how he did it, grab your copy of our ebook: How To Become a Business Coach.
Many business coaches think of sales as a “dirty word” — an aversion spurred by negative attitudes, poor results, and discouragement. But what’s the root cause of all this negativity? What makes selling such a huge chore, a frustration, instead of the exciting, money-making activity it can be?
The answer is simple!
You’re making mistakes because you’re “winging it” — and that’s no fun! 🙂
You’ve got no business coaching systems for sales, so you fly by the seat of your pants, unsure of what to say and how to say it in order to get results. What’s more, you have no idea why your prospects respond to you the way they do (whether it’s positive or negative).
In this three-post blog series, I’m going to share the 9 biggest signs that you’re “winging it” in your business coaching sales process…and teach you how to STOP guessing and START delivering measurable, predictable results in your sales efforts by developing business coaching systems around your selling activity.
SIGN #1. Your Sales Meetings Are Awkward.
Are your sales meetings (we call them “Complimentary Coaching Sessions”) strained, forced — or worse — adversarial? Does it take a long time for you and your prospects to “warm up” to each other? If you run into this problem on a regular basis, you’re failing to build rapport…and it will cost you. Until you connect with your business coaching prospects on a personal, meaningful level, they will NEVER reveal their high-yield emotional needs. As a result, you won’t know how to present business coaching in a way that resonates with them.
The solution? Before you get into the meat of your discussion, take a facility tour when you first arrive (or, if it’s a virtual session, ask them detailed questions about their business, history, etc.) At first, be nothing but positive and affirming. THEN ask questions about business problems, followed by exploring the emotional impact those problems are creating. Do this wrong, and you’ll come across as uncaring and uninterested. Do it right, and you’ll create a meaningful relationship of trust from the get-go.
SIGN #2. Your Prospects Don’t Seem To Believe That Business Coaching Can Help Them.
The second sign you’re winging it in your sales meetings is that your prospects don’t seem to believe that business coaching will do much for them. This happens when you fail to connect your prospects’ emotional needs to specific outcomes in their business. Even if you somehow manage to get them to share their hearts with you, if you can’t help them see how business coaching will help them overcome what’s plaguing them, you’re sunk!
The solution? Describe in direct, clear language, HOW your coaching will alleviate the pain points and produce the promised benefits. Do this wrong, and your presentation will be vague and general. Do it right, and your prospect will feel you can deliver coaching guidance that’s custom-tailored to what they really need.
SIGN #3. Your Prospects Seem Confused By The Business Coaching Process.
It’s not enough to just tell your prospects you can help them solve their problems. You want to help them understand how — and fast. If your clients don’t seem to comprehend what business coaching is and how it works, it’s because you lack a framework to explain how coaching will get your prospects from where they are now to where they want to be.
The solution? Learn or create a framework for explaining your approach to business coaching such as our Silver Bullets system. Do this wrong, and your prospects will fail to catch the vision of what you can do together. Do it right, and they’ll be able to quickly and clearly comprehend what business coaching entails and why it works.
Next time, we’ll talk about three more signs you’re “winging it” in your business coaching sales meetings! In the comments below, sound off on what other common questions or problems you run into and we’ll discuss them together!
P.S. We invite you to enroll in a FREE 30 Day Trial of the Coaches’ Coach members only site! It’s our complete business coaching system, including customizable marketing campaigns, sales scripts, client training materials, business optimization modules, and more. One of our members recently closed $1,500 in recurring monthly revenue after just 3 days with our system…think what that could mean for YOUR business! Get your FREE 30-day trial.
