A coach emailed me asking for an episode about refunds and money-back guarantees for coaching. The person didn’t share their name. A shout out to you!
I love requests for episode topics. Contact me through my website anytime. And before you do … search for topics there from my 8 years of blogging and 5 years of podcasting to find tips and insights quickly. There are few things I haven’t already covered before. Refunds is one of them.
Refunds are not a fun thing about running a coaching business but they don’t have to be painful either.
I’ll cover in this episode a set of things you can do right now, in advance of any request for a refund including all the ways to stop requests from ever happening.
And I’ll cover in Episode 244 — the next one — when you need a refund policy or guarantee, how you can respond to a request for a refund in different circumstances and what to say.
Coaching Client Results Are Not the Responsibility of the Coach
I want you to take this in … your client’s results are not up to you. That doesn’t mean that you have no responsibility for your impact as a professional. All human beings have some responsibility for their impact on others.
Think about what you can control in a session or in a series of sessions with your client:
- The way you show up
- What you say
- How you respond
You cannot control how they show up, what they interpret or how they respond during or after a session.
In my agreement document of my intake packet for newly enrolled clients I ask them to initial this sentence:
I understand that Rhonda Hess is not a licensed therapist and that I am responsible for all my decisions, actions, results and feelings.
Consider having something similar in your agreement. That is a first line of defense towards a client thinking that I am responsible for their results, and that if they do not get the results they want, a refund might be available.
Share this verbally in your Discovery Call too and impress upon prospects when enrolling them that coaching is co-creative. It is a partnership. They have a specific role and you have a specific role but it takes two.
Raise Your Professionalism and Belief in Your Coaching Services
If you are selling coaching session packages and are relatively new to coaching, you may have some requests for refunds. As you gain experience and the more you believe in the value of your services the less likely you’ll have those requests.
Clients take cues from the coach. If you show up uncertain, that will come across energetically and lower your prospect’s or your client’s confidence in your services and perhaps even their own ability to take the coaching in and transform.
So, the second thing you can do to decrease the likelihood of a client asking for a refund is to raise your belief:
- In your services
- In your client’s ability to transform, and
- In your professionalism
Believing in all 3 of these things does not require years of experience. It’s about intention. Set intention for all 3 of these things before you spend time with prospects and clients.
Offer a Signature Program at a High-Ticket Price
You know that I often say instead of selling coaching packages, offer a Signature Program customized to your target audience and the big challenges they have on their way to achieving a big goal. Then price program that high.
Ironically, the more you charge for your services the higher quality client you attract. I’m talking about clients who do take responsibility for their own success. The investment itself in your high-ticket services is a gateway to their own success. And clients instinctively know this.
Low pricing is full of pitfalls. Get past it as fast as you can. I have several episodes on money mindset. Check them all out at prosperouscoach.com/money. It’s time for you to help yourself in countless ways and your clients too by making this shift!
Publish Content Weekly That Helps You Pre-Qualify Coaching Clients
The next way to prevent refund requests is having a strategic content strategy. It helps you pre-qualify coaching clients and from enrolling the wrong type of clients. Yes, there is a wrong type of client for you.
One of the problems I had early on in my coaching business is that I was trying to enroll any client from any audience at any price because I was desperate to get an income flowing.
Well, that mindset and approach is disastrous for so many reasons. When you have a coaching business, it’s critical to step into the CEO mindset and run your business strategically so you can earn well and stay in business.
That’s why you start by targeting a viable audience and building a niche/specialty around that so you can stand out in the crowd and become known for your specialty. Specialties attract better clients.
Then, when you podcast (what I recommend as a content strategy), or blog, or make videos and social posts you are consistently reinforcing WHO you work with and HOW you help them achieve what’s important to them. That helps you attract the right type of clients — not only in that they fit your audience and want the scope of your work but also because they are actively seeking solutions and know they will have to invest to make progress.
Assess Fit with Your Coaching Prospect in Your Discovery Call
The way you conduct Discovery Calls is also prevention from refund requests.
I’ve talked a lot recently about Discovery Calls. Check out:
- episodes 162 and 198 to handle objections
- episodes 217 and 241 to have better Discovery Calls, and
- episode 242, which has a downloadable cheat sheet with powerful questions to ask in the call
It’s equally important to assess the fit of your prospective coaching clients for you as it is for them to assess the fit of you and your program.
During Discovery Calls, pay close attention to your intuition. You know both in your heart and in your gut what is right for you and what is not.
When you are desperate for clients and income you may ignore your intuition and enroll a client who is not right for you and trouble of all sorts can follow:
- The client may not be coachable
- The client may not be respectful and friendly
- The client may have out of balance expectations
- The client may not be capable of taking responsibility for their decisions, actions, results and feelings.
- Or, they might not be a good fit in their personality for you.
You can definitely ask powerful questions in the Discovery Call to subtly uncover some of these things. But what I believe is that you can learn to FEEL FIT by the way coaching prospects show up. So start building that muscle now.
Okay, I hope you found this helpful and I’ll get into the nitty gritty of refunds in the next episode.