Recently I received a following e-mail from a career coach:

“I am a career coach and have been one for a while. It seems that in today’s tough job market there are many unemployed people, which is supposedly a career coach’s target market. However, I find that my prospects tell me that they can’t afford my career coaching services.

What should I do so that I can get more career coaching clients willing to pay for my services?”

Biana says: What a great question! My definition of a target market are people who need, want and can afford your career coaching services.

It looks like you have 2 out of 3 - they want and need your services, but they cannot afford them. So what should you do?

Whatever you do, do not lower the price of your services! When you lower your service prices, the message that you are sending to the world is that you do not value the services that you provide. If you do not value them, your clients will not value them either.

Instead of lowering your service prices, how about creating lower priced products and services? Group coaching, e-books, teleseminars, workshops, membership programs - all of these will help you deliver information to your target market at a lower price than your one-on-one career coaching services.

For example, you can create:

- “How To Get Your Dream Job” e-book

- A three-month coaching program, “How to get back into job search after being laid off”

- A teleseminar on how to create an effective resume

and much more.

Find out what your target market needs and create an information product with that information. Then, when someone can’t afford your career coaching rates, offer them the information product instead. To learn how to create information products, get the How To Create Information Products Guide

Biana Babinsky

Many coaches have told me that all they wish for is a full coaching practice. This was also what a client of mine, Linda, really wished for. She mapped out exactly how she saw her full practice - 25 clients, each one signed up for her 2-sessions a month package.

After creating a marketing plan, and diligently using it to Linda got her wish. She had 25 clients she enjoyed working with, each one was signed up for her 2-sessions a month package.

But, she was still having some issues:

- She wanted to coach only three days a week and spend the other two days on in-person networking events, marketing and spending time with her family. This proved to be impossible, because she could not coordinate the schedules of 26 people (25 clients and her) to fit all the sessions into Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. As a result she didn’t have the free days to do her networking and marketing that she originally thought she would.

- She didn’t have time to market and network - because she didn’t have her free days, it became hard to fit her marketing and networking in-between her client sessions.

- After some time of working with 25 clients she became tired and overwhelmed She hired an assistant to schedule and re-schedule clients and take care of all the admin work. While doing that definitely helped, she was still feeling overwhelmed.

- She wanted to work with more people, but she could not physically take on any more clients.

She started not enjoying her work as much as she used to - she was tired, overwhelmed and she knew that she was not doing some of the things she needed to do. She wasn’t able to help everyone she wanted to help, she had no time for marketing, and, most importantly, she started not enjoying her work!

Be careful what you wish for. One question that I ask my new coaching clients is: “If I could grant any wish for your coaching business, what would it be?” Many coaches that I have worked with told me immediately that their wish would be for a full coaching practice. Many coaches believe that the only way to have a successful business is by having a full practice. And this is not true. There are many different ways to have an extremely successful coaching business:

- Some coaches don’t have to work with one-on-one clients at all. Some coaches I know only work with clients in group settings.

- You can offer create a very successful coaching business by helping your clients with information products. Teleseminars, audios, e-courses, ebooks, study guides - you can offer these information products in addition to your coaching services. That way you will be able to work with very few clients one-on-one and you will be able to help many more clients with your products.

There are many more ways to structure your coaching business. You could membership web sites to offer different levels of coaching programs. You could offer a group coaching program and give your participants an option to buy a few one-on-one sessions when they need additional help. You are only limited by your imagination!

You are running your own coaching business, which means that you set the rules. If the current coaching business model that you have isn’t working for you, map out the coaching model that will fit you better and then create a plan to achieve it!

Linda in the example above decided not to take on any additional clients until she was down to 15 clients. So every time a client graduated, she didn’t look for a replacement, but instead used the time she had freed up to market, build her list and create information products. Later, she decided that her ideal coaching business was a mix of 10 one-on-one clients, teleseminars and a membership web site.

What is a model of YOUR ideal coaching business? Post a comment and share with us!

Biana Babinsky

P.S. Learn how to create your ideal coaching business at the online business mentoring web site

Lately, I have been hearing from many coaches, asking me to teach them how to get results with social networking. Here is a typical email I receive:

“Biana, I have been reading on many coaching lists and forums about social networking. I jumped in a few months ago, created accounts on Twitter and Facebook and started using them. I typically spend 1-2 hours a day on Twitter and Facebook. It has been three months since I joined and I have nothing to show for it except all this time that I have spent there.

Help! How can I start getting coaching clients from Twitter and Facebook?”

First of all, I don’t recommend jumping into social networking without a plan. If you want to get social networking results, you must have a plan for what you want to accomplish with social networking and how you want to accomplish it.

If you want people who you meet on social networking web sites to immediately become your coaching clients, you will be disappointed. People who you meet on social networking web sites are not there to buy - they are there to learn, communicate, share and promote themselves. Because of this, it is much easier for you to get leads (newsletter subscribers) than clients on social networking web sites. Once you have them on your list, you can communicate with them, continue building relationships with them and turn them into clients. But first you must get them on your list.

But even before that you need to do some prep work. Until you know who you want to connect with and have a specific landing page for your social networking efforts, you are not going to see good results. So let’s get started with your prep work:

Decide Who You Want To Subscribe To Your Newsletter

Before you can get good leads, you need to know WHO they are. Who do you want to subscribe to your newsletter? You always want your target market to subscribe to your newsletter!

Create A Landing Page For Your Social Networking

Now it is time to think about a web page where you are going to send people you meet on social networks. This is the page that you are going to include in your social networking profiles, so that people you meet on social networks would visit it.

This page is extremely important, because it is going to turn people you meet on social networks into leads. This means that the only action that people should be able to take on that page is subscribe to your newsletter.

Many people think that if they offer more option on this landing page, then more people will be able to pick the option that they like and use it. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true. The more options you offer, the more confused people become and the more likely they are to just leave the page without taking any action.

So if you have a page on which you give your visitors many choices, change it! Give just one choice - subscribing to your newsletter - and you will get more results. A page that gives just one choice is called a Squeeze Page and I discuss how to create Squeeze Page for social networking in the How To Create Effective Squeeze Pages Study Guide.

Now you are prepared to use social networking! Start networking with your target market by answering questions, sharing useful tips and information, sharing links to helpful articles and blog posts and adding value. When your target market sees that you are an expert at what you do, they will visit your profile and click on the link to your page and subscribe to your newsletter!

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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