How to Sell Life Coaching, Without Selling

By: Mikel Bruce
Submitted: 2008-05-30 16:04:07
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Many Coaches are leery about selling coaching to prospective clients for fear of appearing too aggressive or too pushy. Unfortunately, this creates a dilemma since selling is an integral part of building any business. Many coaches have a misperception about selling and associate a sales process with what they might experience if they were to visit a used car lot. Sales techniques are ultimately a process of educating your prospective clients the benefits of your services, based upon their needs. There is a saying that most people are telling when they should be selling. Selling any service is primarily to focus on listening and not on talking.

Questions are a critical part of every sales process and if you can re-program yourself to ask questions to prospective clients about their needs, not only will you show them that you are concerned and interested but you also have a very specific understanding on how to show them you can help. For example, if you were to discover in a conversation with a prospective client that they have relationship issues, you can talk about how coaching can offer the tools and resources to deal with such issues and you can go into detail pertaining to the benefits and the results they can create. This will be much more interesting to them than your telling random information pertaining to the type of services that you offer.

Here are some steps to take to improve your sales process:

* Come up with 3-10 basic questions to determine a clients needs. If possible, create a needs analysis form and write down their answers.
* Give them as much time to speak about themselves as possible; this will provide you with more information about their needs when you present coaching as a solution to their needs.
* Make an effort to follow up with a prospective client at least three times. Very few prospective clients are converted initially. If you do follow up, your conversion rate should increase significantly. If you are speaking to many prospective clients you may want to create some type of prospect follow up system. You could invest in a software program such as ACT to help with the process. You can also follow up with your prospective clients via email in an email newsletter. Mikel Bruce with WebFlexor Coaching Websites (www.websitesforcoaching.com) recommends adding an email opt-in form to your website to capture email addresses of potential clients so that you can educate them about you and your business as a subscriber to your
e-newsletter.
* Get in the practice of closing your prospective clients with a simple question at the end of the needs analysis such as, “Would you like to try a session sometime next week? I have openings on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

Remember not to be afraid to promote your services proactively. Most coaches know that most people need their services, so take it on as a conscious mission to learn more about the sales process and to implement as many techniques as possible into how you present and promote your services so that you can help more people get onto the path of developing self-awareness and mental health. It is important to have a web presence in today’s market since the vast majority of new clients use the Internet to find coaches. If you are looking to develop a professional web presence and succeed on the web, WebFlexor Coaching Websites specializes in affordable and quality websites for Coaches.

Article source: Expert Articles