If you have decided to become a life coaching client, undertaken your training and are ready to get started, you may be asking the question of your favourite search engine “How to get your first life coaching client?”. Let me show you how to do this.
Why Type Of Marketing Is Best For Landing Your First Life Coaching Client?
You will have no doubt carried out enough training by now to feel ready to get your first life coaching client, but which of the many so called gurus out there do you follow the advice of?
Is it facebook advertising, YouTube or blogging? Maybe it is networking or trying to talk on stage at events, which is it to be?
Good news, it doesn’t have to be any of these, and it is likely to be much easier than you might ever have imagined.
First, you should know that I do not only recommend the one type of marketing that I know and understand, which many business mentors do.
You need to beware of that as they can only show you how to do one thing, EVEN IF that one thing will not achieve the results that you are looking for?
I cannot tell you the number of coaches and consultants who have come to me having spent their money on a type of marketing which will simply not work for life coaching clients.
I always come from the position of what is the easiest and most cost effective method of marketing for my client to win new clients.
Once I narrow that down, I simply put together a plan for them to follow to achieve their objective.
I will come to that shortly, but first, I really need to answer the most common question I am asked by new life coaches.
Should I Give Away My Coaching Services For Free To Get Started?
I have the short answer for you, which is critical, and then I will explain why:
You should NEVER give away your coaching services for free!
Remember this:
FREE IS WORTH EVERY PENNY YOU PAY FOR IT.
For your coaching business to be successful, you need your clients to do what you agree with them during your coaching calls.
Which client is more likely to do what they say they will, one who has paid nothing, so has nothing to lose, or one who has paid a fee so has financially invested in obtaining a solution to their current problem?
It is always the latter.
If someone pays for a service or a product, that financial investment makes it far more likely that they are going to follow through on it and achieve the results that they are looking for.
Think about one of the most common coaching business in the world, Weight Watchers.
People can lose weight at home on their own completely free of charge, or they can pay to receive recipes and be weighed each week with weight watchers.
Paying along with the accountability means that more people have success with Weight Watchers.
So, you must charge your first life coaching client.
Should You Offer A Discount For Your First Life Coaching Client?
This is a different question, because THEY ARE PAYING something for your service.
When I show you how to get your first life coaching client, I am perfectly happy with you offering a discount for your first client on one basis:
They promise to provide feedback AND provide a review if they are happy with the outcomes of your coaching.
This means that while they are obtaining a discount, they are in effect having to work for that discount by providing feedback and a review.
Personally, I never drop my prices and never have, but I am completely happy advising my coaching clients to do so if it gives them the confidence to win their first piece of business (or first few clients).
Once they are up and running and have several reviews, they will never need to discount their fees again.
So yes, so long as you demand feedback and a review, you can offer a discount for your first life coaching client.
Who Is The Easiest Person To Sell Your Life Coaching Services To?
When it comes to winning life coaching clients, particularly your first life coaching client, there is one thing you need to know based on my many years of working with new coaching businesses:
Your first new client will come from somebody you already know!
I also know from many years of working with coaching clients that they don’t really like this answer.
They would love their first client to be brand new to them, to do an amazing job for them and to go from there.
But in almost every case your first client will come from someone you already know.
This was certainly the case when I started my marketing consultancy and mentoring business in 2003!
Now you know that (and please don’t fight it if you want a new coaching client fast), how shall we get you your first client?
How To Get Your First Life Coaching Business
Now that you know your first client is going to come from people who already know you, and bearing in mind that whilst you might have a website, even if you do, no one will be finding it yet (it takes around 6 months for Google to give a new website any love), we need to use another tool to connect with everyone you have ever worked with (or been friends with).
That tool is LinkedIn.
Now, don’t worry if you are thinking I do not want to be pushy, I absolutely never encourage that.
In fact, I encourage the complete opposite of that, because I detest it, and for you as a life coach, it is completely the wrong approach.
What would someone think if a life coach, who is supposed to be by nature of their profession, empathic, beats people over the head with a sales message to win new clients???
It wouldn’t be a good fit.
So, what do you do?
Here is my plan for you:
- Connect with 10 people you know on LinkedIn every day (previous employers, employees, friends, acquaintances etc).
- Do not add a note or a message, this is the first sign of selling.
- Do this every day.
- Post once a week on LinkedIn an opinion or thought. Link back to your website in the first comment after your post (a link in comments works better) explaining that they can read/discover more about the point that you have made on your website.
- On that page on your website which you send them back to, ensure you offer an item of value in exchange for their email address. This will be a guide, checklist or training video which answers your ideal clients most common problem/challenge.
- The comment you make each week becomes the title of your blog post on your website to send them back to to grow your email list.
- You then send a weekly email to your growing email list which again is the content you have prepared on your website, just with a more specific call to action, which is to book a call with you to solve their current problem or challenge. Once again, this call is not a sales call but a chance to help them, show your expertise and prove that you know what you are doing.
- At the end of that call, you can offer them another call, but this time your paid for but discounted service, in exchange for their feedback and review.
This system is proven and works, so long as you follow it consistently.
Now please go and follow it and let me know WHEN it works for you, as it will.
To find out all the best ways to grow your life coaching business, please download my guide here:>>
