Many successful coaches present running a life coaching business as this amazing thing.
And it is!
However: Sometimes there are dark moments when you strike out on your own as a coach.
For me, one of my darkest moments came when I actually had a pretty great month – less than one year into my business I started pulling in $12,000 per month (exciting!).
So, there I was, all “Yay! Let’s HAVE SOME CHAMPAGNE.”
And then, as the month came to a close, I panicked.
I panicked because I had no idea how I was going to make any money in the next month.
It was a dark moment, and it made me feel many things: Afraid. Alone. Exhausted. Like a failure. Worried. Anxious.
None of this was fun.
Things didn’t improve until I got my head out of my a** and figured out that I need a sales funnel. I needed a way to get predictable, regular income, so I could be a normal person and plan and have a life again. Once I got one, wow – life was so much less stressful. I could finally do things like go out to dinner and plan a trip.
That was 5 years ago, and in that moment, my business and life changed. I believe in the power of sales funnels!
So here’s my question to you: Do you have a sales funnel?
Have you even thought about how to handle this side of your business?
If not, don’t panic.
Let’s chat, shall we?
Lesson 1: Here’s what a sales funnel is…just in case you don’t know
A sales funnel is exactly what it sounds like, a strategic system that gently funnels people towards your program or services.
If set up correctly, it won’t feel gross to your prospective coaching clients. Instead, it allows you to educate potential customers on your coaching in a non-sleazy way, and move them along the buying process, if they continue to indicate they are interested.
It also helps you qualify leads, so you don’t waste your time and…most importantly…
…build predictable, regular income.
This is CRITICAL TO YOUR SUCCESS.
If you can’t predict your income, then it’s hard to stay in business.
Lesson 2: How to begin
If you are new coach, please know that a sales funnel can be really simple, and involves no stressful technology, so don’t panic.
Instead, start with your marketing platform – i.e, the one thing that you spend most of your marketing efforts on (for example: Facebook, or networking, or podcasting, or speaking, or LinkedIn. If you need more information on platforms, read this free guide immediately).
Then gather your numbers.
How many people do you need to reach on that platform to get ONE person to have a free consult or session with you?
Of those people, how many *actually* hand over their credit card and sign up to work with you?
Awesome! That’s your base number and your very first, simple, sales funnel :).
Lesson 3: Improve your funnel!
Once you know your numbers, you have two areas I want you to focus on:
1) Improving your conversion rate, i.e., the number of people who get into your funnel and the number of people who say yes to your coaching.
2) And increasing your each – i.e. the number of people in your funnel to begin with.
Sales is a NUMBERS game, which is something most new coaches forget, and therefore they get demoralized quickly.
So, first think about how you can improve your conversion – how can you tweak your process in order to get more people to say yes?
Think through any sticky points – is there an area where you tend to struggle? An awkward moment or a weak process point?
What can you do to fix it? Work on your sales conversations? Send better follow up emails? Better use your time during sales conversations so you have enough time to talk about your offerings? What?
Keep reading for more!
Then, think about how to increase your reach.
How can you get more people into your sales funnel? If you are using Facebook as your platform, for instance, can you join more groups? Can you post more often? Can you create a more compelling page or series of posts to grab attention? Can you ask people to share your posts? These are tiny, simple things, and there’s more than you can do, but you get the idea!
For me, I started with public speaking as my main platform. So I figured out that if I spoke for free to one group of at least 25 people a month, I’d end up with about 4-9 people who signed up for my $99 intro coaching package, and then about 25-30% of them said YES to my expensive private package. All I had to do, therefore, to maintain a level of income was get that one speaking engagement a month – which meant I could LET GO OF THE STRESS and breathe out for a change.
If I wanted to scale, I focused on getting TWO speaking engagements a month, to extend my reach.
So, what you can do?
Your mission
Think about your sales funnel, and for now, simply record your numbers so we have a baseline data. That’s the start of the funnel and of predictable and repeatable income!
The MOST IMPORTANT THING + YOUR NEXT STEP
Listen, there’s an easy way and and a hard way to do sales funnels, and of course there is way more to the story than what I shared in this blog.
The most important thing to know is that you NEED sales funnels if you want a real business – so make sure that you invest in learning about them, and in setting them up properly in your business.
Want to see a super cool sales funnel in action from start to finish? (Of COURSE you do!). Here’s an article on why people don’t pay for life coaching, but it’s *also* an interesting sales funnel. See if you can spot what’s happening. Also, you’ll learn a lot :).
All you have to do is click, no opt-in required!