As a coach, you are in control of only a small portion of your client's success. You can give the best advice in the world, but the onus is on them to put it into practice.
“The most difficult part about selling coaching services is that there is not always a clear tangible value, as my clients are ultimately in charge of their own destiny,” says Emma Siemasko, freelance writing coach.
So, how do you set yourself (and your clients) up for success?
Start with what you can control—building a strong sales process.
This isn’t a stuffy slide deck that’s used once and forgotten. An effective sales workflow uses your everyday tools to move new coaching leads toward a closed deal (without losing any in the shuffle).
This guide shares what the sales process could look like for a coaching business, helping you free up time you spend on repetitive tasks, improve the client experience—and ultimately close more deals.
There’s no beating around the bush: To generate sales, you need leads.
At this point in the workflow, prioritize top sources for new leads for coaching businesses such as:
If you’re a large coaching business with defined sales/marketing departments, make sure both teams agree on what constitutes a “good” lead. Misalignment between sales and marketing could mean you end up with 500 leads, but only a handful turn into paying clients. This is where buyer personas and ICPs come into play.
Getting new leads is one issue. Figuring out how to document them is another, particularly if you have inbound leads with a very human-heavy sales process. You need to find ways to qualify new leads faster and make it easier to close those deals through automation.
A customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Close does exactly this. It stores data about your leads, giving you a central repository that’s easily accessible to your sales team.
To make this data collection process as effective and time-efficient as possible:
Now that you have a central dashboard for the entire sales team to view coaching leads, it’s time to assign a rep to handle them.
For most coaching businesses, your sales team is separated into two groups: Setters and Closers. The “Setters” are assigned new inbound leads to make the initial contact and schedule calls.
This first step is designed to help your team determine whether a new lead is a good fit for your coaching services. Then, the Setter can pass this lead to a sales rep who will close the deal and onboard them.
To track the progress of your new leads through this process to purchase, you can use a sales pipeline—a visual representation of where leads are lingering in the buying journey. That typically looks something like this:
A balanced sales pipeline has an even distribution of leads at each stage. The ideal scenario is a steady stream of new leads coming in for Setters to qualify and make the initial contact.
A consultation call, sometimes referred to as a discovery call or free strategy session, is your chance to chat with leads in real time.
Your Setters make this first contact, and it’s their job to learn more about the lead, including what they’re currently struggling with and how you might be able to help.
Discovery calls are most effective when they’re fast.
The less time between someone submitting an inquiry form and jumping on a call with them, the less chance they have to second-guess their decision. They’re already semi-convinced to join (otherwise, they wouldn’t have made the first move).
Lead nurturing is the process of “warming up” these coaching leads. If they handed over their email address for a webinar, for example, stay in touch in the days immediately following.
Encourage leads to book meetings immediately after reaching out by:
“Our Setters reach out within minutes when a lead requests information from our website,” says Jonathan Hinshaw, Sales Director at UGURUS. “Our goal is speed to lead. They check in, make sure they got what they requested, and see if they’d be interested in talking to someone about our coaching offers. If they say yes, that lead is booked into the Closers calendar.”
Got someone to book a discovery meeting with you? Unfortunately, not all of them will turn up.
Coaches deal with a ton of no-shows, likely because leads are unsure about the investment and don’t want to spend time talking about problems they’re not 100% sure are worth solving.
Here’s how to automate your pre-meeting workflow and increase your call attendance rates:
Online fitness coach Ashley Barnsley puts this into practice: “After someone books in for a call enquiring about that program, they are automatically taken to a confirmation page which contains a pre-call video for them to watch and some testimonials from past and current clients.
“The video talks through all of the logistics of the program, meaning by the time the call comes around, the person is already aware of how the program works and how we get results. That way we can spend more time talking specifically about what they need help with rather than the details of the program.”
As Ashley puts it: “The less time spent on logistics on a sales call means more time going into detail about what a person needs help with and more time to connect to that person.”
You can try your best to avoid no-shows, but some people simply won’t turn up.
That’s not to say there’s nothing you can do about it. Perhaps the lead just forgot. In that case, send a short social media DM 10 minutes after your appointment time. Something like, “Hey [name], I’m here in our call room! Here’s the link to join: [link]” can do the trick.
If that doesn’t work, don’t assume that the coaching lead is lost forever. Set an automated process inside Close CRM that:
It’s not just leads who need to prepare for your coaching session. As the old saying goes, “Failing to prepare means preparing to fail”.
Consultation calls are usually handled by “Closers”—reps who are motivated to talk to your customers and close the deal.
Meeting agendas act as a rough outline and give reps some structure. They ensures that prospective coaching clients get the same level of service and support on the initial discovery call.
That said, they don’t need to be set in stone. There should be some scope for flexibility, and the freedom to pivot the conversation depending on what the lead says they need help with.
Here’s what that structure might look like:
Coaching services aren’t tangible, which can make selling them more difficult.
That’s the issue Emma Siemasko, mentioned earlier, has had to overcome. “I also don't believe in selling a specific formula as everyone's business and perspective is different,” she says. “For example, I can't promise my clients they'll reach a certain income amount or book a specific number of clients because they work with me.”
Emma adds: “I overcome this by addressing it openly and being honest about the value I do provide–my coaching clients receive accountability, someone to help choose actions that they can immediately take, as well as another perspective and lens to examine their business.”
You’ve done some basic lead qualification before getting your prospects on the call, but you still might find yourself chatting with people who either aren’t interested in coaching services or ready to buy.
There’s a plethora of reasons why this might happen. We can break the most common down into four buckets:
Here’s a cheat sheet of questions to use when qualifying coaching leads on a discovery call:
A lead is ready to sign on the dotted line. Here’s how to get them over the final hurdle and pass them onto your coaching delivery team.
You’ll have a good sense of whether a client is interested in signing up for your coaching service during the discovery call.
Help them choose the right package for their needs by reiterating the things they said they were struggling with. For example: if you’re selling business coaching services and the lead has said they’re struggling to prioritize tasks as a solo founder, say:
Connecting them with real, relevant social proof is a superb way of showing your value without being overly salesly. You’ll appear much more genuine if other people are vouching for you—especially if the example you’re profiling is similar to the person/company you’re selling to.
“I had a personal experience with a physical therapy coach recently who added a step to this process that I haven't seen very often: connect them with a success story,” says Sam Brenner, Product Marketing Lead here at Close.
“This could be in the form of sending them a video success story of someone very relevant to themselves right away on the call, or even connecting them to someone who has been through their coaching program and is willing to serve as a reference. I had the latter and it was next-level convincing!”
The prospect has said “yes” and is raring to go. Keep the momentum going with a clear process for closing deals and handing new clients off to your coaching team.
A seamless transition between teams here helps the client continue their excitement to sign up.
On the contrary: if you were to randomly introduce a new team member and go radio silent after the discovery call while you wait for the delivery team to reach out, you could confuse them. That’s not the first impression you want to make.
The exact process of onboarding new clients off the back of a sales call will be different for each business and type of coach. But here are the general principles you’ll need when handing off new clients:
Lead nurture can be a long-term game—you don’t want to lose out on potential customers who aren’t ready yet, but might be in the future.
Prevent coaching leads from falling through the cracks by documenting who you’re talking to and their sales objections. If someone doesn’t convert after a discovery call because they don’t have the money to invest, for example, check back in a few days after the initial session with a payment plan that makes the initial investment cheaper.
Sometimes lost leads aren’t always as clear cut as that scenario. Perhaps someone gave you all the signs that they’d signed up, but ultimately ghosted you in your post-discovery session follow up.
Use Close Smart Views to keep track of coaching leads who are interested, qualified, but never closed. Then set reminders to check in with these cold leads every few weeks.
(If you’ve recorded the discovery call, now’s the ideal time to signpost lost leads back to it.)
Circumstances change, and even sitting on the idea of investing in a coach (particularly as they reference the replay or complete tasks they know you could help with) may be all they need to come back.
A gentle nudge from your team can make all the difference.
There’s a lot of moving parts in a sales process, especially for coaches. You’re launching marketing campaigns to drive leads and offering free discovery calls to those who raise their hand to show interest.
What’s difficult, however, is determining what makes a “good” lead—and what happens after you identify that.
This coaching workflow is a great example of how you can systemize your approach and deliver consistent experiences to coaching leads. Combined with a powerful CRM that can automate tedious, repetitive tasks for you? Even better.
Test out Close for free for 14 days, no credit card required. Or talk to our sales team to get a 1:1 demo and see how Close can maximize your sales efforts.