Ep 198 - Overcoming Sales Challenges: How to Sell Your Coaching with Confidence
Episode 198 of the Life Coach Business Building Podcast
Are you feeling lost when it comes to selling your coaching? You’re not the only one! Many coaches I've talked to also struggle with not knowing how to sell, even though they're so passionate and amazing at what they do!
If you feel sleazy, maybe even pushy, or if you just completely freeze up when selling your coaching, this episode is for you.
On this week’s episode, we are diving into:
The Importance of Selling in Coaching
Common Challenges in Selling Coaching
The Power of Authentic Selling
Overcoming Mindset Blocks in Selling
Building Confidence in Selling Your Coaching
Remember, everything that you do in your business is selling. So, if you love coaching, you want to make money, and you want to have lots of clients, let’s learn to sell coaching!
👉 Learn more about the Business Building Boutique through the Sneak Peek!
👉 Don’t forget to save your seat for the FREE workshop!
👉 Create a profitable business that looks good and sets you up to be respected through the Fast Track Business Building Boutique Program
👉 Check out my FREE Canva Workshop and learn how to create stunning graphics for your coaching business!
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Transcript:
Preview: You have got to identify what mindset is killing your sales. You've got to identify those sneaky thoughts and it could even be that I'm not good at selling or I hate selling or I don't want to be one of those people. If you have a thought like that and your entire business is driven by selling so that you can do what you love, which is coaching, then you better clean up that thinking. There are subtle thoughts like, I'm not sure if I can do it, or what if somebody brings me something that I can't coach around. Those thoughts are sales killers.
Intro: Hello, I'm Debbie Shadid, the host of the Life Coach Business Building podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. Each week I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. If that sounds interesting. Stick around and let's get started.
Welcome to today's podcast. I'm super excited to be talking today about selling. Chances are you don't love selling and I want to see if I can help you solve that. I also want to talk to you about two really great opportunities before we get started.
First of all, I want to invite you to a workshop that I'm hosting on March 8th, all about selling. I'm going to talk about it on today's podcast, but I'm going to give you a process for selling six steps to selling. So make sure you head over to debbieshadid.com/workshop and join us for that workshop. I also want to invite you to come and experience our complimentary coaching. Join us on Monday at 2 PM central standard time for complimentary coaching and a sneak peek or an inside look into what we do in the business building boutique. This is an opportunity for you to come and see what our coaching is. That is really the magic of our program. Our group coaching. People love it.
Also, I want to give you all the details so you don't have to make a consultation call with us to talk about how we support clients so you can see everything that we offer and you can make a really comfortable decision about what might be right for you. So as much as you guys love to coach, we have to focus on building the business. We see coaches that are buffering with learning, and that's why I want to invite you to come and find out what we can do to help you not only learn how to be in business, but we want to help you build that profitable business.
All right, Let's talk about selling. I'm curious. How do you feel about selling? What is the baseline feeling that you have? A lot of coaches that I talk to, they don't know how to sell. They are amazing coaches. They are passionate about what they do, but they're not selling their coaching and they don't even know how to prepare to sell their coaching. Is that you?
Many of the coaches tell me, I'm just going to hire somebody to sell the coaching because I'm going to do the coaching. And let me tell you, that's a fantastic idea, but it just doesn't work that way. At some point when you're making millions, maybe you can hire somebody to sell your coaching, but for today, you have to learn how to sell your own coaching.
So, in the early stages, there's a lot to learn there. You're not only building your business, but you're also learning how to take care of clients and you're also learning how to sell. Chances are when you start working on your selling, you're going to feel sleazy, maybe pushy, maybe even like you have to convince people or even worse yet, maybe you just completely freeze up. I know I talked to somebody at a consultation this week and she was like, I meet somebody, I tell them I'm a life coach. And then I don't know what to say. Maybe you can relate to that.
Another issue might be that you're talking to the wrong people. Oftentimes people will tell me, Look, nobody wants to buy my coaching because they don't have the money to buy the coaching. Chances are, your marketing message is calling in the wrong people. I like to talk about having people prepared to buy from you. So wouldn't it be amazing if your client came prepared to buy from you and if you were prepared to be able to have that comfortable conversation where you truly connected with people, I call this authentic selling. And that is what we're going to be talking about in the workshop.
Today let's just explore maybe where your discomfort comes from in selling. Let me ask you this. What is true for you? And do you believe that you're not great at selling because you maybe don't love your offer? Maybe you can't confidently explain who you coach and what you coach them around. Like what is it that you help people with and what is the solution that you offer? Maybe you're not even convinced that you can actually get your client's results. Is that you? Maybe you don't love your price and maybe you're just winging it when you get on a consultation call to have a conversation.
So I want to talk to you about authentic connection. Doesn't that sound amazing? Wouldn't it be amazing if you could just have a comfortable sales situation where you would feel like you could authentically show up as yourself. You could comfortably talk about what it is you do. You would know how to sell. You would know when you got on that 45 minute consultation call, exactly what was happening in the first five minutes, what was happening in the second 10 minutes and all the way through to the end of the call. Wouldn't that be amazing? That is what you need to do. You have to work on creating your own comfortable conversation process.
Let me tell you one of the ways that you will feel more comfortable with your selling is that if you learn how to communicate what it is you do. I mentioned to you earlier that oftentimes coaches tell me, well, I talked to somebody at a networking event. and I told him I was a life coach. And then nothing happened. Maybe you don't even know what to say after that, or maybe you just keep talking, talking, talking, talking, and they can't even get a word in edgewise.
Oftentimes, clients tell me that they tell people about their coaching and they're like, Oh my gosh, life coaching is so amazing. I'm going to help you reach your goals. I'm going to help you create your next best chapter. Does that sound familiar? And the person is on the other side smiling, shaking their head, but then nothing happens after that.
So I think a key problem is that you don't fully understand what your buyer's situation is. You don't really know what their problem is. And for you, maybe you've had a transformation and you've forgotten how big the problem actually was. Or maybe you're just not able to communicate it in a way that compels people to buy. So, it's your job to help your clients see why they need the coaching. It's also your job to help them understand that you have the solution. and you have to help them understand why they need to make a decision for themselves. Everything that you do in your business is selling. Yeah, all of it from the very first impression that you make, which includes the branding, which includes that one social media post that somebody scrolled by. It includes the photos.
I was having a conversation this morning with my team and one of my team members said, Look at the difference between Debbie and how she's presenting herself and me. That shows you the difference in the level of confidence. And I thought that was interesting because when I looked at all of us on camera, it was like, she's right. I am sitting up in a confident position, close to the screen, really standing up for what I do. So what impression are you making on zoom? When you talk to people, how are they reading your body language? This is important. Do you know how to convey your story?
Now, I know you're saying, what does any of this have to do with selling? But all of this has to do with selling. You have to be able to balance sharing Enough of your story, but not oversharing. You do not want somebody to feel like you're not in a great place. Like you haven't solved it. You know, you don't want to tell somebody you lack confidence. Sometimes if you're going to coach around confidence, you want to tell them that you were not confident at one moment, but through your signature process, you now help people just like them create confidence, the same level of confidence you were able to create with your process. So, you need to know how to communicate that.
One small thing you could say, like, sometimes I don't feel confident still, could mess up the entire deal. And I know that that sounds obvious. But we hear it from people all the time. When they report back to us in our group coaching what they have done on a sales call. And we're sort of talking about what you could do differently.
I find that they said something like that. That is just a small bit of communication that went wrong that soured the whole deal. So you can hire somebody to teach you how to sell. And I have done that. Let me tell you. They will teach you their signature method. And what I want to have you do is create your own signature process.
Again, we're going to be talking about that in our workshop on March 8th, so make sure you sign up for that. But your signature process will be a comfortable way for you to sell. And it's going to be the key to your entire business. There are no clients without selling. Now, I know that sounds obvious, but I still want you to think about that.
We hear coaches tell us like I posted on social media and I don't have a consultation yet. Yeah, you have to post more than on social media, more than one time. Everything that you do in your marketing is selling for you. Each piece of that puzzle brings people to you for a consultation and you want to bring in the right client who has the money to buy from you. I even suggest that you practice your sales calls. I practiced dozens and dozens and dozens of sales calls. You know, for most of my career, I was actually doing consulting and coaching in person. That connection is completely different. When you are talking to somebody in person, you can read body language. You can see where they're getting interested. When you are connecting with somebody via a call or a zoom, that's completely different. They don't know you. They can't sense you. They can't see what's happening and practicing honestly makes perfect.
So I would encourage you to practice your sales calls and Even more than that, watch your sales calls back because you will see in those sales conversations, you will see where you were not on target, where you were lacking confidence, where you were stuttering around as you ask questions or as you presented your offer.
So I really think that traditional online sales methods don't work. I feel like a lot of the online sales training that I had Previous to me creating my own method really involved a lot of manipulation, right? You get somebody on the call and then you're told to close them hard, like get them closed that day. And I really feel like a lot of people need to have time to think. And I think that if you have a great offer and if you are confident with your offer and you're comfortable with your price, And you know how to sell. I think it's totally acceptable to let somebody take time to think, to let them have a conversation with a spouse. But you have to be prepared to know how to navigate that conversation. You have to know what questions You should ask to ensure that they are, in fact, going to come back to you and potentially work with you. That you've actually cleared out any confusion, that you've asked every question, and that they have clarity on what you offer.
So here's what I think selling involves. Number one, I think it involves mindset. Now you have got to identify what mindset is killing your sales. You've got to identify those sneaky thoughts and it could even be that I'm not good at selling or I hate selling or I don't want to be one of those people. If you have a thought like that and your entire business is driven by selling so that you can do what you love, which is coaching, then you better clean up that thinking. There are subtle thoughts like, I'm not sure if I can do it, or what if somebody brings me something that I can't coach around. Those thoughts are sales killers.
You also want to figure out what your power belief statements are. Each of you is going to have something that you could say to yourself that is an inspiring truth that will drive you to be more confident in your sales. So I want you to think about what those would be. Write down a list of what your sales killing thoughts are, and then write down what your power belief statements are.
Also to sell well, you have to have knowledge about marketing. Marketing is key to everything. Marketing is the ATM to your business. There are no clients without marketing. There are no sales conversations without marketing. You have to ask the right questions and for each of you in your niche, you're going to have specific questions that are the right questions.
In the Business Building Boutique coaching, we actually discuss by niche, for your niche, what questions are going to be the key questions that you should ask that will reveal to the person why they need your coaching. And then you have to have confidence in your offer. You have to have confidence in your price and you have to be able to deliver that in a way That just feels simple, where you're not sort of talking back and forth and over-explaining and justifying what you do. You have to catch yourself on that.
I also want to caution you. You're gonna hear a story from your client about money. They're gonna say oh That's a lot of money. And let me tell you what that is the natural response Humans have when they're going to pay for something, when they're told a price for something. That's a natural response, but it's up to you to be able to coach them around that comment.
The other thing you're going to hear is, I don't have time for this right now. Again, you want to coach them around that. That's going to look different for each of you, but you should expect objections. Nobody just says yes. Expect objections and be prepared to answer those. And then I just want to tell you, you need to have that really simple enrollment process already prepared and set up.
So what is the next step? So that while you're on the call with somebody, you can say, I'm going to send you the link and here's what's going to happen. And I highly recommend that while you are on your call, that you work through the process of enrollment with them on the call. So take time right then. I know we're both busy, so let's figure out when your coaching call is going to be. Let me give you the zoom link. Let me make sure you have any materials that you need. I'll tell you what to expect. Let me get you logged in. Let me share the calendar link with you. All of those details need to be handled on the call with the client. So make sure that you have yourself set up in a professional manner so that you can send a link for a payment. That is not Zelle or Cash App or personal PayPal.
If you're in business, you're going to collect money through Stripe or Square or a business PayPal account because that's what business people do. So have that set up with a link. You want to have an agreement that helps the client really have clarity around what it is they're agreeing to do and what you are agreeing to give them. And of course you want to have legal language in there that protects you, that protects your business, that protects your personal assets. So all of that is part of the enrollment process.
Now I want to talk to you about follow up to sales because if you have a sales conversation and you don't close the deal, then what do you do? What do you think you do? Well, you have to follow up. There's many ways that you can follow up. One of the ways that I follow up with people is I do a personal video back to people. I connect back with them. I talk to them about why I believe I can help them, about how I can help them make progress specific to their pain points. And you can do the same. So it's a personalized message for them that just shows people I really care. I've been thinking about you. Here's what I know to be true. I know that I can help you and this is what I can help you with. These are the outcomes that you could expect from our coaching.
You also might follow up with some answers to some questions. Maybe after you get off a call you begin to see that they had some doubts about something. And you say, I want to bring clarity to this, this, and this. All right, I would reach back out and say, let's jump on another call. Let's talk about where you might have some insecurity.
All of you are going to have different ways of connecting with people. Maybe you send back testimonials. Do you have testimonials that really support your coaching? If not, that's another opportunity for you to build evidence that your coaching works are to be able to supply people with testimonials. So where do you land in this selling process? How are you feeling about what I'm saying? And I'm curious what's coming up for you. Are you comfortable with selling?
How many consultations have you had? Now if you're not having consultations, then guess what the problem is? You're not marketing enough and you're not communicating in a way to get clients to the consultation. So what do you need to do to improve your marketing to bring people to consultations? You want to track all of that. You want to track your number of consultations. You want to track what happens on the sales call, like what was your conversation flow? How did it work? You want to time the calls. I mentioned that maybe in your first five minutes you're talking about a particular thing like meet and greet people, right? The second 10 minutes is about the next portion where you're going to ask particular questions.
Again, I have an entire process for this where you create your signature conversation about how you're going to connect with people. And then I really want to encourage you. Why you need to practice is we want to make sure that we leave time at the end of the call to be able to cover those objections, to be able to have somebody think through what they might need to do. Maybe they need coaching. Maybe they've got questions. Oftentimes people will say to me, okay, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not ready to work with you because my niche is not clear. And it's like, no, no, no. Let me just tell you, I'm going to help you clarify your niche. So what would that be for you?
Sometimes people might say to you, if you do weight loss coaching, they might say, well, look, I can't start until after my vacation. And you're going to say, no, no, no. Okay. Let me explain to you why you want to start before you go on vacation. So fill in the blank on what objections that you might expect and be prepared for those.
All right. You guys have got some work to do. Make sure you come to my workshop. I'm going to walk through six steps to creating this authentic conversation that we're talking about. I'm going to coach you and answer all your questions about the challenges that you've had on your consultation calls. I promise you I can probably give you solutions if you bring those specific questions. That's what we do in our coaching time that will follow the workshop.
I hope this was useful. I hope it opened your eyes up about selling so you can see where the gaps are in your process. I want to encourage you to just decide to love selling because I know you love coaching and I know you love making money. So if you want to make money and you want to have lots of clients, let's learn to sell coaching. All right, you guys, I will see you in the workshop on March 8th. Until next time. Bye bye.
Outro: Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching. All right. Have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.