Posts by David Wood

2. FEATURE: Gain More Clients with a Coaching FAQ

If you are drawing in clients with your website, you may be leaving potential clients unsure of exactly what you do. And a confused person is more likely to leave your site than email or call for an answer.

Why You Need an FAQ

People that hop on your web site are searching for answers to their problems. But saying you are a life coach or a business coach is too vague to make a connection. Bear in mind that a lot of people don’t know what coaching is. They haven’t had coaching before. They don’t understand the process.

A Frequently Asked Questions page gives them answers without making them work too hard to get them.

What To Include in Your FAQ

• How many sessions you hold each month
• If sessions are done by phone, web conferencing or face to face
• What happens if a client terminates their coaching before the end of the month
• Characteristics of who you like to work with
• The length of sessions
• Outline of a guarantee of service is one is available
• Description of how coaching works
• When and how clients pay for their sessions
• How long you normally work with a client
• Description of your specialities
• Any other questions and answers you receive often

Formatting Your FAQ

The format that has worked best for me is the question and answer format.

So it would look something like this:

What is your coaching structure?

We will have a 45 minute phone coaching session three times a month.

Would you like to see a coaching FAQ?

You can check out Flaven Clayton’s FAQ here:

http://www.life-coaching-resource.com/life-coaching-questions.htm

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Action:

1) List the questions you are most likely to receive from potential clients

2) Create your own Coaching FAQ

3) Share your Coaching FAQ at the blog
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2. FEATURE: Advanced: Double Your Number of Clients

If you’re just starting out with coaching, you may want to skip this article. It’s an advanced strategy for coaches who really want to drive up their numbers.

If you’ve been coaching for a while, you might know this routine: a prospect fills out a form, you follow up, and then you never hear from the prospect again. That doesn’t have to happen, because I’ve stumbled upon a brilliant way to make sure prospects don’t fall through the cracks!

Follow Up System

Here’s what to do: When you set up your coaching application form, automatically collect the person’s email address in your shopping cart and subscribe them to a special 52-week auto-responder “prospect” newsletter.

With this strategy, you never lose a prospect because you’ve captured his email address in your “follow up” system. One week after he’s submitted his form (but did not respond to your invitation), he’ll receive a short note from you that says, “Hi Brad, I’m just following up to see what’s going on. Sometimes we can get busy in our lives and our goals can be pushed to the side. If you’d still like to have a session, I’m happy to offer a slot, just get back to me in the next three days.”

In addition, you tell him, “Next week, I’ll send you some motivational tips and keep in touch if that’s okay with you. I know sometimes the time may not be right and things get overwhelming, but the time may be right in the future, and meanwhile I can support you in your goals via email. If not, just click on the link below and you’ll be taken off this list.”

Then, every week thereafter Brad receives a brief note from you that is pre-scheduled using an auto-responder. You might ask:

• How do you feel about your goals this week?
• What’s your energy level about your goals?
• What’s getting in the way of your goals right now?
• What’s the biggest thing that would stop us working together? I’d love to know. Email me and let me know.
• What are you putting up with this week?
• What’s one thing you’d love to get rid of in your life?
• What’s one thing you’d love to change? Ping me back, I’m listening.
• What’s one thing you’d love more of?You might also include:
• Motivational tips: “Brad, I just wanted to send you this motivational quote, which can be so useful in moving forward.”
• A question: “Have you made progress on your goals? If not, I’d invite you to email me now to get moving. I can do a lot with you, but you’re the one who has to say yes to coaching.”
• A testimonial: “Hi Brad, I really want to share with you this story of Bill. Bill was busy. He didn’t get around to coaching for six months, but when he did, here’s what happened!” And then include the testimonial.
• Reminders of the top ten benefits of coaching with you or a reminder that: “You’re never locked in. Why don’t we do a trial session and see how it feels? If you sign up for coaching, you can stop at the end of any month, but once they start, most clients tend to finish the three months and have great results.”
• Special offers for coaching. “This week, there’s a 25 percent discount if you do a session and sign up within one week.”
• Ads for third-party products where you receive commission.

This is like a mini-newsletter that you’re targeting to a very specific audience with a very specific purpose. And, best of all, you can sit down and write out all 52 weeks’ worth of communications in a few hours and then have a brilliant, automated follow-up program that converts prospects into clients for you over the next year! 

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Action: Post on the blog:

1) Look at your current follow up system for prospective clients.

2) Create a form for your prospective clients to fill out (I use this autoresponder/forms system). Then you can decide how you would like to follow up with them.

3) Share your follow up system at the blog.
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