If you’re a life coach struggling to find new clients, you might be feeling overwhelmed, defeated, and unsure of how to spend your time. These feelings are completely common amongst new and experienced coaches alike, but with a little structuring of what you’re doing you can get focused on what you’re doing to get new clients and why.
My best advice? Start with the sale.
That’s right, instead of focusing on building awareness and trying to attract new clients, begin by mapping out your sales process in a step-by-step breakdown, starting from the sale itself (the actual transfer of money) and working backward to awareness.
For each step in the process, ask yourself what needs to happen first. You’ll find that the closer you get to the sale, the fewer activities are happening. The further away you get from the sale, the more noise and difficulty in tracking may arise.
Working backwards, you should end up with activities that both you and your client are responsible for through three stages: Convert, Nurture, and Attract.
Let’s take a closer look at each stage and some of the things you might address in the process.
The Three Stages of the Sales Process
Convert
The Convert stage is all about identifying the things that lead directly to your client taking out their wallet. This might include visiting your sales page, booking a discovery call, or reading an email about your current offer.
To optimize this stage, you should first find out how many people engaged with those steps. For example, how many sales page visits do you have? How many people signed up for a discovery call? How many opened the email?
Based on those numbers, you can make changes to improve the conversion rate. Maybe you need to create more content that directly sends people to the sales page, change the language of the copy on your website, or focus on building your email list.
Nurture
The Nurture stage is about building trust with your potential clients. This might include creating valuable content such as blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, or YouTube videos, engaging in social media groups, hosting workshops, or challenges. Getting referrals from someone they trust is also a great way to nurture your clients.
To optimize this stage, you should measure the engagement of your content, the number of referrals you receive, and the level of participation in your workshops or challenges. Based on those numbers, you can make changes to your content or approach to increase engagement and trust with your potential clients.
Attract
Attract The Attract stage is all about creating awareness and getting your name out there. This might include speaking at events or interviews, advertising online or in print, performing SEO on your website, or building a social media presence.
To optimize this stage, you should measure the reach of your advertising, your website’s search engine ranking, or the level of engagement on your social media accounts. Based on those numbers, you can make changes to your marketing approach to increase visibility and attract potential clients.
Test, Measure & Improve
By starting with the sale and mapping out your sales process step-by-step, you’ll gain clarity and focus on the most important activities to find coaching clients. The key is to keep testing and iterating until you find the strategies that work best for your business.
So take action, map out your sales process, test out one improvement, and start measuring the changes today. Don’t be afraid to try new things, but be sure to track your results and make data-driven decisions based on what’s working best.
Over time, you’ll start to see the results of your efforts, feel less overwhelmed, and have a better understanding of what it takes to create an endless pipeline of coaching clients.