Every day I see coaches offering free coaching sessions and I just want to tell them to STOP! This is because offering free services is not a good way to get clients. Your time is valuable and you should only offer your coaching services to people when you are getting paid for them.

“But Biana” – I have heard many of my clients say when I told them not to offer free coaching sessions – “if we don’t offer a free coaching session, how do we find out I and the potential client are a good fit?”

This is a great question! It is important to make sure that there is a good fit for the two of you to work together. I recommend that instead of offering free coaching you offer a free “Getting To Know You Consultation” to people who are interested in your coaching services. Keep the session short, about 30 minutes and pre-qualify your clients before talking to them. Your time is valuable, so doing the pre-qualification work will help you see who is serious about working with you.

If you are not doing it yet, ask your potential clients to fill out a pre-consult questionnaire for me to get to know them better. Doing this also shows a commitment and interest from their side.

But what helped me even more to NOT offer any free services was creating products – E-books, Home Study Guides, Members-Only Web Site and Teleseminars.

When I get e-mails from prospective clients asking about my services, many times I can tell that the one-on-one service may not be appropriate for them. However, an e-book or some other product might be very useful.

When I am able to offer my products to people who can’t afford my services, or are on the fence about them, I am able to generate revenue from the situations that I would not be able to get anything out of if I only had my services to offer.

If you are a coach who offers ONLY services, I strongly recommend to look into creating multiple streams of income by creating and selling products in addition to services.
My Complete Step By Step Information Products Guide shows you a step-by-step process for creating e-books, teleseminars, members-only web sites, special reports and other products. You can get it at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zinfo

Biana Babinsky

I have heard from many life, career and business coaches who are doing everything alone. They make all of their business decisions along, wear all the hats in their business and have no one to turn to get feedback for their business.

As a result, many of them get discouraged from running their business and stop running their business altogether. It does not have to be that way. If you are a life, business, career or any other type of coach, who is doing everything him/herself, I recommend to find people they can talk about running your business. You need to exchange ideas and get feedback from your peers – doing this helps you get fresh ideas for running your business.

To find the best way to communicate with others, decide on what it is that you need first.

– If you need specific help in marketing your business and getting more clients, you need a business coach. A coach will help you market your business better, create a marketing plan, get more clients and much more.

Need a business coach? Click here to join my online business coaching program to get advice directly from me.

– If you are overwhelmed with details (administrative, marketing, etc) of running your business, it may be a good time to hire a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant can do the tasks that need to be done, but are not at the core of running your business. Great tasks to outsouce include admin, web site updates, some marketing tasks, etc.
Need a virtual assistant? contact me and I will be happy to recommend one for you.

– If you are a business owner, but none of your friends and colleagues are, seek out a networking group for business owners. There is a ton of them both online and offline, and you will be able to participate in the groups, network with other business owners and see how others run their businesses.

Join my Online Networking Group For Solopreneurs to network with solopreneurs just like you.

– If you want to get feedback on your business and marketing efforts and get input from others, create or seek out a mastermind group.

It is great to have a masterminding group at your fingertips to share ideas, get feedback on your new project and much more. I run a web site for business owners at
https://www.MarketingSalad.com where members mastermind and get feedback from each other.

Biana Babinsky

The most successful type of marketing has three components:

– Knowing who you are marketing to. Don’t market to everyone – pick a good and well-defined target market and market specifically to it.

Many professionals think they should market to everyone, but picking a good target market and marketing to it will help you greatly. It will make your marketing easier and much more targeted, and will result in more clients.

– Once you have picked a target market, you should research it as much as you can. Truth is, the most successful marketing happens is when you find a group of people, get to know them and market a product to them that they really want.

– The last component is reaching as many people in your target market as you can. When you have a product that your target market needs, the best way to get more sales is by reaching more people in your target market.

Use techniques such as newsletter publishing, search engine optimization, article marketing and others to reach more people in your target market.

Want to learn how to market your coaching business successfully? Use this FREE Tutorial to learn how to market your coaching business: FREE Tutorial: How To Market Your Coaching Business

I have been posting advice on this blog about marketing for coaches. Check it out:
writing for coaches, are you selling coaching? and more.

However, what should you do if you are not a coach yet? What if you haven’t gone to a coaching school yet and are not actively looking for clients? When should you start marketing your coaching business?

You should start now! Yes, that’s right. Even before you pick your coaching school and before attending. You should start marketing now!

Why? First of all, it will take time to learn about marketing. If you have never marketed anything before and you have not done any marketing or networking, it will take to learn how do it.

And even once you have learned about marketing, it will take time to apply it and get clients from it. Marketing is not a one time event; rather it is a process that you need to apply to your business on a regular (every day) basis.

A coaching practice is a business, so knowing how to market it, and how to network to get clients for it will help you a lot.

Here is how to get started:

– Define what your coaching business does (will do) and how you are going to help your clients.

– Define your target market – who are going to help? How are you going to help them?

– Create an effective marketing message for your business. This should involve who you help, how you help them, etc. I will be teaching a teleseminar in a few weeks on how to do this. You can learn more about it at https://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html

– Create an effective web site for your business. Make sure it reflects your marketing message.

– Start learning about how to start an e-mail list of prospects. The more prospects you have on your list, the more of them you can reach, the easier it will be for you to find coaching clients and buyers for your product.

You should get my Complete Step By Step Online Marketing Course to learn more about online marketing techniques to use to promote your coaching practice online.

Biana Babinsky

Many coaches I know sell coaching or free sample coaching sessions.
The problem with doing this is that people rarely buy coaching or sample sessions. What they do buy is a solution to a problem or a cure for a pain.

I have seen many of my clients try to sell coaching and free coaching sessions – they tried to sell coaching by explaining what coaching means, what a coach is, how the industry works, etc. However, once they did their research, found out what their clients’ problems were, and started selling solutions to the problems, their client count went way up

If you are selling coaching, stop. You need to sharpen your marketing message. Spend some time on defining and researching your target market. Then, instead of selling coaching and sample sessions start talking to clients about the problems they have and the solutions they need.

Need help creating an effective marketing message for your business? In two weeks I will be teaching Create An Effective Marketing Message Teleseminar that will help you create a message that will bring clients to your business. You can register for it at

https://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html
Biana Babinsky

Hi,

The Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Teleseminars Series starts tomorrow, Wednesday, August 1st, so register now at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zteleseminars

—————–

Do you want to create and teach a profitable teleseminar this year?

Now is the best time to create one, because if you do, you will be able to promote and
teach it in September.

Many adults go on vacation when their kids are off from school. Once the children go back to school is September, adults go back to life and work. This is why September is one of the best times to launch a new teleseminar or bring back one you have already done in the past.

Join me for the Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Teleseminars Teleseminar Series to discover:

– How to put together a teleseminar in just a few weeks, so that you are ready to teach your first teleseminar in September

– How to find the most profitable teleseminar topics

– The most important thing to mention in your teleseminar sales letter – it will help you at least double the number of your teleseminar participants

and much, much more.

Register for the Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Teleseminars Teleseminar Series at

https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zteleseminars

Q: How can a virtual assistant get more clients online?

I have helped many virtual assistants get more clients and grow their businesses. Here is what I recommend:

– Define your target market. Yes, all of this is going back to figuring out who your target market is. If you do not know who you want to work with, you will not be able to create an effective online marketing system for your virtual assistant business.

– Create an effective online marketing message. What is your unique selling proposition? How do you help your clients? What benefits will they receive by working with you?

– Create an effective web site around your target market. Having an effective web site is EXTREMELY important when you are doing business online. If your perfect clients come to your web site, but the web site does not convince them to hire you, they will go elsewhere. Make sure that your web site is good at marketing to your target market.

– Go where your clients are. Now that you defined your target market, find it! Network in the groups where your target market networks, etc.

– Use online marketing techniques – search engine optimization, article marketing, your own blog, etc – to promote your services and to drive traffic to your web site.

– Get my special report, “Top Strategies To Get Clients Online”. It discusses, in detail, how to use online marketing to get
clients online. You can get it at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/free_report.html

Biana Babinsky

Are you a coach, consultant or solo professional who wants to have others promote their teleseminars in exchange for commissions?
I have partnered with many web sites and business owners (including coaches) to promote my teleseminars, home study guides and e-books. This is a win-win situation for both of us – they make good money on selling my products (I pay 40% commissions on every sale!) and I receive client referrals that I would not have received otherwise.

The best way to do this is by starting an affiliate program for your teleseminars. Once you have your affiliate program setup, this web site can become your affiliate and promote your teleseminars.

You can usually setup the affiliate program through the shopping cart you are using. 1shoppingcart (or any of its re-branded versions), as well as Zen cart and OS commerce shopping carts have the affiliate capabilities.

Want to earn 40% commissions on my products Join my affiliate program at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/prod/products/affiliate_info.php

Biana Babinsky

Are you a coach? Are you writing articles, ebooks and reports?
Writing is an extremely powerful technique for a coach to use. We can write articles, create information products and promote ourselves in other ways using writing.

– Remove the distractions when you write – don’t check your e-mail, let the phone calls go to voicemail, etc. Spend the time writing, and you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish in 40-50 minutes or uninterrupted writing.

Learn how to write articles and make money with them – get the Article Marketing for Profits Audio Recording.

Biana Babinsky

If you have lots of web site visitors from paid ads but no one is buying on your web site, here are some things that you should look into:

– Are your web site visitors targeted? If people who come to your web site are not your target customers, they will not buy your products.

– Are you showing them targeted products? If they click on your ad for a particular product, make sure that the page they see for that particular product, and not your main page.

– Is your web site copywriting good? When your potential customers click over to your web site, they still need to be convinced to buy from you.

How good is your web copy?

– Is your checkout process easy to use? Even if someone decided to buy from you, but your shopping cart to use, they will abandon it in the middle of the purchase.

Make sure that your checkout process is as easy as possible – have others test it for you.

I recommend testing and re-testing your process before you start spending money on the ads. If your web copy and checkout process are not working well, you will just be wasting your money on ads.

An alternative to the ads that I recommend is learning about free online marketing methods, such as article marketing, search engine optimization, business blogging and others. These are long term marketing strategies that you should learn, so that you can apply them over and over again to your business.

Subscribe to my FREE Online Marketing Newsletter at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/free_newsletter.html to receive my articles on marketing your business online.

Biana Babinsky