One of the main reasons small businesses, coaches included, fail to maximise their potential, is that they do not focus on selling. Small business operators by nature are technicians.

This practice is obviously counter productive to success. If you can not effectively sell your service, you’ll have little to no clients to deliver your service to. It’s similarly counter-intuitive to believe that high technical competence will underpin sales.

If you have few clients, and provide them the best service available, your business will still only grow organically at best. And besides, your clients have little to no ability to discern good technical competence from excellent technical competence. The effective marketer will ALWAYS outperform, in multiples, the technician.

Why selling effectively is crucial?

We often talk leverage. In business, how you leverage each function of your business will differentiate whether you just scrape by or make massive profits. If you can make an advertisement generate 100 leads instead of 20; get clients to purchase 5 times per year instead of 3; upsell clients to a $3,000 ‘package’ instead of the standard $1,500 offer; develop a referral process that generates 1.5 new clients per client.

These are examples of leverage. And this is where massive hidden profits exist in your business. How well you leverage your sales is critical to your success.

Advertising and marketing is one of the biggest cost bases in small business. The money you spend to acquire new clients directly impacts your bottom line profit. If it costs you $1,000 to acquire to new client worth $1,500, you make $500 bottom line profit. If you can reduce the cost to acquire that client from $1,000 to $500, you have effectively DOUBLED your bottom line net profit.

If you extrapolate that across your business you can effectively double your net income almost immediately. You can easily move from $30,000 income, to $60,000, to $100,000. Simply by improving this one stage in your sales process. This is the power and importance of selling.

One of the most important steps in effectively selling your coaching services and products involves building value. Once you’ve identified your prospects buying criteria through the qualifying phase, you need to build value into your proposition.

There are several ways to build value, including:

Quantifying cost/pain of NOT buying. Humans are a bazaar species. They’ll often go years and years in discomfort without seeking a simple solution. It’s likely your prospects have experienced the same problems and challenges, which you can assist them overcome, for a significant time.
 
This means they can survive without your service. It also means they’re well aware of the cost of NOT finding a solution. To make survival easier, people diminish the extremity of the problem or push it into their subconscious. You need to bring it abruptly into consciousness. You need to attach an emotional and financial value on it.

Theory of Contrast. Once you’ve brought your prospects challenges into their consciousness you can contrast the cost/ pain of not having it solved, with that of solving it.

Social Proof. You can build value in a very leveraged way by showing that your prospects peers (and particularly authority figures) are already using your service.

Focus on benefits. When building value it’s important to focus on benefits rather than features. Your prospects invest in, and emotionally attach to, the benefits of your service, not its features. As such you must communicate to them in terms of benefits.

Authority. When you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, rapport is a natural side affect. It’s like social osmosis.

Provide Proof. Where possible provide evidence that your service delivers value. This can be provided by detailed testimonials, data, reports, etc. Use this information in a manner that supports your claims and relates directly to the core benefits desired by your prospects.

There’s more to obtaining testimonials than just asking your customers for their comments and feedback. If you want powerful testimonials that catch your prospects attention and build a relationship of trust, you should consider the strategies below:

Try to get a testimonial from your customer ASAP. This could be the day you make the sale or within the first week after you make the sale. Your customer will be at their most motivated to write you a glowing testimonial during this time period. Don’t wait until the honeymoon is over. Consider having them write the testimonial before they leave your office or store.

Always ask your customers to include your USP in the testimonial. For instance, if your USP (unique selling proposition) includes great customer service, same day installation, and a money-back guarantee, then ask your customer to attest to those qualities.

Don’t ask for customer testimonials in survey requests. Many businesses make the mistake of sending out customer surveys to get feedback from their customers, in addition to testimonials. Your customer needs to have the freedom to stay anonymous and say negative things in your survey, which is the opposite of what you’re looking for in testimonials.

Ask your customers to be specific in their testimonials. For instance, if you delivered your product the same day your customer purchased it, tell your customer to include the time that it arrived. If you delivered some kind of outrageous act of customer service have them write specifically about what you did and how it helped your customer.

Ask your customer to talk about the problems they were having prior to receiving the benefits of your product or service. Most likely, the reader will have had the same or similar problems and will empathize. This will make your prospect more interested in receiving the benefits of your product or service.

Have your customer state their credentials. This will make their testimonial even more persuasive because their comments will be perceived to come from a credible source. People tend to believe people in positions of perceived authority.

Always try to get a picture with them using your product or service. As a matter of fact, try to take the picture yourself so that you know you’ll get a good one. Take several and make sure they are showing the benefits of the product or service. Pictures double the effectiveness of your testimonial and bring the testimonials to life.

Make sure you get permission from your customers to use their testimonials in your advertising. Thank them profusely and let them know that it is testimonials like theirs that help your business grow.

Ask them if you can their name as well as the town (suburb) they live in. Addresses, even if it’s just a city name, increase the believability of the testimonial. It demonstrates that they are real people who live in the same community as your prospects.

And if your customer procrastinates to send in their testimonial, call them up and mention that whilst you know they are very busy, you value them as clients and their testimonial is important to you.

Suggest that to save them time and hassle, you will draft a testimonial for them and they can make any editing changes they want. Then send it back. Of course, you’ll want to send a self-addressed envelope. You get the perfect testimonial and they don’t have to do any work.

Retention and nurturing strategies are simple, fun, and low cost. Yet so many businesses fail at nurturing that it makes nurturing such an easy process and massive point of distinction for those businesses that do!

Here are some retention and nurturing strategies to implement immediately:

Link clients and prospects into a regular communication cycle. Regular communication is paramount to any retention and nurturing system. It’s impossible to build a relationship if you do not regularly and predictably communicate. Many businesses ‘dig up’ their databases to use as promotions. This is destructive. You are asking without first giving. Clients and prospects will resent you for this. But they’ll love you for giving them something for nothing; and then providing them with an opportunity to invest.

Thank clients for doing business with you. Most businesses behave as though the client is the lucky one to be using their service. You may behave like this without even knowing it. After every session, service, or product purchase you should THANK your client. Send them an email; sms; card; letter; small gift. Make them feel special and valued.

Give away stuff. We all love unexpected gifts. An excellent nurturing and retention strategy is to give away high perceived-value, low cost gifts.

An excellent way to create value for your clients, at little or no cost to you, is to develop joint ventures with other businesses. For instance, you could approach health spas and get them to provide a free treatment voucher. They are often willing to provide a free treatment as a loss-leader to acquire new clients. This strategy can be applied across a broad range of services.

Add-value to the relationship. Send clients specific information relating to their challenges. Send research, reports, tools, press releases. Anything that your client will find interesting.

Go further than expected. The key to creating true value is to go further than your client would reasonably expect you to go. If you do this, you tilt the reciprocal obligation in your favour, and your client will feel indebted to you.

And here are some additional pointers to keep in mind…

Focus your marketing on existing clients. Your current clients have already overcome certain hurdles to doing business with you. They are much more likely to buy from you again. Focus most of your time, efforts, and resources on better serving your current clients. Go deeper rather than wider.

Be consistent in your approach and interactions. Treat clients with honesty, humour, and respect. Present a consistent, solid, and professional style to your clients - one they can grow to depend on.

Follow through on your commitments. If you promise to send information or to follow up, be sure to do this. You’d be surprised at how many professionals promise to send information, but then never do. You will gain loyalty and trust by doing what you say you’ll do.

Allow yourself to connect. Find out about their lives, hopes, goals, and desired outcomes. Use social media to communicate. Ask questions that encourage a deeper sense of shared understanding. The greater the level of connection, the greater the mutual satisfaction.

Have fun. It’s easy to get caught up in goals, outcomes, and deliverables. Whilst clients do want outcomes, they also want to work with people who enjoy what they do. The more fun you can have while providing strong outcomes, the longer your clients will stay.

Position yourself as a resource for life. Tell clients at the beginning that you want to be their coach for life. That means they can always come back to work with you no matter how much time has passed between meetings.

Ask for feedback and input. At intervals throughout the working relationship, solicit feedback and input. Ask your clients how they feel about working with you and ask if they have suggestions for how the working relationship or outcomes can be improved. Asking for their ideas shows that you care about their opinions and value their contributions.

Share resources. Do you know of a good book that your client might benefit from reading? Tell him about it. Do you have the name of someone who could help your client move ahead on her business plan? Tell her about it. Sharing resources is a terrific way to build loyalty and satisfaction.

Reward them for staying on. You might consider implementing some kind of loyalty or perks program, where your long-term clients are rewarded for staying on. You might offer them gifts, products, or services for a certain level of ongoing participation with your business. Maybe Gold or Platinum Membership to your exclusive club.

Keep learning. The more you focus on gaining new knowledge, new skills, and new experiences, the more you have to offer your clients. The more you have to offer, the more they will benefit. The more they benefit, the longer they stay. Keep focused on your own professional growth and learning - make this a priority. Both you - and your clients - will gain.

Source: www.coachingclub.com.au

To highlight the importance of knowing your prospective client, you can imagine the success you’d have if your target market was adolescent youths from broken families and you promoted your $1,500 monthly coaching service in the Financial Review!

Whilst this example is obviously ridiculous and extreme, clients can be a fickle bunch and it’s crucial that your services are tightly aligned with your prospects profile and needs.

Most novice coaches come from the mindset “I’m going to coach XYZ group”. But they give little thought to the specific challenges, needs, desires and nuisances of their target group (niche). And without this information they’re almost doomed to failure.

They first develop how they’re going to coach, and then try to impose that service onto their target client. This approach does not work!

You must be client driven rather than product driven. You should first identify the specific client group you want to work with and then develop services and products that satisfy and fulfil their unique and specific needs.

What’s the best way to determine the needs of your target client?

Ask them! Interview them; survey them; take them to lunch and pick their brains; hold tele-sessions; talk to industry professionals already dealing with them; go to industry events; read their journals.

Asking the hard questions up front is so important to the long term success of your coaching business and your market niche (more on developing that niche soon).

Remember that it’s not enough for you to perceive that someone NEEDS what you have to offer. They have to WANT what you have to offer and be motivated to buy it.

The benefit you purvey with your offer must VASTLY exceed in value your clients’ perceived risk of investing in it.

Focus your attention on client groups who are already looking for the solution you provide and are willing to invest in the solution. Here is a 7-Step Process to develop products and services that are in high demand by your target clients:

1. First determine the top 3 most serious and annoying challenges that your target group want to solve.
2. Determine how regularly they face these problems and the financial and emotional cost to them having these problems recur.
3. Develop solutions to solve these top 3 challenges/problems.
4. Package your solutions as service and product based offerings.
5. Price point your services based on the financial costs your clients incur by not having the problem solved.
6. Establish yourself as a specialist who can help them solve the challenges/problems they have.
7. Demonstrate to them through quantifiable proof how you have solved their problems with like groups.

If you take this approach, not only will your services be aligned to your client, your clients will actively seek you out to have their costly recurring problems resolved!

Education-Based marketing is the process by which you attract and convert highly-qualified clients by giving them what they want… valuable information and advice that solves their problems; AND removing what they don’t want a SALES PITCH.

Education-based marketing is generally undertaken by delivering Credibility Marketing techniques such as public speaking, information based teleclasses, publications, networking, repetitive communication systems (newsletters, communities, eZines), hotlines, free educational give aways (such as reports, assessments, tools, eCourses), etc.

To develop effective education-based marketing products there are 3 Immutable Rules that you should keep top of mind:

Rule #1: It’s OK to lose money at the front end.

Whilst the development and delivery of education marketing products can be revenue positive, it’s Ok if it costs you money at the front end. As you’ll recall in previous articles, we discussed the Lifetime Value of a Client and the Client Acquisition Cost.

Many businesses often use “Loss Leaders”, or products and enticements that cost them money up front, knowing that they are going to make money at the back end (when clients convert and purchase their products).

For example: You may deliver a free Workshop on “Learn the FIVE groundbreaking strategies used by Super Star mums (including Elle McPherson and Liz Hurley) to SHED FAT after giving birth and be at normal weight within 3-months”.

The workshop may cost you $5,000 to develop, promote and deliver. You may have 30 attendees. Your upfront loss is $167 per attendee. But you may convert 12 clients and know that each client, on average, is worth $2,700 revenue for you. In this example, you have netted $27,400.

NOTE: A free coaching session upfront is probably the most common use of the loss leader principal amongst coaches, although we don’t necessarily recommend its use!

ALSO NOTE: Notice how the promotion is ‘education-based’ not sales-based. An attendee at the workshop will GAIN VALUE from the workshop REGARDLESS of whether they take up your product offer at the end or not.

You have also positioned yourself as an EXPERT by delivering valuable educational content, and have put yourself in a position to link ALL attendees into an ongoing value-add program - such as a Tele-Workshop Series; eNewsletter; etc.

Rule #2: Must be of high perceived value.

The product that you provide should be of very high perceived value to your prospects. One of the most significant barriers for business people to get their minds around with the education-based marketing concept is the idea of ‘giving away’ their valuable intellectual property.

Education-based marketing is NOT about giving away your service or information. It’s about INVESTING it.

By demonstrating the high value of your service you build substantially higher levels of TRUST and rapport with your prospects. And you position yourself as an EXPERT.

Withholding of knowledge only leads to DOUBT in the mind of your prospect as to your ABILITY to deliver on your promises. If you readily INVEST your intellectual property by giving it away, your prospects will TRUST you; acknowledge your ability to help them; and develop the perception that you have significantly more information of value to provide them (through your pay-for-service products).

Rule #3: Must be ongoing.

One of the greatest advantages of education-based marketing is that it lowers your prospects defence mechanisms, and it allows you to showcase your skills. To take full advantage of that opportunity you MUST continue to educate your prospects through an ongoing process.

At any point in time only a very small percentage of your prospects will be READY and willing to purchase.

Most businesses have a marketing system that TOTALLY NEGLECTS this critical fact.

If 100 people enquiry about your services, most likely only 8 to 15 will be seriously looking to purchase your services at THAT point in time. The others are simply inquisitive or think they may purchase at some time in the future.

As we mentioned in an earlier article, this process is called the Cycle of Life. You MUST recognise that your prospects are going through the Cycle of Life. You MUST have a means to add value to them in a non-intrusive and informative manner. And your process must be educational, informative and REPETITIVE.