MM Newsletter

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! 

***

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.
***
 

2. FEATURE: How to Add Vacations to Your Business Trips

Last issue we covered how to incorporate business in your travel, so this issue you are going to learn how to add vacations to your business trips.

Top Ten Reasons to Combine Business Travel with Vacation

1. You can double your vacation time
2. Your vacations can be partly or wholly tax deductible
3. Use the business travel budget to cover your transport costs (e.g. work flies you to Miami and back, so the cost of your vacation is really just accommodation for the extra days you stay)
4. Split up long period of stressful work with some R&R
5. Split up long period of R&R that can start to feel a little boring, with a little productivity (great for us workaholics)
6. Come back to the office happier, more grounded, and more productive
7. No more long periods out of touch with the office when people are unable to access you
8. Keeps you out of the office more so your assistants can prove they can handle more responsibility
9. Forces you to be more efficient when you’re only allowed to work for 2 hours a day
10. Allows you to get those BIG projects done with no distractions

When doing a business trip, how can you incorporate vacation?

• Get there early. The simplest and most obvious way is to get to the event a couple of days early and do some sightseeing before it’s time to do business. If you can justify it to the office as important to get grounded and happy before the meeting – especially if it’s an international flight – you might get work to pay for a day or two of the extra hotel cost.

Or – tack on a few days at the end of the project. If the client agrees to stay another day or two, that’s a BIG reason for your boss to fork out for the extra hotel expense.

Example: This month I fly to Australia so the government can audit my company. I’ll be setting speeches up in two towns, meeting with my accountant and production manager who live there, and spending time with my family.

• Stretched financially? Try www.couchsurfing.com for a place to crash once the business accommodation budget dries up. Youth Hostels might seem a bit unprofessional or like you’re coming down in the world, but that’s largely the point. You’ll meet colorful people you’ll never even see while insulated at the Hilton. Call way in advance and you might even secure the private room instead of a dorm.
• Use your network. Another way to defray the cost is to email every friend you know, asking if they have a friend in that town who might put you up for two nights. Then, you do such a good job of tidying up, doing the dishes, and cooking dinner for people that they’re asking you to stay longer.
• Work couldn’t survive without you? I hate to break it to your ego (especially if it’s as big as mine), but I suggest you write down what would happen if you were in hospital for two weeks unable to communicate. What would happen in your business? Who would pick up the reins? What could your assistant or secretary handle that you’ve never allowed room for?
• Stop ‘on the way’. Is work flying you close to a place you’d like to go? See if you can stop off on the way there (or the way back) for a couple of days, at no extra airfare cost to you.

Example: This year I flew to Vail Colorado for a retreat. I decided to fly “via” Calgary and spend a week with friends. The cost of the total trip was less (in time and money) than if I’d flown to Vail only on this trip, and then done a separate trip to Calgary.

***

Action: Post on the blog:

1) How have you combined work and vacation successfully?

2) What is one idea you would like to incorporate to add vacation to your work?

3) Post your answers to the blog.

***

2. FEATURE: Pricing and Negotiating Fees

[Proudly Reprinted from Mentor Monthly #50]

Suppose you got 1,000 visitors to your web site today.

How many would give you their email address so you can stay in touch?

5? 200?

And will they be engaged? Inspired to do a coaching session with you?

In this article I’ll tell you a very simple, yet clever strategy, which will engage your visitors in an interactive way, AND get their email address.

Start a relationship

People don’t tend to plunk down money the first time they visit a site. And they don’t want to become a client until they feel they know you a little better. So to get them interested in you and your site, try fr ee downloads, articles and other freebies. These are excellent ways to bring people to the top of your marketing funnel.

Once you start a relationship by giving them something, it will be easier to convert your visitors to clients or sell your products.

Assessments as freebies

Assessments are a fantastic way to attract visitors. Assessments are quizzes and questionnaires that create an interactive experience for your prospects. “How Successful Are You?” “Are You Ready for a Relationship?” “Are You Stressed?”

People love to fill them out and better yet, they like to pass them on to their friends. And assessments can be powerful tools to help people learn more about themselves. In other words, they are already being coached!

Lyle Johnson, a client in my Coachstart™ Mentoring Program took this idea and turbo charged it. He created 38 assessments in one week!

I’m serious – 38 assessments, 30 questions each, and SIX EMAILS in an autoresponder series to follow up every assessment individually!

http://www.coachforoutcomes.com/assessments.htm

He used the Assessment Generator to get his assessments up that quickly (it does the programming for you).

Now I don’t expect you to be as prolific as Lyle, but you could definitely whack one up there in the next few days, and send the link to your colleagues and friends.

Get their email address

Once you have a visitor’s email, you can contact them more to build the relationship you started with the give away. And you get a chance to show them what else you can offer them (i.e. coaching, an information product, a teleclass, etc.).

Lyle has a great system for following up with potential clients who take the quizzes. He asks for their name and email address before they hit the score button. He tells them where they are based on their score, and then follows up 6 times via an autoresponder specific to that quiz! The autoresponder messages are to upsell to his coaching.

How do you set up the autoresponders? Well – that’s a topic for another article. To save you from overwhelm, I’d suggest you just start with the quiz. But for those of you ready to go to the next step – you can check out the system I recommend here.

Can you see the potential? Set up this system once and then you don’t have to email each prospect, each time. Just some tweaks here and there every so often.

What’s your freebie?

Now that you know how important having something to give away is to attracting potential clients and customers to your site, what are you going to do?

What kind of freebie do you want to use? Can you think of a fun quiz that would suit your niche?

Exercise

1) Brainstorm a list of 10 assessments or freebies you could offer which match your niche.

2) Think about what you want to upsell to (i.e. coaching, products, a course).

3) Post the name of the freebie or assessment you will create in the comments area:

Post and Comment here