Straight-Talking Sarah Alert! (for those of a sensitive nature 😉)
I was chatting to a coach this morning – let’s call her Jane – and she said to me that someone had recommended another coach to her, who specialises in helping coaches get clients. Jane gave me this coach’s name – I’m going to call the coach Freda Bloggs.
You will have heard of her, I’m sure said Jane.
I have to confess that I had never heard of Freda at all, but while Jane and I talked, I googled Freda. The top of the homepage of Freda’s website says Free Webinar – How To Get Clients In 30 Days!
Jane, I said, if you see claims like this, it’s a BIG red flag.
Jane and I went on to have a long conversation about the marketing process and why getting coaching clients in 30 days as a claim from someone in my industry is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst.
Magical Thinking…
There’s a tendency for coaches to get stuck in ‘magical thinking’. What I mean is that there’s a tendency for them to believe that if they can just find the one thing, the silver bullet that will mean that they don’t have to do anything much, and that they can find all the clients they want. It’s this magical thinking that allows people like Freda Bloggs to thrive. She fits her offer to that magical thinking.
The problem with magical thinking, and the idea of silver bullets is that they miss the basic tenet of markeing, and that’s this: Marketing is a process, not an event.
Freda is suggesting that if you attend her webinar, you’ll be able to find coaching clients in the next 30 days from a standing start, and that’s not believable if you know what you’re talking about. And I do know what I’m talking about.
The Marketing Process
To move from stuck coach to a coach with clients, you need to have several things in place;
- a clearly defined target audience (or niche – synonym of target audience)
- a well-defined ideal client avatar as a focus for your marketing
- a succinct, well-crafted marketing message that speaks exactly to the kind of client you want to attract
- a marketing strategy to move you from where you are now, to where you want to be, using the tools outlined in this list
- visibility – you don’t have to be visible to the whole world, just to people in your target audience
- consistency – the most important part and the part that most coaches find tough. You have to be visible continuously
Does this sound like a 30-day job? No, it doesn’t, does it?
Red Flags To Look Out For
I took the opportunity to download Freda Bloggs’ 12 Quick and Easy Ways To Find Clients checklist. I mean after all, perhaps she really has discovered a way to find coaching clients in 30 days, right? (I’m joking, I just wanted to see this checklist…)
The checklist includes things like ‘tell people what you do’ and ‘invest in a coach’ as well as ‘write a blog’ and ‘ask for referrals’ – all of which are things that most coaches will have already done and absolutely know do not produce clients in 30 days.
If you see anything that says that finding clients is a breeze, or find clients in 30 days, or 6-figures in 90 days and the person who has written that is someone who is selling marketing training for coaches – walk away. It’s promising fantasies and it’s not believable.
A Green Flag
May I offer you a green flag to counteract the red one?
If you’d like to talk about how you really find coaching clients, about how you craft a great marketing message, how you share that marketing message where it will land the best and how you attract people who you can help the most into your world (and into your diary), then we should talk.
Will you get there in 30 days? No – there’s a reason our programmes last a year.
Will you learn to create the tools you need to build a rinse and repeatable formula for generating inbound enquiries and turning as many of them as possible into paying clients? Yes, yes you will.
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