Are You A Coach, Or A Marketing Opportunity?

A Very Perplexing Puzzle With Coaching Business Opportunities

We have been approached by a number of coaches who need help to create a financially viable coaching business using materials purchased from ‘proven marketing system’ organisations. Something rather unpleasant has come to light.

These organisations – usually overseas – promise huge sums of money (“your clients will pay £20k+ per year each” for example) in return for access to their marketing material.

Sadly, this proven system rarely works here. In fact, the failure rates of some of these organisations is eye-wateringly high.

One has to ask, therefore, how do these organisation continue to sell coaching materials to the very same coaches who have failed to gain clients using materials they have already bought?

One has to ask if the aim of this type of organisation is helping coaches create a coaching business, or is it actually creating a pool of ‘customers’ for themselves?

It’s Cheaper To Sell To Existing Customers Than Find New Ones

It is a well-known fact that it’s easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers than it is to find new ones. Hotels will create membership clubs that give discounts and freebies to guests who come back for that very reason. Mailing lists created at the point of sale (“may I email your receipt to you?”) are curated for that very purpose. You’ve bought, you’re now a customer. With some marketing effort, you can be a loyal customer and then a percentage of you will buy each and every offering.

It is a particularly unpleasant sort of coaching organisation that, when asked by their coaches for help and support to create the coaching business that they bought, offer them another product to sell. “You can’t sell the 1:1 coaching package that you bought from us at a cost of a couple of grand? No problem, spend another couple and we can add business coaching/career coaching/financial coaching/weight-loss coaching – that will definitely sell!! After all, this ‘new’ product taps into the global interest in business/career/financial/weight-loss coaching – honest!”

How Do These Organisations Survive?

One has to ask the question – why do these customers/coaches fall for it?

Well, you need to be a charismatic salesperson to pull it off. You need to create a pool not of customers, but rather disciples. These disciples will believe everything you say – until they don’t. When they see through the obsfuscation and walk away, you simply disparage them – “yes, we thought they were honest/had integrity/up to the job, but it turns out they’re not. Hey-ho; ever upwards” – until the remaining disciples stop questioning why, and continue to buy.

Equally, those who can’t create the promised business will fade into the distance, feeling like they failed. They will also be disparaged “they’re not up to the job, they don’t have what it takes to be successful“.

Hats off to those who pull it off – it’s obviously lucrative, if grubby.