It’s really odd, but I tend to write my best articles when I’m cross, and trust me, I’m cross! I’ve heard a few stories recently from individuals about companies that operate in the same industry as The Coaching Revolution. Ones that don’t seem to share the ‘integrity’ value that we hold so dear.
This week I’m focusing on the first of these that I’ve heard of.
High-Paying Clients
I’ve been talking to someone recently who joined an organisation that was going to help her find clients. ‘High-paying’ clients specifically. She paid a lot of money for this privilege and to date, she has yet to see a single client, high-paying or otherwise.
First of all, what’s a high-paying (or high-ticket) client? Who defines what high-paying means? Is it an industry standard or is it an amount of money that an individual coach thinks is high? And what are they basing that on?
You can see I have far more questions than I suspect I’ll ever have answers.
This company seems to attract coaches in large numbers (well, high-paying is attractive, right?) and they pay handsomely for a combination of online learning and a weekly group coaching session.
STOP RIGHT THERE!
One of the things that I can absolutely promise you, is that coaches don’t need coaching sessions to help them find clients!
I am so certain of this because the reason that they don’t have clients is that they have a knowledge gap – they don’t know how to find clients. The reason that they don’t have clients yet is because they don’t know how to market themselves. That lack of understanding of how marketing a coaching business works, (aka a knowledge gap) means that coaching isn’t appropriate. After all, you can’t coach a viable marketing strategy out of a head that doesn’t have one in it in the first place.
Of course, the coach doesn’t know that, do they? We coaches believe that we can coach most things out of the heads of others, and the fact that the knowledge gap is there is often missed.
Scuzzy Marketing Techniques For Coaches
It turns out that what they are taught is to use LinkedIn to DM people offering their coaching services, usually as a result of a comment this person may have left on someone’s post.
Apparently, out of every 50 DMs you should get 5 ‘yeses’. That’s 45 noes for every 50 DMs sent! How dispiriting is that?!
The weekly coaching session is used to help them to realise that if they’re not succeeding with this grotty marketing method, it’s because they have the wrong mindset. It’s their own fault.
Some examples of what I’m talking about:
? The potential client is a single parent who is unemployed and so can’t afford your coaching?
WRONG!
? It’s that your mindset is wrong – you could coach them into a well-paying job! Get them to put the coaching on a credit card! It’s an investment after all…
? You don’t like that of the 45 noes, some get cross with you for spamming them?
WRONG!
? It’s that you have a weak and lily-livered mindset! Be strong, rise above it!
In short, this organisation teaches everything that makes the industry in which I operate stink! They are fleecing coaches and teaching them marketing processes that are hard-core and ‘call centre-esque”. There’s a reason that call centres have a high turnover of staff, and these coaches are learning what that reason is; massive discomfort about the daily activities they’re expected to undertake, and the pushiness they’re expected to demonstrate.
Live Teaching For Coaches
What coaches have when they join an organisation that’s going to help them find clients are questions. Lots and lots of questions. Those questions deserve an honest answer, not some coaching (and frankly avoidance of the question).
Marketing is alien to most of us and so coaches need hand-holding for the longest time, until the penny drops and they get it. Once they do – and providing that they have the reassurance that they are welcome to ask questions and get relevant and valid answers to those questions – they begin to thrive.
Four Years In The Making
In the four years since The Coaching Revolution started, we have refined and honed our programme for coaches. We teach a highly polished and successful programme that gets results for coaches.
Not only do our clients get their mentoring sessions – specific classes to learn the various components of marketing and how to apply them – they also get masses of extra support in the form of live daily drop in sessions, weekly group classes (always focused on client acquisition), accountability calls and more.
The more I learn about what others offer, the more I understand why our clients describe us as ‘a lighthouse in a shark-infested industry.
Recent Comments