We don’t even call them sales conversations. We use euphemisms like ‘discovery call’ or ‘strategy session’ or ‘chemistry call’ because the word ‘sales’ makes us deeply uncomfortable. In these calls, we give away an hour’s coaching for free to ‘demonstrate the power of coaching’ because the perceived wisdom is that the only way for a client to understand the power of coaching is to have been coached.
By the end of that hour, we believe the potential client will be thrilled and happy to pay whatever fee we ask. The reality is quite different. Yes, we can engage the odd client like this, but it’s a lot of work for little return. Even if the session was great, it can result in us naming a fee and the client doing the equivalent of gasping ‘how much?!’ which leaves them feeling ambushed by an unexpected price, and us feeling like no one wants to pay for coaching.
Why We’re Getting It Wrong
The sales call isn’t a standalone thing, but most coaches treat it as if it is. We think the magic happens in that one conversation, that we can coach someone brilliantly for an hour and the person will immediately sign up and pay. That’s not how it works, and that’s not what a sales conversation is for.
If you market effectively, by the time a client lands in your diary, they already know who we are, what we do, that we do it for people like them, and crucially, what it costs. They are in the sales call to see the whites of our eyes, to reassure themselves that we are who they believe us to be – which of course we are, because effective marketing is authentic.
The sales conversation exists to explore whether there’s a good fit, not to surprise someone with coaching and then hit them with a price they weren’t expecting.
The Unique Challenge We Face
We have a challenge that no other professional services provider has to deal with. The vast majority of the population have no idea what we do. Worse, they think they know and they’re wrong – they think we teach something, like a sports coach does.
Lawyers, accountants, therapists, psychotherapists – people understand what they do. This means that people know when they need the services of those professionals. With coaching, this isn’t the case at all. What this problem means is that as a whole profession, we need to get very good at articulating the benefit of what we do to people who are not coaches. As a profession, we’re notoriously bad at this.
This is precisely why we can’t treat a sales conversation as a standalone event where we coach someone and hope they’ll understand the value. They won’t necessarily understand the value because they don’t understand what coaching is in the first place. Apart from anything else, we reach a point where we’re struggling to find people to coach for free in this way.
What Should Actually Happen
The potential client should have been attracted into our diaries by excellent marketing, so they already know who we are, what we do, and that we do it for people like them. They should also be clear about the price before they book the call.
Then, in the sales conversation, we explore how the problem we know they have is playing out for them specifically, and what their goals are. We answer any questions they have and then invite them to become our client. Because they know the cost and purpose of the call ahead of the call, they’ve arrived understanding that this conversation is specifically to see if there’s a good fit.
If they don’t want to (or can’t) afford coaching, they’ll cancel the call. That feels like a bad thing, but once we’re busy, we don’t want to spend time on sales calls with people who don’t want to engage us. Our time becomes valuable, and we want to spend it with people who are genuinely interested in working with us.
Why We’re So Uncomfortable
We’re fear sales conversations because we don’t have a process. A good client acquisition process removes the fear of marketing, of selling, and of following up, because it’s a process – a process that we simply follow. When we don’t have a process, every sales conversation feels like we’re making it up as we go along, and that’s terrifying.
The idea of selling feels uncomfortable because we have this idea that selling involves making people buy things they don’t want or can’t afford. The truth is that selling is the process of uncovering needs to see if we can help. That’s all it is. It’s not manipulation, it’s not pressure, it’s not talking someone into something they don’t want. It’s a structured conversation to explore whether what we offer matches what they need.
When we have a process, when our marketing has already done most of the heavy lifting, when the person sitting across from us already knows what we do and what it costs, the sales conversation becomes straightforward. We’re not trying to convince anyone of anything. We’re not springing a surprise fee on them at the end – we’re simply exploring fit.
Free Coaching
Giving away free coaching in a sales call doesn’t demonstrate value – it demonstrates that you’re not confident enough in your marketing to have them understand the value before they get on the call with you. It also sets up an awkward dynamic where you’re trying to be both coach and salesperson in the same conversation, and neither role gets done well.
The person receiving free coaching often isn’t thinking “this is amazing, I must pay for more of this.” They’re thinking “this is nice, I wonder if they’ll keep doing it for free?” or “I’m not sure what just happened or why I would pay for it”, because remember, they don’t understand what coaching is in the first place.
Our sales conversation shouldn’t be where we explain coaching. It should be where we explore whether the coaching we offer matches what this specific person needs. When we’ve marketed well, the answer is usually ‘yes’.
What Changes With a Process
When we have a proper client acquisition process, sales conversations become easier because they’re no longer carrying the entire weight of attracting, educating, and converting a client. Our marketing has attracted them, our content has educated them about their problem and our approach, and our clear pricing has filtered out people who can’t or won’t pay.
The sales conversation is simply the final step – the human connection that confirms what they already believe about us. It’s not scary anymore because we’re not trying to make something happen that should have happened earlier in the process. We’re just having a conversation about whether we can help this person with the problem they already know they have.
The Real Issue
If sales conversations feel scary, uncomfortable, or like we’re constantly being rejected, the problem isn’t the sales conversation itself. The problem is that we’re asking the sales conversation to do work that should have been done by our marketing. We’re trying to educate, convince, and convert all in one hour-long call, and that’s a impossibly high bar to reach.
The sales conversation we’re too scared to have isn’t actually the problem. The problem is that we’re trying to have the wrong conversation. When we have a proper client acquisition process in place, the sales conversation becomes the easiest part of the whole thing because it’s just confirmation of what both of us already know.
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An Opportunity
If you’d like the opportunity for a robust conversation about this – or to just flat-out tell me why I’m wrong – why not join my next free challenge, Nail Your Niche? We run it several times a year and there’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me for just £99 (inc VAT) – that provides us with time for a lot of robust conversations!
Are you ready to choose a focus for your coaching business? Register for the challenge by clicking here.
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