I’ve just read an article about “a day in the life” of 8 successful coaches.
Here’s what all of them do daily:
1. They set time aside to “own” the day: meditation, exercise, planning, prioritising, journaling.2. Every single one of them spends one or more hours every day on marketing, and on creating content. One of the coaches even said that she spends half her working day on marketing as it is one of the most important contributors to her success.
Does every day in your life as a coach include marketing, or do you avoid it as much as possible?
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, marketing is a non-negotiable.
A business guru, Shiv Singh, said that the sole purpose of a business is to…
…create clients who create clients.
I bet you expected me to say: “to create money”.
Well, it’s a no-brainer to say that without clients, there’s no money.
But creating clients who create more clients…that’s just smart. That’s getting other people to do your sales and marketing.
It means that you are creating brand advocates.
Getting clients is one of the biggest challenges that people come to me with.
But what research into the coaching profession shows is that most business comes from word of mouth referrals.How does this happen?
Well, neuroscience tells us that there are seven stages in the customer journey from becoming aware of us, to becoming brand advocates who spread the word about how fantastic we are.
Our goal is to create brand advocates, not to create clients, and there is a very easy way of doing this: focus on surprising and delighting your clients.
Give them everything you promised, and more than they expect. This needs to become part of your business strategy and framework.
Other ways of getting your existing clients to help you create new clients is to get social proof: testimonials, and positive reviews.
Research by Nielson revealed that 84% of people reported always or sometimes taking action based on personal recommendations, and 70% said they did the same of online opinions, reviews and testimonials.
One of the things that I teach my clients in the Marketing & Sales Accelerator for Coaches is an off-boarding strategy, which includes giving them a format for getting client testimonials.
A few carefully-phrased questions make it easy for a client to share their experience with you.
If you do NOTHING else, focus on this: creating clients who bring you more clients.
If you’d like to learn more about how to move potential clients from being aware, to becoming brand advocates, watch the series of videos that I have done on each stage in the customer journey here
