Do you know how to sell coaching services?

As an entrepreneur, blogger, podcaster, and digital nomad, I’ve traveled the path of the coaching industry, gaining unique insights and knowledge about how to effectively sell coaching services to different markets.

However, it’s not just my own experience I’m about to share.

Successful coaches from various niches have provided their stories, tips, and tricks, sharing invaluable insights for both budding and seasoned coaching professionals.

This article will draw from the wealth of these experiences to help you navigate the art of selling coaching services, particularly online.

Table of contents

How To Sell Coaching Services: 5 Strategies
1 – Establish Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
2 – Identify Your Target Market
3 – Craft A Compelling Offer
4 – Perfect Your Sales Funnel
5 – Leverage Testimonials & Success Stories
Selling Coaching Services: Best Practices
1 – Create A Professional Online Presence
2 – Build A Strong Brand
3 – Develop A Marketing Strategy
Selling Coaching Services: My Closing Thoughts

Straight off the bat, here are a few essential tips on how to sell coaching services:

• Establish a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as a coach
• Identify and understand your target market
• Craft a clear and compelling service offer
• Optimize a sales funnel for effective client conversion
• Use client testimonials and success stories
• Create a professional online presence
• Engage in podcasts and webinars for wider reach
• Build a strong, value-based brand
• Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy

Let’s dive into these in more detail…

How To Sell Coaching Services: 5 Strategies

1 – Establish Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The story of Marie Forleo, an acclaimed life and business coach, is a fantastic example of a personality powered USP.

Her honest, no-nonsense approach to personal and business growth, and vibrant, fun style, makes her unique and compelling. People like her, and want to learn from her.

Marie leverages her USP by reflecting it in every aspect of her coaching business.

From her website copy to her social media content, making her services uniquely appealing to her target audience.

As a coach myself, several times I have refined my USP.

I began with coaching for bloggers. My USP focused on how to earn a certain amount of money ($10,000/month) from running a blog using a certain amount of work (2 hours per day). This USP led to the creation of a report I used to sign up coaching clients called the Blog Profits Blueprint.

When you start thinking about your USP, ask yourself the following questions:

• What specific skills or experiences make you unique as a coach?
• What sets your coaching style apart from others?
• How do you uniquely address your clients’ challenges?
• What specific results have you helped your clients achieve?
• What distinctive tools or methods do you use in your coaching practice?
• What unique value can clients gain only from your coaching services?
• Who is your ideal client, and why are you uniquely equipped to help them?
• How does your personal story relate to your coaching practice, and how is it unique?
• What are clients saying about your services that sets you apart?
• How do you want to be remembered by your clients?

2 – Identify Your Target Market

Tony Robbins, arguably one of the most successful coaches in the world, understands his target market well.

His clients are typically high achievers looking to unlock their full potential, and he tailors his coaching services to meet their specific needs, further emphasizing the importance of identifying and understanding your target market.

If you know who you are targeting, it enables you to establish a sensible price point and attract demand for your coaching services at the right price.

Michelle Tascoe is a great example of this. She made $1.2 Million in three years with one-on-one financial coaching.

Michelle started with a low priced coaching offer to help people get out of debt. As she gained experience and more clients, she gradually upped her targeting from people who were broke and in debt to wealthy people who were poor with finances but had more to spend on receiving financial coaching. She also upped her prices — a lot!

3 – Craft A Compelling Offer

Consider the example of Stacey Boehman, a life and business coach for entrepreneurs.

Instead of selling individual coaching sessions right away, Stacey offers a five-day training program—a series of video sessions on how to make money as a life coach.

Stacey uses this to sell her one-on-one coaching sessions further down the line.

Her free training series helps to build trust and clarify what her offer is, who is the best fit, and what a client can expect in terms of results if they choose to work with Stacey.

It’s more about getting a foot in the door than signing a client up immediately.

You can learn from Stacey’s approach by offering an initial program (free of charge) to get people into your sales funnel.

4 – Perfect Your Sales Funnel

Dan Lok perfected his sales funnel, allowing him to effectively communicate the value of his coaching services and convert prospects into paying clients.

When you visit his landing page, you are immediately presented with a sign-up form as part of the first call-to-action.

The page is filled with social proof from both brands and consumers that have left Amazon reviews.

Dan Lok uses a “one-time limited offer” along with a countdown timer to create FOMO.

The order confirmation page also comes with an immediate CTA that’s trying to upsell you on additional products.

If you feel that this type of approach is too “salesy” for a coach like yourself, you can always tone it down a little and explore different options for your sales funnel.

For most coaches, getting someone into your sales funnel is going to come down to producing engaging content.

Here are some qualities of an effective sales funnel for selling coaching services:

• Targets specific client needs
• Communicates value clearly
• Uses testimonials for credibility
• Provides engaging content
• Smoothly leads clients through stages
• Has strong calls to action
• Includes follow-up strategies
• Tracks and optimizes performance metrics

5 – Leverage Testimonials & Success Stories

Health and fitness coach, Joe Wicks, leverages testimonials from clients who have achieved significant transformations through his program.

Alongside box-standard one-liner testimonials, Joe Wicks’ website also includes blog articles that include inspiring success stories.

The blog articles include images of the people in question – which adds to the authenticity of the social proof.

These success stories not only demonstrate his effectiveness as a coach but also help build trust with potential clients.

If you want to build up a collection of social proof, here are some tips for getting started:

• Incorporate feedback requests into the closing sessions
• Create a “story share” platform on your website
• Conduct “testimonial contests” with coaching discounts as prizes
• Implement a “coach’s journal” system for tracking progress and testimonials
• Use an “experience sharing session” where clients can share their testimonials
• Implement a “pay it forward” scheme where testimonial leads to free sessions for friends

Selling Coaching Services: Best Practices

1 – Create A Professional Online Presence

In my experience, I’ve learned that a professional online presence is a prerequisite to building a credible brand and attracting the right clients.

You need to create the type of presence that’s going to attract the caliber of clients you want.

This digital presence encompasses several crucial components:

Website

I can’t stress enough how vital it is to have a user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing website that not only showcases your services but also reflects your brand and values.

I remember when I first started, my website was a simple, text-heavy site.

Over time, I learned to make it more visual, interactive, and infused with my brand’s personality.

A significant boost in client inquiries and conversions soon followed this upgrade.

No-code platforms like Wix and Squarespace can provide you with all the tools you need to create an engaging website design in no time at all.

If you want to create a website design that’s optimized for conversions, you may want to use a platform like ClickFunnels to ensure you have access to the right set of templates.

Social Media

If used effectively, social media will enable you to unlock a treasure trove of leads for your coaching services.

You may be hesitant to commit to social media due to the cost and time it demands to keep ‘feeding’ the social channels.

However, once you dip your toes into the social media world, you will realize the potential it has for building a community and boosting your visibility.

Regularly posting valuable content and engaging with your audience can significantly grow your following and client base.

To ensure consistency, the best thing you can do is use a tool like Hootsuite to schedule content across multiple social media platforms in advance.

By bringing all of your posting under one roof, a solution like Hootsuite will give you a complete view of your social media efforts and streamline the scheduling process.

As long as you stick to social media habits that are realistic, you can build a following without spending all day, every day, posting to your social channels.

Blog

Blogging was a game-changer for me.

The ability to share insights, tips, and thought leadership in my niche by sharing stories from my own life established my authority and enabled me to tap into tremendous organic search traffic from Google.

In my case, for many years, my blog was the number one source of new clients for my coaching business. The key was to be consistent and target keywords to attract the right kind of audience.

It wasn’t something that worked instantly, but because I enjoyed writing, I was able to be consistent. Google rewarded my efforts and sent me over 100 new email subscribers per day, all for free. Many of these people went on to purchase my coaching products.

The effort you put into creating relevant, high-quality blog content is a long-term investment that pays off by attracting potential clients to your website.

Podcasts/Webinars

Participating in podcasts and webinars initially felt intimidating, but I’ve found it to be an excellent way to share my knowledge with targeted audiences.

Once you get over the initial stage fright, you will relish the opportunity to go on as many podcasts and webinars as possible.

It has allowed me to reach audiences outside of my usual networks and build credibility in my niche.

The best thing you can do is foster relationships with podcast hosts and other thought leaders. This can be done in person at events, directly approaching via email or social media messages, or through mutual introductions (this last one can work very well as you build your network).

2 – Build A Strong Brand

It’s easy to assume that branding is just about having a catchy name and a good-looking logo.

Only when you launch a product or service do you realize that a brand is so much more — it’s the experience and promise you to deliver to your clients. It’s your personality, your presentation style, all the elements that your potential customers and paying clients experience as they work with you.

To put it simply, your band is the feeling you evoke in others, and how that leads them to decide to purchase from you.

Identify your brand values

I’ve seen the power of aligning my business with my core values. I’ve always been about freedom, both financial freedom and time freedom. This comes through in every piece of content I create and all the coaching products and services I’ve ever sold.

These values guide every business decision I make, shape the client experience, and allow me to stand firm in my unique approach to coaching.

Develop a unique visual identity

Investing in a visual identity that reflects your brand’s essence is one of the best decisions you can make for your coaching business.

It’s about creating a feeling and building recognition.

When a potential client visits your websites, they get a sense of what working with you will be like.

With design tools like Canva, it’s never been easier for a coach to create visual mockups and play around with different graphical elements. You can keep things simple to start with when your budget is tight, but over time it pays to reinvest some of your cash back into your brand visuals.

Craft a compelling brand message

Your brand message should evoke an emotional response, clearly articulate what you do, who you serve, and why you’re the best choice for your potential clients.

Remember, your brand is not just a logo. You can’t expect just one graphic to deliver all these messages. Your logo, and other graphics you use, along with your videos, social media, and all your marketing, and products and services you sell all contribute to your brand message.

Consider your brand like a long ongoing experience that your audience has with you. The longer they are in your world, the more they will begin to feel and understand what you stand for as a coach.

3 – Develop A Marketing Strategy

In the beginning, I was under the impression that as long as I was good at what I did, clients would naturally come.

This is a common misconception.

Developing a marketing strategy is a non-negotiable part of selling coaching services. Here are some of the best options for marketing your coaching services based on my experience and case studies from other coaches.

Content Marketing

Creating and sharing valuable content has been instrumental in attracting and converting my ideal clients. It’s about providing value first and positioning myself as an expert in my niche.

The key to succeed with content is to understand what your target audience is trying to do, what problems they have, and creating content to go meet them where they are.

The more you understand how your ideal client feels and describes their problems, and how they go looking to solve those problems, the better your content will be.

The internet is full of content, so you may feel like your content is lost in the crowd. When you go after niche markets, you reduce your competition down to the point where it may be just you and a handful of other competitors.

SEO

Content is great because it serves two purposes. First the content itself educates, entertains and helps people to solve problems. It’s a direct line of the communication with potential clients.

However, content is also your main SEO tool. By learning the basics of sound SEO tactics, when you construct content, you know to include certain keywords, to include important elements and use structures that search engines are looking for.

As an example, this article you are reading now is following SEO guidelines. It includes many elements, including a table of contents, bullet point lists, headlines that target certain key phrases, all designed to help this article rank highly for the search phrase ‘How To Sell Coaching Services‘.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is an entirely different beast. What is engaged with and shared the most, will get viewed the most.

By monitoring your own results, you can learn what social media content formats work best to generate more views. You can also monitor similar people and see what types of content they produce that works.

Unfortunately social media is very hit and miss. This is why most people focus on a volume approach, knowing that more times at bat will result in more hits.

One smart tactic with social media, especially if you are attempting to manage it yourself, is focus on only one platform. Don’t try and be everywhere at once. Be consistent on Instagram or YouTube or Pinterest and build your following over time.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is my favorite marketing method by far. Of course you have to first grow an email list, which is where your content, SEO, social media, blogging, etc can come into play.

Once you have people subscribed to your email list, you have a direct line of communication to your potential clients. Almost all of my clients have come through my email list. While they may discovery me somewhere else, it is my email newsletters that build trust and convince clients to work with me.

Your goal should be to ask people to subscribe to your email list in as many places as possible. Your website/blog, your social media profiles, when you speak on podcasts or webinars – even in your email signature! Keep asking people to subscribe to your newsletter.

Partnerships/Collaborations

Partnerships with similar thought leaders or complementary business is one of the best ways to rapidly expand your coaching business.

The right partner can promote your message to thousands of people, with an endorsement. It’s the combination of distribution + trust that leads to the best results from this marketing method.

Strategic partners should benefit as much as you do. Whether you pay them a referral commission for each new client they send your way, or you offer to promote them in return, there must be a compelling reason why they are willing to work with you.

How To Sell Coaching Services: My Closing Thoughts

Each of the practices mentioned in this article have shaped my journey as a coach.

They’ve helped me build a strong online presence, create a powerful brand, and craft an effective marketing strategy, which together have been key to selling my coaching services successfully.

Although it has taken many years to succeed, today I can say that my coaching and training products have generated over $2 Million in revenue. Needless to say, this income has changed my life for the better in so many ways.

The key takeaway for you is that each element is a piece of the larger puzzle, and a holistic approach will yield the best results.

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Michelle Tascoe Made $1.2 Million In Three Years With One-On-One Financial Coaching (VC EP33)
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