Enrollments Conversations are the key to a coach’s success in business. If you can’t enroll clients into your programs, you don’t have a business. But most coaches didn’t get “sales” training in coach training. You learned how to be a coach but not necessarily how to be a salesperson. So you are in a position of needing more training, but you may not be sure of what kind of training.
Usually it’s some kind of sales training. There are so many different kinds of sales training out there. When I participated in a fancy year-long group coaching program with a 7-figure coach, we were taught 23 steps to take during a strategy/discovery or enrollment conversation session. That’s a lot of steps to remember. And what I found was that it was hard to stick to the formula. Prospects can pull you in all different directions—especially if you let them do most of the talking.
If the prospect is a good fit, no matter how good your intentions are to help/coach that prospect choose your program, when they don’t, or when they come up with all the objections that you can’t fully address, it’s disappointing. And disappointment is hard to hide with a smile.
Inside you’re wondering why running a coaching business is such an uphill battle. You’re just trying to help people and make enough money in the process to keep going with it. Why do you need to be a salesperson too? Maybe you’re even avoiding these conversations because you don’t know what to say, how to establish your value, or how to address the prospects inevitable objections.
Recently I heard a teleclass by a business coach who said that even 6-7 figure coaches only get 25-30% conversions in their conversations and that’s what you should shoot for. That means if you want 5 new clients a month, you need to have 20 conversations a month. Think about that for a minute—that is 20 hours a month, plus the time it takes to find those 20 people.
So you need to have a marketing plan in place where you are doing something every work day to get about one conversation per day, if you work five days a week. If you want to figure out how much time you are actually spending to get each client, track the time you take to do the marketing to get those conversations. Then you will know what your true ROI (return on investment) is. The consequence is that if you want more clients, you have to spend more time marketing and having complimentary conversations until you reach your goal. It can get overwhelming.
But actually, there’s an easier way. You could focus on improving your conversion rate instead. What if that 25-30% was increased to 50-75%? Then you would only need 7-10 conversations per month to get those 5 clients.
Here are some tips about how you can improve that conversion rate.
1. Check inside yourself to see what beliefs are preventing you from getting sales – sometimes some personal development is necessary to increase sales
2. Get crystal clear on who your ideal target market is – so you are targeting the right people who are the best fit for your programs
3. Set up a system for prequalifying your prospects – so you can tell whether they are ready for a solution to your problem
4. Have a system for following up with people you meet or connect with to help you determine their interest
5. Learn how to articulate the value of your program/service
6. Learn how to establish the gap between where they are at and where they want to go
7. Have a plan and be able to stick to it
8. Find your authentic voice, and be able to relay what you do compellingly
9. Speak from the heart, offer your solution, and support them in deciding the right path for them
10. Learn how to confidently ask for the sale, without feeling salesy
11. Bonus Tip: learn how to do all of this from someone who’s an expert at it
Learning how to turn simple conversations into clients almost every time is a skill you can acquire with a little help. Try these suggestions and see if your conversion rate improves.
https://youtu.be/-QtcgWt5X8M