Читать книгу Coaching for Daily Miracles - Raimon Samsó - Страница 9

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Attract More Clients Than You Can Imagine

You perhaps imagined when you started coaching that clients would "fall in love" with you spontaneously, and would engage your services as soon as you handed them your business card.

Time to wake up, stop dreaming! Set out to do something concrete to attract more clients that you think you can handle. Having a business card, an office, a website, and taking all the fiscal steps to register your business are just the "theoretical" aspects. Until you make an actual sale, nothing has happened. It’s all theory, nothing else.

The purpose of this section is for you to learn how to have as many clients that you can assign to a team which you will form so that in the long term, they can replace you and work for you. How high you hoist up the flag is the measure of your ability. Short of that, your business will seem disjointed.

First, we’ll see what you can do to make your schedule overflow with more and more client requests. Second, see how you can personally give up some marathon sessions so you won’t get exhausted, eventually making you hate your profession. The third and final step is to develop trust in people and believe that they are as good as you, or at least good enough for you, so they can substitute for you. Do not believe that you are indispensable.

The best way to organise your business is to not appear as someone with titles or credentials.

The first thing I remember is that when people tend to be attached to titles, diplomas, college grades, certifications, accreditations and credentials, these titles do not constitute a reason for clients to want to work with you. Your clients bestow upon you the qualifications you take for granted. Your credentials are the minimum they ask for, but will not be their reason for choosing you as coach. Be clear about this. I have never been asked about my certifications (certifications that coaching schools sell at gold prices).

When it comes to helping others, all of us are tested every single day. If you help, it is worth something, if you don’t, it isn’t worth anything. It does not matter how good your titles say you are. Your clients rate you and believe me, they do it every day at every moment.

Ratings serve a purpose when taken in the context of schools and universities; that is, in the theoretical world. In real life, however, only value and utility carry worth, the rest is theory. Even in companies I worked for as an employee, they valued the photocopy of my college degree. I was tested, and employers reminded me that my performance would determine whether or not they would renew my job. This is how we live every single day: being tested.

If you are useful, clients will stay with you and will recommend you; otherwise, they leave you and don’t recommend you.

The second thing I recommend is to promote yourself. Do not tell your clients "what you do" and "how you do it," and what is coaching, etc. Tell them that you will advise them when they start working with you. Explain the benefits and tell them about the added value they will derive from your work as a coach, because that's all they care about. Talk about useful outcomes, instead of techniques.

Here is a task for you: write a list of benefits for your client. Try to make it long and interesting because it will be your selling argument. Let me remind you about the added value of tangible and intangible. The former – tangible - would change a habit, the second – intangible - would change an emotion. Do not make promises that you cannot deliver, or impress your clients with technical words that they do not understand.

Again: your clients want results, not certifications.

Your clients seek solutions to their personal and professional problems.

In fact, all personal problems are disguised as professional problems. You must therefore learn to deal with the problems of people because behind every situation are people with fears, limitations, and concerns. Work problems are personal problems in disguise. These two areas of life are interrelated and become a unit.

Third, set up your fee list and discount policy, and put them in an accessible and visible place. From this point, the fee list is un-disputed, as it becomes "house policy." Do not be flexible about your fee. Prospective clients may want to discuss rates, but they cannot dispute “house policy.” Try it and see that it is infallible.

By analogy, a law is questionable and can be interpreted in different ways, but the Constitution is undisputed until it is reformed. Your fee list is your Constitution: the law of laws. You will see that when you say the magic words – “it is house policy” - there will be a respectful silence and that will end the discussion.

Are you clear about your policy?

Are your fees absolutely clear?

I remember one case when a client, who was a nutrition therapist, showed her clients a complex table of services and fees , so complex that they could not understand. When she showed them to me, I did not understand any of it; the worst was she failed to answer my questions. Then she realised she was losing clients; they were leaving her office saying they would have to think about it (maybe even hiring a mathematician to make things clearer). At the end of the session, we conclude that she needed to simplify her fee schedule.

Set you’re fees. In this kind of market, there are people who are always willing to compete with the lowest fees. This situation is like war where everyone loses. The recipe for disaster is a fee policy that makes your clients choose you because of your lower fees!

Numerous businesses have closed because they engaged in absurd fee competitions. Let others sell at their low price. What must differentiate you from the competition is not your cheap rate. Quite the contrary.

Yes, hover around at the higher end of the fee structure, where you can compete in prestige. What about an average fee? The middle fee segment is interesting because it puts you in an "invisible" area as far as the market is concerned (where more supply is concentrated).

This book wants you to obtain 100% visibility!

A lower fee does not mean more clients. It just means being like the rest. In business, being equal to the competition is cheap. Do you want to be cheap?

If you're going to compete, compete on quality and differentiation. As I said, “price wars” always lead to a bad ending because they ruin all the contenders. If you compete, do so at the high end of rates, or find other reasons to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

In addition, a low fee creates distrust in the market. Would you buy cologne for six Euros? I'm afraid not. Value has its own price. It happens to everyone: cheap ends up being expensive. For God's sake, do not be a cheap professional product with a plain white label on the shelf in a large area. Differentiate yourself!