How To Get Clients: Complete Guide for Coaches

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Wondering how to get clients, engage in conversations, and enroll your dream coaching clients to work with you?

At Evercoach, we have trained thousands of coaches with creating clients and building successful coaching practices.

We have personally tested many strategies ourselves, giving us a holistic perspective on what works in building long-term successful coaching businesses.

During our time, we have found there are very specific steps to understanding and implementing client acquisition strategies. Using these steps and strategies carefully, you are much more likely to increase the odds of your success.

A lot of what's in this may seem obvious.

Yet, most of us fail to follow this direction. Often leading to lack of success, frustration. Which then leads to a loss of hope. Without hope, it's unlikely that your business would thrive.

In this 5-part report, you will find a clear strategy and action steps on how to get clients - effectively!

Why do Coaches struggle Enrolling clients?

Beware of the greatest challenge you will face.

Like coaching, most service-based businesses get daily, weekly or monthly feedback. The feedback is so fast that just a single session gone wrong can implant the feeling of worthlessness, and you may doubt your capability as a coach.

Which brings us to your greatest challenge: You.

While strategies and techniques are useful in creating a thriving business, the reasons why you struggle in your practice are:

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Inconsistent action

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Trouble turning a conversation in the right direction

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Struggle to make a confident offer

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Battle proposing coaching packages with a price that truly represents your value

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Struggle to start conversations with qualified clients

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Inability to follow-up with confidence

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Difficulty in adopting new technologies related to coaching

A careful study of these challenges presents the real reason(s) why you struggle to get clients.

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Reason 1:

Your Ability to Manage Your Emotional States

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Reason 2:

Your Ability to Impress Your Clients with Your Coaching Skills

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Reason 3:

Your Ability to Close a Conversation and Enroll a Client

We will explore these three reasons more in depth later in the guide. But first, let's explore a client getting system.

Once you understand this system you will also be able to see why the above three reasons are even more vital for you to get better at.

3 Steps To Enroll Coaching Clients

Let's resolve the mystery of how to get clients.

Really, there are only three steps to getting clients. This is even more relevant when you are a new coach.

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Step: 01

Go to Places Your Clients Go To

Knowing where your clients like to go, the events they attend, the workshops they attend gives you an opportunity to engage with your clients in a non-threatening environment.Here are a few examples:If you are a life coach, visit events which revolve around personal growth. Attendees tend to be focused on growth. They are already hungry for education, and are likely to be interested in what you may offer. If you are a business coach, you want to attend masterminds for businesses where your potential clients might attend. They are in a mastermind, so they are open to listening to what others have to say.

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Step: 02

Engage in Conversations

Knowing where your clients like to go, the events they attend, the workshops they attend gives you an opportunity to engage with your clients in a non-threatening environment.Here are a few examples:If you are a life coach, visit events which revolve around personal growth. Attendees tend to be focused on growth. They are already hungry for education, and are likely to be interested in what you may offer. If you are a business coach, you want to attend masterminds for businesses where your potential clients might attend. They are in a mastermind, so they are open to listening to what others have to say.

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Step: 03

Create Results and Enroll

The final step is to enroll. Before you can enroll a client, be mindful of the conversation you are having with them.If you approach a client straight for enrollment, you are likely to fail. This is because they don't really know what you do, and why they should engage with you.A better way to approach enrollment is to deliver a result in an area of challenge for your client. This means you start the conversation talking about them, understanding them, potentially sharing an insight with them which makes their problems smaller - or even better -disappear.

How To Get Clients Online

With the advent of Online Coaching, accelerated by the Pandemic, more and more coaching resources have moved online.

One of the ways you can get acclimated to online coaching is to approach the online medium in the same way you approach coaching in the physical world. 

Here's a 5-step framework you can follow to approach, engage, and enroll coaching clients online:

How To Introduce Yourself As A Coach

Now, you may be wondering: "How can I introduce myself as a coach in a way that's not weird or sales-y?"

Here is our best advice on how to do it in the most effective way:

2 Steps to Engage potential Clients In Conversations

You might be finding it hard to engage in conversations with your clients. This is even more difficult when you are in an environment where there are other coaches.

To find what works to start a conversation, we should first explore what doesn't work to start a conversation.

This is what doesn't work:

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When you share something that is already a popular or familiar idea

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When you lead with your profession

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When what you share is of no interest to your potential client

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When you start the conversation with random small talk

What does work as a conversation starter?

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Unfamiliar ideas which drive curiosity

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Topic of interest to your potential client

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Asking insightful, thought-provoking questions that open a deeper conversation

This may sound obvious, and I would implore you to review if your conversation starter fits these criteria? Is your conversation starter driving curiosity? Is it even interesting to your clients?

Most entrepreneurs are told "marketing is needed for scaling companies". When I spoke about systems to scale companies, it was an unfamiliar idea. It drove curiosity. It had "scale" in the title, because I know my potential clients cared for it but it wasn't the same story they have heard time and time again.

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How can you start a conversation that creates potential client engagement?

Here is a technique that will help.

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Identify a single problem that is top of mind for your client. 

If you are a life coach, think about a very specific area of life. 

For example, as a life coach, you could focus on creating more time for family. Or tapping into your creativity or starting a new career path.

It's a specific enough problem for it to drive curiosity and help you quickly identify who would be your ideal client and how to approach them.

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Approach the problem from a different angle.

So you know the perfect topic to start your conversation with, but the next challenge comes: how to present it in a way that is interesting enough to make the potential client curious and eager to continue the conversation?

Find new angles to start the conversation that will spark client engagement. You can test them out by asking yourself, "Would I be interested in this conversation if someone asked this or said that to me?" Remember... you are your own best client. If it doesn't work for you, it probably won't work for someone else.

For example, if I was to approach a client to start a conversation around time, instead of simply stating that you need to have more time with family, I might make the conversation starter as: "I believe we have a flawed understanding of time. Time is not about the number of hours, instead it's about extracting more out of every minute."

While I am not a time expert, the above conversation opener is more likely to have a follow-up instead of you introducing yourself as a life coach.

Once you start the conversation and get your potential client curious, you should be able to drive a result.

Master The Art of Selling

When you get to this stage, the only thing that matters is your ability to create a result, and then propose.

The classic mistake you would normally make is trying to get the result you want for the client, instead of understanding and relating to what your clients need.

Understanding the distinction between what you want for your client and what your client wants for themselves makes the world of a difference. A good coach knows it's not about them, but about the client.

So it's crucial to use the first conversation with a potential client to understand what is it they want, and then identify how you can help them achieve that. This is where your coaching ability becomes the key to enrollment.

Fail in this step and all the work falls like a house of cards. Nothing loses more clients than a poorly held coaching session for a client you don't really know.

You want to impress them with your capability in 20-30 minutes. Once you pass that threshold, your client is losing interest. But if you can already spark some insights and paint a picture of the possibilities they could open by working further with you in those 30 minutes, then all your enrollment work is done.

If you get them the result that they seek within that time, you have a glorious chance to enroll this client in your packages by simply sharing the details of the package. No need for any secret sales scripts or advanced coaching techniques.

So, how does a new coach create results in less than 30 minutes?

Here is how you get better at creating results every single day.

Watch the masters, the experienced coaches.

There is a unique ability that masterful coaches with over 10 years of experience in the field are able to demonstrate. You can see what they are doing if you observe them carefully.

If you can deconstruct what they are doing you can gain an insight into their capabilities which took them decades to build, in a matter of minutes.

Learning from the masters is the singular difference between coaches that have an abundance of clients and the ones that struggle to enroll them.

How you can learn from these masters; how you can watch their coaching in action; how you can tap into their minds; more on that in just a bit. First...

How To Enroll Business Clients

If you're a business coach looking to enroll your first few business clients, follow our proven 4-step process:

What To Do When A Client Says 'No'

So, you've approach your potential client, you had a powerful conversation with them, and you pitches your irresistible coaching package...

But then they started hesitating, doubting, or straight-up said 'No.'

What to do now?

Before you give up and leave the conversation, here's everything you need to know about why potential clients might say 'No' to your coaching, how to turn a 'No' into a 'Yes', and how to deal with pricing objections.