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We’ve been in the business of coaching for a long time…

What we’ve found from talking to many coaches is they tend to get the first few clients over the line in the first year to 18 months of coaching before income levels stabilise at around 4-5 long-term 1:1 Clients.  There’s obviously a range of results from coaches with some getting better numbers than others, but the key point here is that the income tends to settle.

This is generally the point where the marketing effort has to give way to the time that needs to be spent in delivery.  This is what gets called the Coaching Flatline.  Flatline happens for one key reason.  Coaching 1:1 Clients is a time for money exchange.  There’s very little leverage in it and worse than that, when coaches get concerned with losing their clients, they can start over servicing… when that happens, income growth flattens and the business focus changes towards maintaining income rather than growing income.

Therefore the challenge is to find a different model that breaks through the Flatline and gives the coach sufficient leverage in their delivery services to help many more clients than just those in 1:1 Client programmes.  The answer is group coaching!

Once you have a group programme you can deliver the same material to many clients who all get the benefit.  You also have the ability to invite guests to your delivery sessions meaning that marketing is back on again!  Much more impact, much more income, all thanks to a model that breaks through the Flatline.

Once you’ve broken through Flatline, you also have the ability to help other coaches do the same!  This can be done either in a Firm or from Mentoring other coaches to break through their own Flatline.  Now you have three solid income streams that not only breaks through Flatline, but also give you far more stability of income as you’re less reliant on 1:1 Client revenue.  It means that if a 1:1 Client decides to “graduate”(aka finish up) you have a pool of clients in your group programme that you can tap to upgrade them into your 1:1 Client programme.  Awesome 🙂

So that’s how Flatline works… and that’s how to get through it…

If you want to talk about how to start your own group, tell us a bit about you and we’ll be in contact.  You can do that here:

You’ll already know that your agenda (for long-term, high paying clients) is different to your Prospect’s Agenda (for quick and preferably free advice from you!)…

See how a Group programme fits into the Pathway Strategy and how to utilise three super-helpful outcome of the Pathway:

These are just some of the benefits of having a Pathway Strategy…

If you want to talk about how to install the Pathway Strategy into your business, talk to us!

The Coaching Cycle…

In this blog we talk about how to use the coaching cycle to keep clients long term…

This is a theme we talk a lot about as there’s a lot of money that gets lost by coaches when they have clients leaving early… not only revenue loss from losing the client, but also the time it takes in sales and marketing to replace them!

A lot of consultants have the ability to solve a problem in a business, but that can lead to a very start/stop type of engagement.  When you approach your clients with a cycle, it gives a lot of structure to your coaching that is missing when you are merely fixing problems.

So building a coaching cycle works like this…

You start with a Plan… a large part of the plan is the process you go through to make sure you’ve covered everything before you start.  Without one, your subsequent sessions can feel random and “unplanned”… this is not helpful for confidence from the client!

The next part of the cycle is breaking down the Plan into specific Tasks or projects.  Turns out that no one gets super-excited about a big plan with a tonne of pages to read… just looks like endless work on top of the endless work your client already has :(…  So the Tasks are the bite size chunks that come from the plan… We use worksheets to help with this process of making the Tasks easy to implement.  Means the client isn’t starting with a blank sheet of paper that never gets much traction between sessions.

Once the Tasks are being implemented, the next part of the cycle is to Monitor the results of those Tasks.  This is to make sure the needle is moving in the right direction… if it’s not, then why are we working on it!  Important here is the quantification of the Monitoring as this is what confirms to the client the ROI of the programme they are paying you for.

The last part of the cycle is the Review… this allows you to put the spotlight on them to make sure they’ve done their part of the process.  Your job as coach is to lead them in the right direction… this doesn’t mean doing it for them as that’s not your role.  Therefore for your programme to be successful, you need a mechanism to Review their performance and to reset the plan for the upcoming period.  If you don’t review, you lose the opportunity to reset their commitment to the big picture that you planned from the outset of when you decided to work together.  Gotta review people!

Now you’ve done the Review, your ready for the next Quarterly Plan and you’ve started the cycle again…

That’s the coaching cycle!

We have taken the (rather rash!) step of custom designing a Software system that builds the coaching cycle into your client programme.  It take all the hard work out of operating this with your clients and gives you the tools you need to “Find your Fee” and make sure the client can see ROI on their programme to keep them long term as a client with you.

Check out our Home Page where it says SOFTWARE for a demo… if you like the look of it, we should talk!

Quantifying Your Wins…

This is another big deal when it comes to keeping clients long term…

The process of quantifying your wins is something that’s not done at all by clients!  We have to do it for them and remind them of the great decision that they made to engage our services.

If we don’t do this, they can think that all the gains that have been made would have happened anyway, and why should they keep on paying for our services!  Without a solid way to quantify our wins, it’s no wonder that clients get to wondering “what have you done for me lately!”

We think this is a massive part of being a professional business coach!

The business optimisation software that we have built makes this process obvious in the way that we are able to compare our fees to the upside that’s available in the business…

A review that looks at quantifiable wins is how to do this as it shows the client 3 things:

1. Shows the client the progress you’re making as key mile markers

2. Also they can see great value for the time they are spending working on their business with you

3. Lastly it demonstrates ROI on your fees which is really important for retaining

We’ve automated this into a propriatory Software system because retention is such a massive part of building a successful coaching business… check out the demo on the home page where it says SOFTWARE!