So far in your coaching business you might be simply trying to convince any client to hook on … to want coaching and be willing to invest in a certain number of sessions up front.
Convincing clients they want coaching can be painful process. I tried that for years and wasted a lot of energy.
The problem is that offering coaching session packages doesn’t create a strong context for why your prospect would want to enroll.
It was only when I targeted a narrow audience and found out directly from them what’s been in the way of achieving their top goals and turned that into an exciting offer that I began seeing great results from clients and earning well.
When you customize an offer for your audience into a Signature Program it creates a powerful context for why they want to hire you.
Developing this high-ticket customized program requires you to think like your ideal client … not like a coach.
Why Customize a Program to Align with Your Audience’s Top Issues and Goals?
In my VIP mentoring program, I help coaches craft that customized offer because selling that offer is far easier than selling coaching session packages and coaching will still be the method used to help the client move positively forward.
Offering a Signature Progam benefits you 4 important ways:
- You will feel more confident that you are offering something of value.
- You will know exactly how to articulate that value to your target audience.
- You won’t have to keep trying to convince people to buy coaching, which is a hard sell.
- You will need to enroll fewer clients each year to earn well.
And there are benefits for your coaching prospects too.
- The program has an implied structure for them to lean into. People love structure when they are stuck.
- And because you are naming the specific problems they face and outcomes they want, your program inspires a greater investment both financially and emotionally in the work.
Focus in Before You Create Your High-Ticket Signature Coaching Program
- Target a viable audience – one that’s full of seekers – people who do invest in their professional and personal growth. Listen to Episode 240 to understand audience’s who are seekers and those that are not.
- Next uncover their biggest known problems and the ultimate outcome they want to achieve. Listen to Episode 65 called Are You Solving a Big Enough Program for Your Coaching Clients? What you learn from your audience becomes your coaching niche.
- Then, you strategically design your signature program so that it’s tailor made for your audience with a clear set of milestones you’ll help your clients achieve on the way to that ultimate desired outcome they want.
- Then, describe your offer to prospects in benefit rich language, including both tangible or concrete and intangible or internal ways they will transform.
- Lastly, create a strategy to attract clients, build trust and rapport so they reach out to have a Discovery Call with you already excited about hiring you. Listen to Episode 69 called To Attract More Coaching Clients Plan Their Journey to You.
I feel so lucky because when my clients have a Discovery Call with me they often say they already know they want to hire me for my Signature VIP Mentoring Program – they just wanted to talk to me first.
It helps to have a coaching business mentor like me guide you through all the steps making sure you have built an attractive offer your ideal clients truly want and will buy and also a solid customer journey to bring your ideal clients to you.
But Coaching Shouldn’t Be a Set Program, Should It?
If you’re still in coach training some trainers may insist that coaching should never be programmed. In other words, you shouldn’t create an offer other than coaching session packages because it means that you are taking away the client’s agenda.
If you’ve been listening to me for a while you know that I believe and have observed over and over that coaches can both serve a client’s agenda AND offer a program customized for that specific audience.
After 20+ years of experience in my own coaching business and helping hundreds of coaches reach financial success in their businesses in my VIP Signature Program, I know that selling coaching by the session is a very difficult business model.
When coaches hear about creating a Signature Coaching Program and not selling coaching sessions by the package — they tell me they are greatly relieved. And I know exactly what they mean! They’ve been struggling to sell coaching and know that it’s a hard sell. They could only get so far with that approach.
With a customized Signature Program, you will coach your clients but you will also find it easier to attract and enroll clients who pay well because you have put your offer into terms that connect deeply with your ideal audience.
They feel that you understand them and have thought through what they want and what’s been in their way. The fact that you’ve taken the trouble to do that instead of just throwing up a website all about coaching makes a HUGE difference. Your program resonates and inspires investment.
But listen, if you are finding it easy to enroll and earn well selling coaching session packages, stick with that!
What Does a Signature Coaching Program Look Like?
Let’s say you’re a relationship coach helping people to find their soul mate. Your program might include the following milestones — takeaways you’ll help your clients achieve:
Identify Your Partnership Values
What are their must haves and deal breakers in their life partnership?
Get Yourself Ready for Love
What are their strengths but also habits and behaviors in need of adjustment? What are their limiting beliefs about relationships? You might even have something like a mindset makeover in your program.
Set Dating Goals & Guidelines
Help them set personal boundaries and show up with confidence.
Find Ideal Connections in the Best Places
Help them discover new ways to meet people.
There would be more to it and you can see that there’s a clear arc to the program and plenty of opportunity for the client to bring their agenda to sessions. You’ve set a scope for the work you’ll do with your client, which builds trust. And, you’ve focused your coaching business around topics you’d enjoy coaching around.
The structure and language you use to describe your program helps prospects feel confident about working with you. They feel you’ve thought this through. They resonate with the language of the program benefits. Those things convey credibility.
Another example … If you are helping HR leaders gain greater impact in their role — something you’ve discovered they want from market research — your Signature Program’s milestones might include:
- Create a vision about the impact the HR leader wants to make.
- Identify beliefs, behaviors and habits that are not in support of their goals.
- Uncover their professional strengths and learn how to leverage them.
- Strengthen their resilience, mindset and competencies.
- Build their rapport, attract the right sponsors and build a solid network.
- Develop a thicker skin, find their voice and become bolder in meetings.
These milestones are specific and tap into what your audience already knows they want. You are not selling coaching as if coaching is the solution. You are showing them a path to overcome specific challenges so they can reach their goals.
Any coach could help this audience achieve these kinds of milestones.
Either of these programs could be a 4 – 6 month or longer program. Clients could re-up again in the program to continue the work.
Identify What Your Audience Gets in Your Coaching Program
What do they get when they invest in the program? Consider bundling more into your program that just a set of sessions. For example:
- Specific assessments or guides that address specific challenges
- Session recaps
- Unlimited emails to you
- Group sessions or a mastermind
- Annual retreats
- Half or full day where they fly out to work with you face to face on some aspect
Get creative! These things still involve coaching but they add excitement to a program and help justify the higher fees to enroll.
But don’t add too many things to the program or it starts to feel exhausting when you describe your offer to prospects. You can lose enrollments if you overwhelm your future clients.
Now, what is your next step to create a customized high-ticket Signature Program for your audience?