September is a great time to reach out to potential coaching clients and to communicate your offer. Not only do clients seek support at this time of year for annual planning or strategic thinking but they are often looking for a supportive coaching partner to help them achieve their goals before the year end. Combined with the fact that most sponsors and coaching budget holders are also budget planning it is worth working on getting your message out there for a share of the opportunity before it’s all allocated for another year!
Getting your message out there takes courage and a mindset of experimentation to find what specific channels work best for you. Whether you are communicating to your ideal client type on social media or reconnecting through networking or placing calls it is important to be prepared to share your story and your product well.
This work starts with looking at your sales strategy and what products you are going to offer so that you can prepare your communication for each revenue stream. Many coaches find it difficult to prepare their communication messages as they say they feel they are lacking a unique selling point and therefore won’t stand out in a crowd. I would like to say to every coach that this trying too hard to be unique is a waste of energy when most clients look at similarities to themselves in your story and what in your offer will meet their pain points.
So rather than thinking about what you don’t have it is better to think about what your ideal client needs to see and hear that could be useful to them. Preparation, Practice and Feedback on your elevator speech is key to getting your verbal communication ready before working on your written statements. The feedback also needs to be sought to see the perspective of others. It continues to surprise me that what I am selected for is not something I have in my CV or coaching experience. It is more about what they hear or read in who I am today that they are drawn to and how I helped somebody like them recently and what the outcome was.
Once you have asked yourself key questions around the buyer of your product and what your product has that can help them believe in coaching as an aid to them fixing their own challenges or desired outcome you will find it easier to express how your coaching will stand out to them. What then takes some experimentation is getting comfortable with self-promotion and championing coaching in your verbal and written communication so that you are not to be missed whilst in the crowd!
If you are looking for support in your business build then follow the updates on my LinkedIn page @TheCoachingSolopreneur