The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.
So coach a LOT. It’s OK if you’re nervous, or even terrified of doing your initial sessions – coach anyway. And don’t worry, we’ll cover many tips in later chapters to help increase your confidence and make the whole process much easier for you.
In the extreme, if you had 20 pro-bono (i.e. non paying) clients, you would attract many more clients and feel very comfortable charging them your full fee. You would also be getting a lot of training and experience under your belt. However, it doesn’t have to be for free…
Once you have 10-20 clients, with the assistance of your mentor coach, your practice will naturally grow in number of clients, client retention (how long they stay), and income. Once you have say ten clients, you might begin to look at longer-term, sustainable marketing methods.
The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.
David: It sounds great that you hit that block, you kept on moving, and I’m grateful to these people who didn’t keep their appointments with you.
Client: Yeah, that was a real kick in the gut. It was like, ‘Oh, no. I knew it wouldn’t work.’ You know, I went into the whole self-doubt thing. Some of them did ring me and apologize, which I thought was great. When I went back, it was, ‘Oh yeah. Sorry.’ I said, ‘Would you like to reschedule?’ ‘Oh yeah,’ so I’ve actually rescheduled everyone.
David: Okay. I think this may have come along for a reason for you right now, being some kind of lesson here. Can you see what the lesson is, what might the lesson be?
Client: That it’s not necessarily about me, that maybe something else came up, and it’s not personal.
David: Okay, very good. I can see that as being a powerful lesson. I can see another one here, too. See, early on in my practice, I had a lot of people not be there for calls. I can have six calls scheduled in a day, and two or three of them wouldn’t be there when I called. Nowadays, that doesn’t happen. Nowadays, there are zero people not show. Even for the trial sessions, in different countries with different time zones, the people are there. It’s very few: maybe 20 percent aren’t there. Who doesn’t show up, the percentage of people that don’t show up is totally a function of who you’re being in setting up that call.
The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.
David: Think of the cost of them not getting their stuff right. The cost is unbelievable. You probably use that in your sales, but whatever they’re paying is worth it, because the cost of them not getting their stuff right is astronomical.
Client: It’s significantly more. This is why the top executive search firms charge about 33% of salary and we charge 12½ to 15%.
David: Why is that?
Client: Good question. It’s like selling Porsche or Rolls Royce. They have absolute market reputation and they’re dealing with the organizations that can afford to pay that. However, we were a long way from there, so we started at 12% so we could be competitive and get in the door. Raising the price to 15% was the easiest thing I ever did. No one even said anything, and it gave us a massive increase in profits. The reason we do 12½ is because we realize that there’s some value in customers who work with us exclusively, so we give a discount and some other benefits.
David: Imagine if you charged 18 and discount to 15 or 12½. You have just created a bigger discount, a bigger value for them. Then they’ll be saying, ‘Wow, I can get 5 ½ percent.’
The following is an excerpt of David’s interview in Top Coaching Techniques.
Ingrid: Know what David? I’m going to put my cynic hat on here. That is, what about all that paperwork and guff and BAS statements and paying the bills that come for you, if starting your own business?
David: Yeah, there’s a lot that comes with it. One of the traps that people fall into is, they start working in the business and they take on something, and then they find that really, this is just another job where they’ve got ten times more responsibility. Ten times more work and less pay than before. So what’s really important is, once they get started in the business, you start setting up business systems so the business starts running itself. Start bringing on employees and people to help so that you don’t just have a job anymore, but it actually runs as a business instead of a job.
The following is an excerpt of David’s interview in Top Coaching Techniques.
Ingrid: It’s hard sometimes, especially if you have a young family. The needs of family, and perhaps the families of other people, make it difficult to even save a little bit. Can a little bit help?
David: It can make a big difference. Saving $50 a week, instead of using $200 to go out, can change your outlook. Start with saving, so it is a practice. Most people pay all sorts of expenses and say, ‘I’ll save whatever is left over.’ Do not try this at home. Your expenses will always expand to your income. Pick a goal, work out how much you need, and set a savings target. Then slash out expenses. First put in bank, and then live on the rest. Play a game called ‘How to Live on the Rest’.
Client: That’s like turning your savings on its head though.
David: It is. Right. ‘Pay yourself first’, I read once in a book. Put it directly into a bank account. It can be painful to slash expenses, but when you’ve been putting $200 in the bank, and this is what we have to live on, it becomes a game.
The following is a transcription taken from Explode Your Practice.
David: See, what I’m learning about pricing is that you really get, people are looking to you for initial clues on what the value is.
Right.
David: Now if you give them an initial clue that this is worth about $50.00 a month then that’s how they’re going to treat it. If you give them initial clues that this is worth $1,000 a month, you may hit resistance when they look at other things in their life that they compare it to and they go hang on how can that be. So you may need to create a shift in them and you may need to set a certain target market to make sure they’ve got the money to make it easier. But you know, people can pay a thousand a month, and they do for certain things. It might be a holiday or it might be for a Tony Robbins course because it sounds so good.
