How many times has this happened to you? You are talking to a prospect who sounds like a perfect client. You have had a wonderful conversation and you are really looking forward to working together. But at the last minute, as soon as the prospect hears about how much you charge, the prospect says: “I can’t afford this!”

So, what do you do? You have three options:

Option 1: Lower Your Prices To Accommodate This Client

I have to tell you, this is the worst option. I teach my students to never lower their coaching prices.

When you lower your prices the message that you are sending out to the world is “I do not value my own services, so I am lowering my prices.” If you do not value your services, no one else will either.

Even if the client decides to hire you at the lower rate, you will secretly resent the client and will not be able to be your best with this client. This is a lose-lose situation for both of you.

Option 2: Be Polite, But Stand Your Ground

Tell the potential client that you would love to work with them, but your rates are your rates, and that’s what you charge.

Better than option #1, but you still did not help the client and did not earn any more money. This is why we have:

Option 3: Recommend A Lower Priced Product

This is the best option for both you and the potential client. Not everyone is going to become your one-on-one client. But you still want to help as many people as possible, but not necessarily by working one-on-one with each of them.

Offering products to people who can’t afford your services helps you in many different ways. You are able to help them without having to lower your fee. And you are able to make money - a win-win for both of you!

So, how can you offer products to your potential customers? Here are a few options:

Create Your Own Products

Here are some products you can create:

- E-books.

- Audio Products. Record yourself on your computer, record an interview with you or someone else, record a class or workshop, etc.

- Teleseminars. Teach a class over the phone.

- Membership Web Site. Repackage your knowledge, and help your target market in a group setting.

Want to create your own products? Learn how to do that in the How To Create Information Products Guide, available at http://www.marketingsalad.com/products.html

Or, you can

Offer Other People’s Products

So what if you don’t have any products for sale (yet!) and you need to recommend a product to someone today? Recommend other people’s products! You can recommend other people’s products and still earn money with them!

Recommend books. Books are great to learn from and inexpensive to purchase, so most all of your potential clients will be able to afford them. Join an affiliate program at Amazon or some other online bookseller and you will be able to recommend books and earn money. An affiliate program is a program that lets you recommend someone else’s products, while earning commissions on every sale that you refer.

Recommend products from other online business owners. If you have used another business owner’s products and think that your clients and potential clients will benefit from those products as well, join the business owner’s affiliate program and earn money by recommending their products.

It may not be obvious from the business owner’s web site whether they offer an affiliate program or not. If you want to recommend someone’s products, but you can’t find an affiliate program on their web site, you may want to e-mail the business owner personally and ask if they offer an affiliate program.

Want to recommend my products? Click here to join my affiliate program and earn 40% commissions on every sale!

Biana Babinsky

Some time ago I was working with a new client. She was calling herself a life coach, and her marketing message was that “she is a life coach who could make everyone’s life better”. She told me during our first session that everyone is her potential client. Even though she was charging a very low rate ($150 for 3 coaching sessions) she had very few people take her up on her offer of coaching. Her strategy of marketing to everyone just wasn’t working.

The first thing that she and I did was we re-defined her coaching niche. At first, she wanted to continue working with everyone. But as we talked, we found a group of people she really enjoyed working with. She loved helping women find something they were really passionate about - new career direction, new job, new business, promotion at work, etc. Then she narrowed it down even more - she really enjoyed helping women in their 40s move up the career ladder.

So we re-branded her as a career coach for women in their 40s looking to further their careers. She also increased her rates (after resisting this for a long time). Now she was charging $450 for 3 coaching sessions and she started getting more clients.

After a year and a half she increased her rates again and narrowed down her niche even more - she decided to work with women managers in just a few specific industries. She was getting so many clients that she started a waiting list.

She now told her potential clients that she was “a career coach who helps women managers get promoted, make more money and ultimately, find the careers that they love”. This is a very powerful marketing message! How does this compare with “life coach who could make people’s lives better”, her old tag line? Sounds better, right? Her new message tells you exactly who her target market is, what their problems are, and, most importantly, how she can help her target market solve those problems.

What can we learn from this example? A few things:

- Working with everyone will NOT get you clients, you must narrow your target market. When you narrow your target market sees themselves in your marketing message, you will get clients much faster.

- Your brand, your marketing message and your overall marketing strategy should be extremely specific and targeted. The more specific you are about who you serve, the more clients you are going to get. When she called herself “life coach who works with everyone”, she got very few clients, even though her rates were low.

Once she narrowed her niche, and created a marketing message that told her clients exactly how she will help them solve their problems, she started getting many more clients, even though her rates were much higher.

- Niche, niche, niche! My client was able to finally create a business that she loves and that makes money with after she found her niche.

Take action! Find a profitable niche for your coaching business, and redefine your brand and other marketing materials to communicate with your new niche. You can get How To Find A Profitable Target Market Audio Recording and start building your more profitable coaching business today!

Biana Babinsky

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Welcome to the Coaching Kitchen! Pull up a chair and sit down. This blog is all about going-ons in a coaching kitchen - the heart of a coaching business.

We will talk about everything that goes into creating an extremely profitable coaching business - selecting a niche, doing marketing, attracting clients, teaching groups and teleseminars, creating information products and much, much more!

So subscribe to the feed and visit us often - we have lots of interesting things planned!

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Biana Babinsky