A new VIP client of mine hired me because she wants to enroll more clients at higher prices than she’s been charging. She wants to end this year with significantly higher income. Can you relate?
She’s been getting clients through LinkedIn posts and deserves a lot of credit for the connective way she has been using that platform.
But, some of the clients that hire her just aren’t ideal and many of her new clients are low hanging fruit— colleagues from her previous corporate career — so that flow will taper off soon.
Also, she’s tired of rejection. It flags her confidence and she puts a lot of pressure on herself, which doesn’t help.
I think all of these things are related. So, we’ve been talking about how she can shift what she’s doing and thinking to attract more clients, who are also ideal, at prices that will sustain her business.
The solution might surprise you.
The 3 Things New Coaches Long For
What do you think are the 3 things new coaches long for most? You know it …
- More clients
- More income
- And more confidence to get them
I completely get that. I still remember my early years in business feeling deeply frustrated, to the point of tears sometimes, that I could work so hard and have so little to show for it.
And, of course, in retrospect I know why all of those things eluded me for too long.
You know what I’m going to say, right? It’s 75% mindset and 25% right action. Mindset drives all success. Mindset drives confidence, client enrollment and income.
So, let’s start with mindset – yours and your prospective client’s.
The way you feel about yourself comes through in:
- How you understand (or fail to understand) your ideal clients
- What you charge and how you feel about what you charge for your program
- What you say and how you feel about what you say to your audience
With just a quick look at my client’s recent LinkedIn posts I could tell that she was failing to show that she understands her audience. Her posts were not speaking to anyone in particular. All the specifics were taken out. Everything was soft, bland, vague and sweet.
This is why she was attracting her past colleagues. People who already knew, liked and trusted her were motivated. And, by the way, when she was offering low fees, they were snapping those offers up!
Not good in the long run. Because what she was doing was not sustainable. Look, she has two little kids at home and needs to earn well for the hours she serves.
And there was something else going on … by selling her services at unsustainable prices she was psyching herself out about her worth.
And that energy alone is enough to make it difficult for people who do not already know, like and trust her to invest — even at her lower fees. So, her confidence was slipping away with each ‘no’.
And guess what … the ones that didn’t know her who were signing on that weren’t ideal demonstrated that by not being invested in their own growth. They weren’t doing the work, which is no fun for a coach.
So, let me summarize what needs fixing:
- Offering services for low fees engenders feelings of low worth.
- Low self-worth comes across subliminally and keeps ideal prospects from saying ‘yes’.
- Pressuring yourself to enroll more clients when you feel low worth doesn’t work.
- Generic messaging won’t build the know-like-trust factor and only people already feeling that will enroll.
What needs to change?
Charge and Get Behind Coaching That Will Sustain Your Business
1. Do the math to understand what you need to charge to earn sustainably. Episode #57 is called Coach, Is It Time to Give Yourself a Raise and it explains a practical way to price your services with the right mindset behind it. Listen to that next.
2. Get fully behind your price. Believe that you deserve to earn well. And know that, to a degree, the more you charge the better clients you’ll attract. I know it doesn’t compute, but it’s true … when the price is a stretch, your clients invest in themselves and gets more value from your coaching.
3. Use words that inspire your ideal clients to know, like and trust you. How? Target a viable, unique audience, learn what’s most important to them in their words. Then contextualize all of your messages to their circumstances. Use keywords. Use their words!
4. Speak to your Avatar – one person who represents your ideal client in every way. Episode #187 has 25 powerful questions to ask yourself about your most ideal client. It’s worth it to take the time to create your avatar profile. Then, be sure that EVERYTHING YOU WRITE is addressing this person. Just one person.
A big mistake in messaging is trying to cover it all — all audiences, all scenarios, all challenges, all outcomes — by dumbing down the language and stripping out specifics.
Everyone is scrolling fast and it is only through relevance – using specific language your audience relates to – that you’ll attract attention from those you really want to serve.
The Problem With ‘We’ and ‘Our in Messaging
The other mistake in messaging is to slip in the words ‘we’ and ‘our’ from time to time. You think you are being kind and taking the pressure off of your reader by commiserating. But really, it comes across as patronizing.
Stick with ‘you’ and ‘your’. Then, you can occasionally use ‘I’ when you are sharing vulnerability. That’s the way to commiserate.
Think about it … do you ever slip into ‘we’ and ‘our’ language when you are having a conversation with a friend? No. So don’t do it with your Avatar either. Speak directly to them and about them in specific terms.
The Good News for My Client
One week after we talked through these adjustments my client enrolled her first client into her program at the significantly increased price and I was congratulating her.
You can do this too!