What They Don’t Tell You In Coaching School About How to Have a Wildly Successful Business
December 2, 2016
Back in the day when I first had the calling to become a coach, I went to school to get my Health Coaching certification. I did the work, completed the certification, and followed their instructions on how to get clients and start growing my business. But within months of completion, I still didn’t have much of a business.
So I got another certification thinking that more certifications would not only help me become a better coach, but would allow me to attract more clients and grow my business.
But a few months after I completed the next coaching certification, not much more had changed in my coaching business. I still didn’t have many clients and I still wasn’t making enough money so that I could quit my full-time job.
Then I found a third coaching certification program and decided to invest in that, thinking, this one’s going to help me further my skills and grow my business! But guess what? Not much changed once again.
There were two problems with what I was going through.
- Problem #1: Many coaching certification schools and programs are not set up to provide in-depth business, sales, and marketing training.
- Problem #2: We can never expect that more trainings and certifications alone are going to be the sole solution to business growth.
Most coaching certification programs are designed to help their students become better coaches. Some coaching certification programs include a small amount of business development training. And other programs are far more in depth.
But the only thing that’s going to help you have a wildly successful business is if you do the following.
The Keys to a Wildly Successful Coaching Business
Key #1: Learn How to Sell: One of the reasons I see many coaches failing in business is because they don’t know how to sell. I get it; most are unfamiliar with how to do it and how to do it without feeling slick and salesy.
Learning how to sell comes from modeling what works and practice. I tell my clients this all the time, the only way you’re going to get better at sales is if you have sales conversations. And the only way to have sales conversations is to have a process in place that helps you get in front of your most ideal clients.
But there’s an art and science to selling. In it’s purest form it’s a conversation between two or more people understanding the needs and desires of one individual and the ability to fill them by the other’s service, products or offerings.
And the only way to get more sales conversations is to create a marketing system that provides them. So next on your list is marketing.
Key #2: Learning How to Become an Expert Marketer: Marketing is simply a process in which you as a business owner get more of your ideal clients or customers interested in learning more about what you do and how you can help them.
Marketing done well shouldn’t feel pushy to your ideal client but should feel like they’ve finally found the person or the solution they’ve been longing for.
Most coaching certification schools (if they cover it at all) only touch on marketing and what you must know in order to begin attracting clients.
To attract clients through marketing you must do three things:
- Know Your Ideal Client: Know everything you possibly can about your ideal client and their struggles and desires
- Know What Will Make Them Buy: Have an understanding of what’s going to make them want to buy and take action on buying
- Create a Plan That Will Attract Them: Once you know your client’s struggles, desires, and what will trigger them to take action, you then need to put together a plan to get in front of them. That’s your marketing plan.
Key #3: Learn How to Develop and Grow Your Business: By this I mean your:
- Business Model how you want to make money and what you’re going to offer for services, packages, programs.
- Niche you must know what you’re going to specialize in – and yes, having a specialization is one of the keys to success
- Pricing how much you’re going to charge. You can’t just come up with some random prices. You need to think carefully about what you’re going to charge for your services.
- Schedule when are you going to work? How much are you going to work? These factors need to be taken into account as well.
- Getting Stuff Done how are you going to do it all? Will you need a team? Who do you want to delegate to? When will you do that?
Time and time again I’ve seen coaches fail because they don’t realize that when they decide to become a coach and grow their business, they need to learn how to do it.
Growing a coaching business takes time, patience, dedication, more training, and being held accountable to your goals.
It also takes knowing what to do, when to do it, and mastery over sales, marketing and business development.
It’s why I created my Influencer’s Mastermind, to help coaches get the business, sales and marketing foundation they need to grow the business they want. If you’d like to learn more about how you can grow your coaching business, simply apply to speak with me here.
Bottom line, growing any kind of business takes time. Having someone help you shortcut the process can and will make all the difference in the world.
Now I’d love to hear from you on this topic. What’s your take? Have you felt you needed more certifications in order to be successful in business? What have you learned that’s helped you grow your coaching business? Let me know in the comments below!
Hey there!
I’m Jeannie Spiro, business coach and strategist for woman coaches and service-providers. Want to make more money in your business? Here’s how I can help.
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