I had the pleasure of running a Linkedin live with Suman Randhawa, sales and messaging coach, to discuss common myths around selling coaching services.
Specifically the main ones that are stopping coaches from earning more (without resorting to sleazy tactics).
We first met at Atomicon24 at the speakers’ drinks event (I spoke there in 2021 so I got an invitation). I loved her talk! Then she commented on one of my posts and we ended up chatting about sales and marketing for coaches. (Coz that’s what we do.)
It was clear that we had similar values but differing perspectives so we decided to run an online sesh to thrash it all out!
You can watch the original LinkedIn live by clicking here. (It takes you to the LinkedIn live replay post.)
Or read my summary below!
Here are the 5 myths we tackled, and the truths we uncovered…
1. You have to have a group programme to scale your business
Suman kicked off the discussion by saying that the idea that you must have a group program in order to grow is a myth.
“What is the shape of your business? How much are you charging for what you do? Because if you’re a high ticket one-to-one coach, there’s no reason why you can’t make just as much money—if not more—than someone running a large group programme.”
Suman then classified what it means to scale- which is a really good point. Are we all meaning the same thing when we say we want to ‘scale’ our business?
What does it mean to you?
- Do you want to turn your business into a multinational concern with hundreds or thousands of employees?
- Do you simply want to earn more?
- Or something in between?
For the types of people Suman and I work with, the question of scaling is usually ‘can I increase my income significantly without grinding myself into the ground?’
Level with me; if you’re a coach-shaped-person and you’re thinking of selling group programmes, or even memberships and courses, is it because you have an unmanageablely high amount of incoming leads that can’t be resolved with working more efficiently or charging more? (This is a good reason to move to a one-to-many business model.)
Or is it because you believe that if you run a group programme, then you can charge less per person and therefore people ‘should’ buy more..?
That is flawed logic. People don’t buy more just because something’s cheaper.
You’ve got to be clear on the positioning of what you’re selling first.
Ask yourself questions these questions:
- Is your message clear?
- Is it clear to the right people why they should work with YOU?
- Are you clear on the transformation you’re providing your clients?
Because if you’re not, you’re not going to find it tricky to sell any kind of service, no matter whether they’re courses, memberships, group programmes or one-to-one.
You’ve got to crack that foundational piece first, and then you’ll feel more confident to charge what your service is worth.
There’s a strong temptation to offer more ways to work with people on top of one-to-one basis. This leads into another myth which we could’ve included; you have to have a value ladder. (No. No you don’t.)
A value ladder is when you have to have a selection of services with different price points and levels of interaction with you.
The idea is that someone can journey up the ‘ladder’ from dipping their toe in the water with a very low priced offer all the way up to spending thousands of pounds with you on something one-to-one and intensive.
In the LinkedIn live I explain:
“[People feel compelled] to have this small thing like a course, and then this bigger thing like a membership, and then this even bigger thing like a group programme, to lead people through. And that absolutely works for some people.
But what works better is getting clear on your main thing and making absolutely clear how you’re positioning that, how to sell that thing. And that it is actually selling. And then you can create the other things if you want, if you need to, or if you have the capacity. Or if you have the desire to do that. It’s not a must-have to have a full suite like that.”
I’ve known coaches who dislike working on a one-to-one basis, so they naturally want to run group programmes because it makes the most of their facilitation skills for instance.
That’s fine! Just don’t do it because you think you’re going to magically earn more money.
Suman summed this section up by explaining that the main thing we’d suggest you focus on first is to nail your signature offer. And what implications that has on the type of business you want to run.
Because the more complex your offerings are, the more support you’ll need.
She said “it’s all well and good people talking about running multiple six figure businesses, but they’re also going to be having a much higher level of cost as well. So one is not necessarily better or going to get you to that end goal quicker. It’s what is the model that’s going to work best for you and your business.’
2. You must niche
There is SO MUCH noise online about niching!
Barely a day goes by without someone telling me one of these things:
- They’re thinking about niching more but don’t know how to do it or whether they even should.
- They fear they’ve niched too much.
- They think they’ve niched (but they haven’t).
- Or they loudly declare that they hate the idea of niching and won’t ever do it (when they’ve already done it).
Why all the confusion?
It’s because we don’t have a common understanding of what the word ‘niching’ means.
For a full-on Janine rant about this, read my blog Why you don’t have to niche (but what you need to do instead)
I began the chat on this section by saying:
“I feel like the whole niching thing is such a big red herring. It’s also a stick that people use to beat themselves with…My approach is; you don’t have to niche your whole business. But you do have to be specific about who each offer is for and what the transformation is.”
If people say they want to work on their niche when they come to work with me, I first take a look at their offers.
I’ll be looking at things like:
- What is going to be the easiest for you to sell because people desperately want it?
- What is going to earn you the most money because it’s the most valuable outcome for clients?
- What are you going to enjoy delivering the most because it’s rewarding work that makes the most of your unique blend of gifts?
Get clear on these points and that’ll reveal the positioning of your main offer and the headline messaging for it.
Once you’ve done that with all of your offers (and perhaps retired the ones that aren’t up to scratch any more), then we can have a look and see if there’s a niche position that reveals itself for you.
One of the points I made was that the big players in the online space aren’t ‘niche’ in the way that most people would define it. ‘[For instance] Amy Porterfield with her digital courses. For who? For everyone! From newbies to people who’ve been running their business for 20 years. From engineers to nail technicians. [Her target is] every single person who does online courses. That is not a ‘niche’ business.”
Suman then added “where I believe people get lost is they’re still thinking in the very traditional way of [defining niching]. It wasn’t that long ago that you’d ask is this a man or a woman? How old are they? How big is their house? What is their income? And I think that’s where people get stuck.
Your Niche might be a feeling or a behaviour or a stage that somebody is in in terms of their mindset and the way that they think. But they might be completely different people.- Suman Randhawa
She then used the example of a transformational coach; “[Let’s say] you help women who are ready to live a more expansive life. As opposed to ambitious women who are married and who have teenage children [and want to get on in their career].” The point being that there are tonnes of differences between those two profiles of people and therefore what changes they’d desire in their life.
Suman continued; “I would say that generally, the more advanced someone is in their business, the less specific they are on the more traditional niches.”
My interpretation of that is that the longer you’ve run your coaching business, the more you know the people you love to work with and the more nuance you can bring to your messaging in terms of their wants and needs.
Suman used the example of a speaker coach who’s book she’d just read. “It’s clearly targeted at anybody who wants to become an incredible keynote speaker… In that sense, there’s no niche, because it’s not like it’s a man or a woman or a coach or a professional. The ‘niche’ is anyone who is passionate about driving income from keynote speaking.”
You might have heard this distinction categorised as demographics versus psychographics.
Demographics are things like age, industry, job title, where a person lives, that sort of thing.
Psychographics are more about what the person values, what motivates them, what they’re trying to move towards or away from. What’s standing in their way of getting to the life, business or job of their dreams?
I also acknowledged in our chat that yes, I am being pedantic about the word niche!
Because when you’re talking about niching, the importance really is the specificity of your message.
Whether you call it messaging or positioning or niching. That ‘narrowing down’ of opportunities is what people are shying away from.
And as you’ve probably heard before, if you’re not clear about who you want to help or if you’re aiming too broadly, it’s not going to cut through.
In conclusion- don’t get stuck on a word! Just make sure that it’s clear who you’re helping with what for each of your service offers.
3. You shouldn’t sell every day
Suman took the reigns on this one by stating:
“It really depends what your definition of selling is. …One of the core pieces of work, no matter where you are in your business, is about changing and repositioning how you think about sales.
Selling isn’t always saying, ‘I have something for sale.’ It could be changing the link on your bio. It could be where you’re showing up. It could be who you’re associating with. So I would say wherever you are visible, it should be clear what you can do, how you can help, and how you can change things for someone.”
Suman was clear that she’d advise that you do sell every single day, but consider what selling actually means.
She then went on to say “It’s about making it very clear [what you do] so that you are attracting people to you, because that’s what’s going to do the heavy lifting for you.”
Surprise surprise I agree with Suman on this one. I know SHOCKER! 😄
I then spoke about what it was like when I first started my business:
“I remember getting into [starting a business online] and being completely bamboozled by social media marketing and content marketing, and thinking, ‘oh my goodness, I’ve got to be everywhere!’ It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that you are creating content…to eventually make sales.”
You’re creating content and showing up so that people can see that you care. To show that you know what you’re doing. To show that you can get results. To show that you can help people like them. And ultimately it needs to lead to some sort of sales call to action.
You’re not blogging and podcasting and whatever else out of charity.
So as Suman said, you can have overt sales messages and much more subtle sales activities.
The point is that some people will be waiting for you to say ‘this is how I can help you and this is how you can take action’.
All roads eventually need to lead to an offer to work with you.
Because if they don’t buy from you, then you can’t help them. #MicDrop
Two points from Suman on this:
- Make it easy. You’ve got to make it easy for people to make a decision and take action. Have you ever clicked on a link where you’re just so overwhelmed by all of the choices there? Or you’ve tried to buy something online and you’ve had to jump through so many hoops that you abandoned the basket? It’s no different for coaching services. Make it easy for people, once you’ve taken them on that trust building journey.
- Provide lots of touch points. The amount of touch points it takes before somebody buys for the first time is going up every year. It used to be known as 7 but now it’s often quoted as thirty or more. Because of the speed at which technology is advancing and information overload. We’re more and more saturated by choices and options. So you need to make it clear how you can help.
If you haven’t done any overt calls to action on your marketing messages and then you pluck up the do one, but then you don’t get any replies…
DON’T PANIC!
Maybe they haven’t interacted with enough touch points from you yet.
Maybe they want to see more of you before they’re able to make a confident decision.
Nobody is going to take action on one sales post if they’ve never heard of you before.
Each marketing message you put out there ‘overlaps’ with others and amplifies the effect of each of them.
I talk about this ‘know like trust’ journey potential clients of yours go on in my upcoming book The Easy Yes. Click here to sign up to the waitlist.
4. Charge your worth
‘Go, girlfriend, charge your worth and put up your prices!’
It’s not a helpful way to phrase the advice to charge more for your service. (Despite the likelihood that if you’re reading this, you’re likely to need to charge more. Amiright..?)
The theory behind it is solid; charge more and you will be making it easier to earn more.
But that assumes that you can sell your services at a higher rate and you won’t be able to do that unless you…
…get clear on what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to and what they actually want.
In other words, we’re back to positioning and messaging again.
Here’s what I said in the discussion:
“It has to come from a place of integrity, doesn’t it? When you’re putting a price on your own worth, it opens up a hell of a can of worms. There’s a large proportion of business owners out there who don’t need that extra pressure.”
Basically you’re selling an outcome. NOT your ‘worth’.
I went on to explain “[Clients] aren’t paying to sit and stare at you for an hour.” They’re paying for an outcome. For some sort of result.
Suman went on to use the example of charging by units of time — another unhelpful thing to do if you’re a coach. Because that makes it about the value of your time, not the value of the transformation in their life.
If you do that, you’ve disconnected the money they’re spending with the outcome.
This leads to price quibblers!
Suman said “It’s about ‘How valuable is this? How much further is this going to take someone? Because the more relevant it is for someone, the higher the value they’ll put on it. [For instance] would a hairdresser charge Beyoncé the same that she would charge me? Probably not. Why? Because there is a higher risk. There is more impact.”
Another great example Suman shared:
“In the wedding industry, that’s why there’s an uplift on price. It’s not because they’re greedy. It’s because the importance is so much greater on your wedding day; for the photographer to be on time, for the cake to be a showstopper…It’s really understanding the impact of your work.”
The example I shared is that of corporate consultants who often have the reputation of being expensive. A typical day rate is thousands of pounds depending on experience and the demand of their expertise.
You might think ‘how on earth can they justify charging thousands of pounds a day?!’
But some of these consultants work with billion pound turnover companies.
A 1% increase in that company’s revenue per year would be millions more per annum.
So a few grand will be a drop in the ocean in comparison to the massive result they’re delivering!
The bigger the result to the client; the more you should be charging.
And if you’re not charging in line with the type of change that you’re able to help people with, it’ll shrink the perception of what you’re able to do.
5. You need a big social media profile to be successful
Suman and I have both worked with people with huge followings. If you needed a big social media following to have success- they should be halfway there, right?
NOPE.
As Suman pointed out, people with big audiences don’t automatically earn more money. And conversely there are people with very small followings who are able to hit their earning goals no probs.
Suman goes on to explain:
“Having loads of likes when it doesn’t lead to somebody wanting to take an action is obviously not going to be helpful for your business…It’s great at getting your profile out there. But what is the objective of your business? It’s about the right people being drawn to take the right action, which is ultimately to step forward and to come into your inbox.
You don’t have to have lots of followers, nor do you need to have incredibly high engagement. You just need relevant engagement.”
And if you’re a coach who’s charging higher-ticket because you’re working deeply with people, you’ll need fewer clients and therefore huge volumes of social media followers becomes a vanity metric.
As always, it’s about quality rather than quantity.
I fell into this trap when I was in the first couple of years and was setting up my business.
My background was marketing. I used to talk about marketing a lot.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing!
I used to use lots of jargon and explain how non-marketers could think more like marketers.
The result? Huge engagement from other marketers.
Very little from my ideal clients because they weren’t interested in what I was saying.
‘What’s in it for me’ is what’ll be at the back of any reader’s mind at all times. And my content wasn’t giving my best fit clients a reason to stay and take action.
What a waste of time. 😬
However you do want some growth.
If you launched an offer this month, some people would buy, some would think it’s not for them right now and some would decide that they don’t want to hear from you any more.
If you’re not growing your audience at all it’s essentially static.
Or worse, declining.
And fewer people will be on that road to getting to know and trust you in readiness for potentially buying from you.
Suman advises “What are your results currently showing you? That’s going to tell you a little bit about whether your current audience is hungry and ready to buy so it then becomes not so much about the numbers, but actually, what do the results tell you? What does the data say?”
It’s not about growth for growth’s sake. It’s about the evolution of your audience.
How this can help you if you’re a coach-shaped-person looking to earn more.
The two biggest things that Suman and I would love you take away from our session would be this:
- The clarity you have on your messaging is absolutely key. It forms the bedrock of what we do with our clients, no matter what their goals are and no matter how experienced the coach is.
- You don’t have to have a specific business model to ‘scale’.
As Suman pointed out; if there was only one way of doing things, there would be one training that everyone would watch and you wouldn’t need any other advice.
The people whose coaching practices really take off have made it their own.
They’ve noticed what works for them and their clients and tweak what doesn’t work so well.
If you’d like help with the positioning, messaging or pricing of your coaching offers, book a call with me by clicking here and answering a quick set of questions.
Or if you’re more interested in improving your sales performance, message Suman Randhawa on LinkedIn by clicking here.
