Ep 199 - Sell Your Coaching with Ease
Episode 199 of the Life Coach Business Building Podcast
In this episode, I'm going to help you sell your coaching with ease!
You’re probably thinking of just hiring somebody to do your selling for you and focus on the coaching. But guess what, my friend, coaching and selling are almost the same thing!
From defining your unique expertise to understanding your client's pain points and painting a vivid picture of transformation, learn how to sell with more confidence, passion, and love toward your offer and price.
I want to sell you on yourself. I want you to recognize the incredible experience, knowledge, and value that you bring to your clients, making selling a breeze!
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Transcript:
Preview: When you are confident and you are sure that you know what people's problems are and you're sure, like look, everybody I talk to says, I don't know how to get clients. I can say, look, you guys need to work with me because you don't even know how to get clients for your coaching business. That is how you create confidence speaking to people. Just like I told you, look, you got to work with me to get this solved. So that's the bottom line, you guys. Get with people to make sure that you understand so crystal clear what their problems are. And then have a conversation with people about it.
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.
I am super excited about selling. So I want to know, how do you feel about selling? Chances are, you probably don't love selling and you're thinking, if I could just hire somebody to do my selling, I just want to be a coach. But guess what my friend, it does not work that way. You have to love selling as much as you love coaching. And what I just want to point out to you before we get started today is coaching and selling are almost the same thing. When you coach people, you're coaching around the things that you love most. You're talking about transformations. You're helping them through painful situations. You're helping them get to where they want and you are coaching around what you love most.
And as you do the coaching, you're teaching. And that is essentially what you're going to do when you sell. You're going to talk and teach about what you love most. You're going to show the gap of where they are now to where they want to be. You're gonna be talking about their pain points. You're gonna be talking about the solutions that you provide. So I'm going to help you see that selling is really not hard. It really is as simple as learning how to talk about what it is you do and then slightly tweaking your message so that then you will be selling your coaching.
Today's podcast, I'm going to share three very simple strategies. This is going to be a quick podcast where you will be able to see how easy this can be. Three just steps that you can take to make selling easier. Before we get started, I want to remind you about our workshop on March 8th, where I'm going to be teaching you more about selling. There are many angles and many layers to selling. And I want you to be able to sell. from a comfortable position and to really feel confident about your selling. So sign up for our workshop, debbieshadid.com/workshop. Join me on March 8th, Friday at 11 AM Central Standard Time.
I want to mention that we always offer complimentary coaching after our workshop, so I want to make sure that when you leave the workshop that you have all of your sales questions answered so that you can leave and do some selling of your coaching. Ultimately, none of us can have clients unless we sell something. Alright, let's get started. I want to talk to you about the three strategies to make selling feel easier.
Number one. I want you to spend some time really understanding what you are best at. Now I talked to my clients this week about that. There are so many weight loss coaches, so many, every kind of coach, but each one of you is unique. Every weight loss coach brings their own experience. Every weight loss coach got to their result in a very unique way. They had their own problems and their own path to their success. So you have life experiences that will make you the best person to coach around that niche.
So what I want you to think about is the education that you bring. Maybe you have certifications. Maybe you've taken a bunch of courses online. Maybe you've had some college education. Maybe this is just what you've always done. Maybe you've just always been a helper. Whatever that is, I believe that you already know your niche inside and out. And I believe that you already have practice at solving their problem because you already solved your own problem.
So you would have a method, a really signature method for solving that problem. When you think about the lifetime of knowledge of an experience that you bring to your coaching, that is priceless. I had a client that I was talking to about pricing her offer and she was saying well, you know, my certification costs this much and I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You have 30 years worth of experience that you're bringing to this. It's not what you learned in the certification. It's 30 years that you bring to your coaching. That is priceless. And in your niche and what your problem is for your client, There's nobody in your business that can do it better than you. I know that about my business too. what I help you guys with, there is nobody that can do it better than me. I know that my coaching is unique because of my personal experiences.
My coaching philosophy has been created out of thousands of hours of working with clients, of reading all kinds of books about business and marketing. I've watched and listened to thousands of hours of podcasts and YouTube. Right? You've done the same thing. I've had more conversations about business with clients, with potential clients, and just with people. I talk about business everywhere I go. I can be at the nail shop and somebody is talking about business and I jump in the conversation.
I am certain that that is the way it is with you and if it's not, that is the way it needs to be about your niche and about your coaching. So every time I talk to people about business, it's a moment for me to learn something about them, about their problem, but it's also a moment for me to teach them something.
You have also been on social media and I guarantee you that you have been scrolling and stopping at posts that are all related to your topic. So can you see how all of that knowledge builds and creates a level of expertise that is unique to you that nobody has because every time I hear something about marketing, the first filter I'm thinking about is about you.
I'm thinking specifically about how do I make this simple for women who are really stuck? How do I do this without them having to spend money on paid ads? How do I do this where I can make the tech easy to use? I'm always thinking about how to take a complicated topic about marketing and make it so that it is like so relatable a fifth grader could do it. That is what The filter is for me. What is your filter? When you are listening to things, when you're thinking about things, your mind is going and you're thinking about your niche client and about their problem, this is your expertise. So can you see how unique you are? This is how you work to build this perspective about how you are the perfect person to help your ideal client. You're going to sell from your knowledge and your experience.
So what is the next step for you? I want you to figure out what this looks like for you. I just said to you, I've done thousands of hours of YouTube, thousands of hours of conversations, and read dozens and dozens of books. I've taken these classes. I've got this certification. That would be what I would say to you. What are you going to say about yourself? So you have to spend some time really documenting what is unique about you. What are the skills that you bring to solve this problem? What is the life experience that you have? For me, it's 25 years of talking to women in business. Twenty five years. I do not know anyone else that has been doing that.
You have something just like I do. You've been thinking about something for a decade. That is the experience that you bring. What methods have you used to solve your problems? What coaching have you tried? What have you done that you know doesn't work? That's another piece of your selling. Like, I know you should not run paid ads. Why? Because I did it way too soon in my business. It's not going to work for you. You have to know other things before you run paid ads. So what education have you had? What practice have you had? Document all of this so you can talk about it. This is how you share your expertise and how you gain expert status. This is also how you grow in belief about your unique perspectives, about your unique knowledge, that is the knowledge that somebody else needs to solve the problem that they have.
Alright, number two strategy to make selling easier is to understand your client's pain points. Now I know I've talked about this all the time. But I cannot stress this enough. People pay to solve pain and if you don't know what those things are, you're going to have a hard time. You cannot just have a mediocre message. It has to be a message that really connects with people. You have to be able to speak to them as if they just shared it directly with you. Like you were right in their head and you heard it. So, this could require you to go back and think about yourself before you had all this self development. Before you've been thinking about this for the last 10 years, where were you 10 years ago?
This also could require you to talk to some people and to help them communicate a problem with you in a very crystal clear way. You might have to get very specific and I want to encourage you to not sugar coat anything. Sometimes people are like, Oh, I don't want to say that on my website. Like that sounds too harsh. I'm like, look, if you are a coach who's helping people with betrayal, and you don't talk about the betrayal you experienced, then you're sugarcoating it. You have to talk about the agony and humiliation that you felt when your partner betrayed you in order for this to work for you.
If you need to do research, then I would highly recommend that you connect with people who would be your ideal client. Don't Google. Your ideal client is a person that probably is similar to you, that's had a similar experience than preparing questions that will help get you clear on what it is you need to say in your messaging.
It's so interesting. Yesterday I had open coaching, which we offer every single Monday, by the way, at 2 PM Central Standard Time. If you want to get some free open coaching, you can sign up at debbieshadid.com/sneakpeek. We want you to see first hand what the magic is in our coaching. We talk about it all the time and people think group coaching is not for me. And I'm like, I'm going to prove you wrong. So come get coached.
In yesterday's coaching session, I asked some questions to the people who were there just for me to get clarity on where they were in their business. And I said, Hey, tell me about your niche. Tell me where you're at in your business. Tell me what challenges you face on a regular basis. Where are you stuck? Tell me what you've tried, what you haven't tried. I asked that question and here is what people said to me. They said, I don't know how to get clients. Check. You said that too. I'm resistant to niching down. I don't know if it's the best thing for me. How do I know if my niche is a good niche? Check. I bet you've said that too.
My messaging changes so often because I'm not even sure if what I'm saying is right. I struggle with what to do next because there are so many things to do and everybody is telling me to do something different. Yep, I bet you feel that way too. I'm terrible at tech. I don't know how to do marketing. I hate social media. Now does that sound familiar? I'm gonna bet it does. I know this because I interviewed people. I talked to people about what their problems were. I talked to people week after week and I hear the same thing. This is what you will get from You know, whoever it is that you interview about their problems.
And then if you need even further clarity, you can ask additional clarifying questions. Like tell me what is your concern about niching down? Why is it a problem? What are you scared about? Why don't you want to pick a niche? So I can get clear on what the issue is about niching down. I could say, well, what is the problem with social media? Is it that you don't know how to do it? You're scared to show up? You're afraid you're going to embarrass yourself or maybe you don't even know what to say. Then I have clarity on where I need to go when I create a message for that person. Maybe they're saying like, look, I'm terrible at tech. I've tried all the things and I'm terrible at it.
I'm like, look, wait, tell me what you've tried. And chances are the things that you guys might be trying aren't even things that you need. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, we can make this easier. You don't actually need to be using Kajabi. I can teach you how to put your content for your course on one Google document and share it. And it's free.
So, you could go through this and get a much deeper clarity on what their problems are. Like, what have you tried and why haven't you been able to lose weight? What has been the obstacle for you every time? Why do you think you regained the weight that you've lost a dozen times? Why don't you think you can keep it off?
What's the story that they're telling themselves? Those would be those clarifying questions that you can get to so that you can then be able to talk about their problem in a more concise way. When you are confident and you are sure that you know what people's problems are and you're sure, like look, everybody I talk to says, I don't know how to get clients. I can say, look, you guys need to work with me because you don't even know how to get clients for your coaching business. That is how you create confidence speaking to people. Just like I told you, look, you got to work with me to get this solved.
So that's the bottom line, you guys. Get with people to make sure that you understand so crystal clear what their problems are. And then have a conversation with people about it. It's just like you're talking about coaching. That's it. It doesn't have to be some orchestrated sales script. You're just having a conversation.
As I mentioned in last week's podcast, that was the biggest challenge for me. I'm going to share with you guys that when I started coaching online, I hired my first sales coach who taught me this structured consultation method. I actually had 800 consultations using that consultation method. In addition to those 800 consultations, which was 800 plus hours, I only sold 80 to 100 clients. And that is because I was terrible at that consultation method. I felt like I was manipulating and twisting things around, and I actually wasn't clear.
I wasn't even listening, actually, to what people were saying. I was so in my head, and maybe you've been there, about, oh, what do I say next, and how should I make that person see the value in me? I wasn't even listening to what people's problems really were. Today, when I have a consultation conversation with somebody, I'm like, Hey, tell me what's happening in your business.
Where are you at with things? They're like, Oh geez, I don't know how to get clients. And I'm like, okay, talk to me about what you've tried. Let me talk to you about maybe what I see the problem is. Yes, I actually help people on consultation calls. You can do the same confidently because then what I also do in my conversation is I'm like, look, I hear where you're at, and what I do is the answer for what you need. That's the missing piece that you don't have, and maybe you didn't understand that, but here's the steps that will basically get you to where you want to go. Can you see how that would work?
So, the third strategy that I want to talk to you about is to really understand deeply what your person's life would look like after you bridge the gap with coaching. Your potential client, they have this pain. And they really feel miserable or it's really holding them back or it's keeping them from living their best life. So what does it look like or feel like for them to have what the new version of whoever it is, past coaching looks like?
What is that? I call that the rainbow results. What does that look like? Like how amazing is their life? This is the gap that you have to bridge that shows people like here's the pain that you have that you want to pay to solve. By the way, I'm the expert because I bring the perfect level of expertise to solve your problem.
And then here's what it looks like when you get to the other side of the pain that I'm gonna bridge the gap for you. And this is why you need me to be helping you with this. This is the picture that you want to paint of this incredible life where they've lost weight, where they now are in the place that they want to be, right? They've passed through the valley of misery to get to the other side. You could even potentially in your niche compare therapy to coaching.
Now, maybe you talk about what therapy looks like for you or for your client. And here's why coaching was the answer. I know I believe that coaching is multiple times better than therapy, but depending on your niche, maybe you're talking about people who've been through trauma and they're ready to move out of the trauma. This is what life coaching can do for you. So show the value of your coaching so that people can see.
I love the idea of comparing it with therapy because people know what the value of one hour of therapy is and then it's easy to say, "Look, if you've already done this with therapy, think how much you've invested.” I'm talking about now getting you from where you are to this amazing magical place that we're no longer going over the same thing. And the value of that is worth more than what you've paid in therapy. So it's good to basically put yourself in the same space as maybe a therapist.
In my situation, I can talk about, look, you can pay a copywriter to write your marketing message and it's $2500. How do I know that? Because people do that. You can pay a branding person to work on your professional coaching brand. You might spend $1000 to $5000 on creating a professional coaching brand. How do I know that? Because people come to me all the time having done that. You might work on your website and have somebody do it. You could spend thousands on that too.
All of that you can work with me and do in the one program, in the one coaching opportunity, I'll teach you, I'll tell you, and I will show you how to do all of that during the time that we work together. See the value of what I offer. So what is that for you? When you know what that gap is, and you are certain that what you have to offer bridges the gap, and like, I know for sure when you work with me, let me tell you what, it's going to save you thousands of dollars, and it is going to get you on track multiple times faster than what you have been able to do, or than what you can do on your own. I'm going to save you thousands of hours. What are you going to do for your own client?
So, every single day that you work with clients, you are learning about your business. You're learning how to talk more confidently about your business. You're learning how to speak more confidently. Yesterday In that coaching that we offer every Monday at 2 p. m. So make sure you sign up for that, debbieshadid.com/sneakpeek. I learned things about clients that I already knew. So it just affirmed again and again, Hey, people still have the same problem. They still have the same challenge. They're terrible at technology. They don't know how to get clients. They don't know how to market. It's the same thing that again was reinforced to me. So I can confidently say, Look, week after week, I hear the same thing. This is why I can help you. That's what happens when you talk to people over and over about your coaching, about their problems.
You just will become comfortable as you talk about what it is you do. When you do that, then you can begin to love your offer. It will become so easy. I help clients learn to love their offer and their price. And then when you do that, it's like you can have a better conversation. You know what their problem is. You know what your level of expertise is. You know how to bridge the gap. You know what the incredible results are after you coach them. This is how you feel good about selling.
This is what we're going to do in our workshop where I'm going to walk you through an even deeper look at selling. I want to remind you guys that in last week's podcast, I talked about authentic selling. Can you see how authentic it is to just take these three steps where you work on identifying what it is that your unique level of expertise is where you identify the pain points that your specific client has and then you think about the transformation that your unique coaching will give them the results that they will have. When you know those three things, you guys, it makes it so much easier to be able to talk about your selling. That's how you have authentic conversations.
In our workshop, I'm going to be talking about how you are selling from the first time they interact with you. Now y'all have been to the Canva workshop. So you know I talk about a professional brand. That professionalism runs all the way through your whole business. And that is the work that we do in the Business Building Boutique. We help you set up a professional brand, professional marketing, just a level of confidence about your coaching and your selling and your offer and your pricing that then you can talk to anybody about it. That is how you sell your coaching.
So join me, March 8th Friday 11 AM Central Standard Time. I'm also going to give you an opportunity to have some complimentary coaching. We want to make sure that every time you come to a workshop with us that you leave us Clearly knowing what you need to do next to be able to get your business Growing and going in the direction you want. So if you're stuck and you've been spinning an indecision about how to sell, if you're not talking to people about your coaching, you've got to attend that workshop.
All right, you guys, thank you so much for being here. I love to sell. I want to sell you on my coaching. I want to work with you. I want to sell you on yourself. That's the key takeaway today. I want to sell you on yourself. I want you to see the incredible experience and knowledge and value that you bring to your clients. All right, you guys have an amazing week. I hope to see you in the workshop on Friday, March 8th. I will talk to you very soon. 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.