We’re going to look at three powerful ways you can attract high-ticket clients to your business. It’s not a complicated system by any means. The first step is to reverse engineer success. The second step is to provide a transformational offer. The last step is the strategy call. It’s that simple. It’s not a complex sales funnel. It’s not a time-consuming social media strategy. Once you get these mechanisms in place in your business, then it’s time for you to scale. But you’ve got to get things right before you scale, otherwise you’re going to spend a lot of money pushing traffic through a system that simply doesn’t work.
Would you love to attract more high-ticket clients by tinkering with the tools you already have?
By high-ticket I’m talking about $3,000 plus. As a coaching and consultant business, it’s really important to get those high-ticket clients and it’s going to help you position yourself as an expert in your particular niche. But we’re not going to look at reinventing the wheel. We’re going to make use of tools that are proven to work, but also tools you already have. If you’re new to your coaching consulting business, this system will also be helpful in building the foundations, but I will assume that you are already in business and training as a coach or a consultant.
Would you love to do it without building a complex sales funnel or a massive social media following?
It’s not that I don’t think sales funnels or social media work. They absolutely do. I use both. But complex sales funnels can be a lot of work. That can be a huge investment, even with the do-it-yourself tools that are available. They always present as if they are really simple and easy to do. But you might need good copywriting and good design. You might need product creation, which in itself is a huge project. You need to come up with unique IP, videos, landing pages. There might be up-sells, down-sells, email sequences and conditional actions.
Complex sales funnels can work, but they’re a huge investment with no guaranteed results. You can spend a fortune building out one of these systems, and it might seem like an ideal scenario. But what happens if potential clients don’t get past that first step, that first opt-in, that first landing page? Or it might work to a degree, but it costs you so much to fill that funnel, to get enough eyeballs to the landing page, that it just doesn’t make it viable. You’ve got to consider how much it will cost to fill your funnel if you go down that path.
There are also ways you can leverage the traffic you already have in your website. Social media can work, and people invest a lot of time building their social media following and engagement, but it doesn’t necessarily mean dollars in your bank account. And it doesn’t necessarily mean more high-end clients. As a coaching consultant, you’re selling your time, so you don’t want to be spending it on social media engagement. My system can work with or without a strong social media presence. I’ve been in this game a long time, getting my hands dirty, and I know what works so you can get value and a good return on investment. And a lot of it you can do yourself.
Do you want to generate more business while spending less time by reverse engineering what is proven to work?
Many coaching and consulting businesses are smashing it, while others are struggling to get the clients they need. But there are easy ways to see what’s working online, particularly on a website, and how you can make an assumption about what’s creating the best outcome for other businesses and how it can be reverse engineered it into your own website. You can replicate the results of leading coaches and consultants in your niche. Or, potentially, do better, modelling on what they’ve got and then adjusting to suit your own specific needs.
Who is this system for?
You are a coach or a consultant with a burning passion to help more people. Or you’re a business owner using a consultative approach, which is my style of working with people. I’m a people person. I love to talk to them, educate them, work alongside them, support them. And that’s why I love working with coaches and consultants, because they’re of a similar view. We also like to tinker with things to make them work more effectively.
Once you understand the process, it should be quite easy for you to massage it into your own business, and you might be able to use some of these strategies with your own clients They may not be coaches or consultants, but some of your clients will benefit as you’re consulting with them.
If you’re content with the level of business you’ve currently got, then obviously you’re not looking to change. If you’re not looking to change, this system’s not for you. But I think, for the most part, coaches and consultants are looking to grow. They’re continuous learners. So it’s about taking what you learn and applying it to your business so that change happens.
You could be a few small tweaks from greater success.
Because you’re a coaching consultant, you probably enjoy education and learning from the experts. The problem is, the systems do work, but they’re really complicated and outside the realm of possibility for small business owners who often work solo or in very small teams. They just haven’t got the time or resources to massage their intellectual property into the system so it’s unique and specific to them.
I’m a continuous learner and I study other gurus and marketing experts and what they’re doing online to keep on top of things. But how can we take this learning and make it simplified? How can we massage this into an existing website to create a similar outcome, but with less investment, and make it achievable for the average small business owner?
Have you tried sales funnels?
Some of the very best marketing presenters and platform speakers talk about sales funnels. The problem is, they are complicated marketing systems, so it takes significant effort, time investment and money. I’ve spoken to lots of people after they’ve built out a sophisticated sales funnel. They’ve got their opt-ins, their squeeze pages, their video sales pages, up-sells, down-sells, email sequences. They can have sophisticated actions and triggers according to how someone interacts with a particular funnel. If you don’t buy now, they make a stiffer offer. You get something via email. You’ve probably experienced them as an end-user as well.
The strategy definitely does work, and lots of people have applied it. However, it does take a lot of traffic to fill that funnel. And if you don’t know what’s converting to it, you could be burning money. I often speak to people who have invested in sales funnels and didn’t get a great outcome. They often come to me to find out how we can manipulate the content and resources so they get some sort of value out of it. If they’ve got great copywriting, there might be other ways to apply it so they get something from all the hard work they’ve done or paid for.
Traffic sources
The challenge is to get enough eyeballs, enough traffic, to whatever it is you’re offering. SEO is really popular. Videos can be great resources to build your sales process and attract enough eyeballs. Articles, blogs, social media. You don’t necessarily need to be highly engaged in social media, but there are ways to apply it to create an outcome. Google Ads can be useful. Sometimes it’s a fast way to burn money, but it can be useful in certain circumstances. Podcasts. All the content marketing is great.
Referrals are good too, but getting involved with networking events can be a huge time investment. It might involve lots of early mornings and late evenings for little return. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. I’ve done all that myself. Email marketing. SMS. There are a lot of ways to get traffic to your business online, and it will vary from niche to niche.
It’s my view that these bigger investments are primarily to drive people to your company website, to your brand. They also require specialist knowledge and skills or a huge time investment for yourself. Coaches and consultants tend to be a one-person business, so they’re time poor. The gurus will tell you to try everything, see what sticks, test and measure, see what works. But during that process, you’re going to burn through a lot of money. It’s a huge expense and risk when there is a faster, more practical approach.
Don’t dabble
With all the strategies out there, I think it’s important not to dabble. By trying to dabble in systems like the sales funnel or traffic sources, you’ll probably not produce the results you’d hoped for. You’ll give it a lot time and energy for a while, but you won’t see the results fast enough, so you’ll revert back to whatever marketing efforts you used in the past. You’ll go back to the things you wanted to avoid but that worked, like networking events. You’ll go back to persevering through huge time investments where you were getting minimal results.
But you don’t need up-sells, you don’t need down-sells, you don’t need cross-sells, you don’t need complex email sequences. As a coach or a consultant, you’re probably a people person with reasonable connections on social media already. Look at leveraging those connections so you can make the most of them. You’ve probably got at least a couple hundred people visiting your website. Are you really getting a good return from those people? Extrapolate that out over the course of the year. That’s a lot of eyeballs on your website. And if you’re not converting a lot of them into your high-end clients, then it’s just not worth it.
Three simple steps
You want a simple system that works. You want to convert potential high-ticket clients who visit your website or engage with you on social media. When the system is set up correctly, it will create consistent delivery of quality leads. And consistency is really important for a coach or consultant. You don’t want leads all at once and then nothing, because it’s hard to facilitate all those enquiries. But you want consistency. You want a system where you can turn it on and off, increase it or decrease it as you need to. When you’ve got a quiet patch, you can dial it up. If you’ve got a busy patch, you can dial it down to control that lead flow.
The good news is that much of what you’ve learnt from sales funnel webinars and other training can be applied to what I’m showing you now. It’s just simplifying it so you get a faster result and start servicing the great high-end clients that you’re receiving. It’s a simplified method that delivers value. The other thing, too, is that some of these marketing systems feel a bit like snake oil, or they can feel a bit cheesy. A lot of coaches and consultants I talk to don’t want to appear that way. They want to appear authentic, trustworthy and reliable. They want to be someone people can know, like and trust, not someone trying to pitch.
I focus on websites because people are looking to buy. If someone comes to your website, they’re looking to make a transaction. They’ve got a burning need. And it would be rude not to be able to serve them in a suitable way. Facilitate a way so they can learn more about you. But make sure they understand who you are, what your values are, and how you operate as a coach or a consultant. That way they can know what you stand for, make the enquiry and build that relationship. This system will do that without extra effort. You can do some of those steps one-to-many. And then, at the pointy end, when you’re signing the higher client, you can do that personally.
Reverse engineering success
Competitor research can be really powerful. Do a Google search and look for coaches and consultants in your space. Look at those who are advertising. If you know that someone’s advertising frequently, that’s evidence that their website is converting really well. Open up all of the advertisers that you can get your hands on and see what the common traits are, what their offers are, their call-to-action. See how their page is structured. Because we can leverage those learnings and reverse engineer them into your own website. Your website might be 80 or 90 per cent right, but to reverse engineer some of their call-to-action strategies and structure can be really quite powerful. Advertisers aren’t typically going to be fools. They’re going to have high-converting websites.
You can also search interstate and international cities for similar business to yours. You could use a virtual private network (VPN). I use PureVPN so I can search as if were in London or New York. It’s good to search from a big city where there’s lots of competition. Anyone spending money in those cities, in a similar business to yours, probably spend a lot of time to get results, so you can model yourself on them. It’s also powerful to look at cross-industries who share your target market, or even look across industries who share your brand, attitude or personality. If there are people out there who you relate to and have a personal brand, it’s worthwhile looking to see what they’ve done, especially if they’re highly successful.
You can also look at template providers. They’ll often search to see what’s popular and trendy. I’m not suggesting that you buy a template and shove your content in it. I’m just suggesting that you look at them to see what other people believe to be a popular trending website design, and you can often learn things that way. There are also user-experience testing tools, such as www.usertesting.com and www.userbrain.com.
There are lots of different methods which can be adapted for your personal circumstances. For instance, radical and incremental website redesign. Most people who design websites will present a radical redesign, because that’s a brand new everything. It’s a bigger investment for the client, and it’s a better sale for the company. However, incremental website redesigns that massage the call to action into the page or refine it so it’s more in line with the sites that are converting can create a far better outcome and be a much smaller investment.
So would you prefer investing in a complex marketing system with no guarantees, or model on the success of others? What I’m doing right now is, to a degree, the system that I’m teaching you. You’re learning it by seeing the process yourself. You could use videos or webinars. You could use lots of different resources that help people to self-qualify. This part of the process is one-to-many, so it filters through and filters down. People will begin to know, like and trust you. That’s how simple it is. Just a simple video or webinar, whatever it is you do. There are a lot of options.
At the end, provide a way for people to test the waters so there’s no risk. They’ve seen your webinar or video. They’ve learnt a little bit about you. They just want to talk to you personally, because it is a high-end client we’re going for. We’re not going for a $7 or $50 product. We’re going for high-end clients who typically don’t buy online. They’ll want to talk to you and really understand if the product is going to work for them. They want to test the waters at no risk. They’ll be ready to discover more when they get to the end of this strategy. And you need to adjust and apply this system to your own unique position as a business. It’s leading people through a very low-pressure sales method.
Ideally, your coaching and consulting will sell itself by the time people get to the end. The beauty of it, too, is that they’ve self-qualified, but you may want to qualify them as well because there might be reasons why you can’t work with a particular client. For example, you may have a client who owns half a dozen dry cleaners around Melbourne and you’re working with them closely to grow their business. If you pick up their direct competitor in Melbourne, there’d be a significant conflict of interest. This system allows you to weed out potential hazards like that, but also people who you think are not a good fit. There might be alarm bells ringing. Following this process creates a way out for you as well. You can avoid the conflicts and depart as friends.
Your transformational offer
As a coach or consultant, you want people who are looking for transformation. They want to change in some way. So your offer needs to be able to produce the results your potential clients are looking for. It’s not about your program mechanics. It’s not about the resources or the time that you invest in coaching and consulting. It’s not about the video programs, the online classes, your membership website. It’s about the outcome. It’s about the transformation people are going to go through as a result of working with you. It’s about outcomes or transformation that they can expect. These are the genuine emotional reasons why people might buy into your program benefits. What’s not working for them right now? What would it meant to them if you were able to solve their problems? Talk about how your program would go about solving those problems. Identify what’s not working right now and the problems that need solving. Providing a way to do that is really quite powerful. Identify pain points and what motivates them to want the change.
It’s also important for them to realise that they need to change now, so they’re motivated to take action. Many people will buy an online product or package. It might even be high-end. But it never find its way out of the plastic wrapping. You want people who are prepared to take action. Coaches and consultants I speak to find it frustrating when they’re not producing results. As a people person, you want to see people change, you want to see people transformed and you want to see them doing really well. So your system should help to filter the people who are prepared to make their transformation.
At the appropriate time they’ll want to know about the resources and training and the mechanics behind it. But that’s not important at this point of the process. Remember, this is a three-step process. Your job is to make them realise the benefits of change and allow them to become self-motivated. So if you’re working with a self-motivated client, you’re working on action steps for them to take.
Isn’t it more powerful and exciting when you realise they’ve actually done it, they’re looking for the next steps and they’re creating results? They’re going to be great case studies for your testimonials. They’ll become raving fans because they’re actually producing something. If they’re not doing anything, it’s their fault. You might have given them the best resources and the best coaching, but they haven’t done anything. They haven’t created results and they blame you as the coach or consultant. But that’s what happens, so you’re vulnerable to bad testimonials and bad word of mouth.
You need to stick with motivated clients and the high-end motivated clients. They’re the best. Transformation is taking people out of their current situation to the place they’re dreaming of. Again, look at their dreams and aspirations. That’s really the place you want to work from. Then you get to the pointy end. Up until this point, your process is one-to-many. Then we get to the strategy call.
The strategy call
This can be free or paid. It depends on your personal preference. Some people don’t believe in providing a free coaching session because they feel as though it devalues their time. Others are comfortable providing one session. The strategy call could be at a discounted rate or your full rate. It could be a coaching or strategy call. Call it whatever you like. But the session needs other types of resources, because it’s nice to get something tactile to make it a compelling offer. But you need to talk to them so you can assess if they’re a good fit for you.
While the strategy call is intended to provide value to the potential client, it’s also an opportunity for you to assess whether they’re going to be a good fit for you. If there is a conflict of interest, you can depart as friends and keep your reputation intact. The last thing you want to do is upset people, and who knows what they might say online.
It’s an unfortunate scenario when coaches and consultants get a bad rap online. But that’s something you can avoid if you take this process seriously and do the strategy call. I’ve seen it work with 15-minute sessions, so that’s a way of really valuing your time. It could be a 1-hour session, if you want. It could be a couple of hours if you really have a strong process. But if it’s a couple of hours, you really should be charging for that.
Then you need to set up systems to cater for the call. It could be in person, by phone or Zoom. Lots of people are comfortable with Zoom these days. Whatever works for you. As a coach and consultant, I’m sure you already have a method of taking bookings. It’s about connecting the pieces of the puzzle to get people to make that enquiry. The piece in the puzzle might be your webinar, video or a fact-sheet.
The challenge with resources like fact-sheets, as opposed to a video or a webinar, is that it’s difficult to convey your value and personality and what it would be like to work with you as a coach or consultant. It’s difficult to get them to take action, because they’ll probably skim over the content and not even read it. If they’re watching a video, they can’t just skip bits. That’s why I think recorded video, a live video, a webinar and even evergreen webinars can be helpful. It’s my view that evergreen webinars work, but I find them frustrating because I know it’s not live. A lot of people realise evergreen webinars are popular now. I find them a bit annoying because I’ve got to wait half an hour till the next time slot. But you can go down that path if you want to. They do work.
You can call your strategy call whatever you like. An interview. Appointment to enrol. A discovery session. It could be whatever time frame you want. It could be additional resources. Whatever you feel is a great starting point to engage in a real and meaningful way with the person, one-to-one as opposed to one-to-many. The strategy call is also a way of removing the tyre kickers. It attracts those who believe in you. They’ve already learnt and understood something of who you are, what your values are, what you believe in and what you might do for them.
Scalability
You’ve got to get your system working first and then scale it up. Don’t try and create scale for a system that’s not proven to work. That’s the challenge with building out really complex marketing systems with automations and similar strategies. Even if you want to go down that path, set up your landing page and your opt-in page and see if they work. See if people actually subscribe and then build up the sequences. When you do know things are working, there are lots of opportunities to scale up or down according to how many new enquiries you need to generate when it’s quiet or when you’re flat-out busy.
One strategy is SEO. This is something you would do consistently over time once you’ve got a system that works. There’s paid traffic through social media. You would have seen lots of ads yourself. Even though people get frustrated with ads, I love them. I look at them and open up their landing pages. I don’t necessarily join, but I see what they’re offering, and the more you do that, the more you get out of it, because it gives you some insights into where the marketplace is going, where marketing’s going and what other people are doing. It’s an ongoing education. Another strategy can be Google Ads. They can be powerful in certain circumstances and niches, particularly with certain websites that are proven to work.
All these methods can be a way to burn money, so you’ve got to know what you’re doing. Get your system right first, then it’s time to scale, not the other way around. It depends on where you’re at. You might be at a point where it’s time for scale.
Everyone wants a business they can scale according to their desires. Maybe you want to stay as a solo entrepreneur and coach consultant. Maybe you want to have lots of coaches and consultants working within your brand. It’s attractive, but it’s not as simple as some people might tell you. This three-step formula that I’m showing you will produce the best outcome. If you do want to scale your business and use the system I’m suggesting, you may need to hire some sort of support, like an assistant or an employee to work through all the calls that you’re going to get. If you scale up, someone’s going to have to be at the end of the phone or Zoom to go through those calls. That’s part of the challenge.
You might choose to use scalability techniques to increase your rates. That’s also an option if you get this system right. Rather than getting more clients, you get higher-quality, higher-paying clients. That might be a better way to grow your business. But the same scalability methods can apply. Once you’ve got the system in place and it generates leads and high-ticket clients, you have lots of options.
These are the three steps. You reverse engineer success. I spoke about how you can model on the success of other coaches and consultants in your industry, across industries and in other locations. I also mentioned some of the tools and techniques you might want to use. I spoke about your transformation offer and why that’s important. And I talked about the strategy call and how you can make that unique for your own niche and business model. It’s a compelling and attractive mechanism for you to educate people, but also to filter out those you don’t want to work with.
Would you like me to work with you to create a simple, transformational system that creates qualified, high-ticket coaching or consulting leads? I’m happy to help you develop a plan for attracting more of your ideal clients and scale up your business in a predictable, reliable and consistent way. It’s about attracting the right leads so there is no scarcity of clients in your business, allowing you to charge the prices you know that you’re worth. This is often a challenge with coaches and consultants I work with. Some will lower their prices because they’re not getting enough enquiries or business, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Wouldn’t it be great if leads weren’t a problem so you could just scale your business and charge what you know you’re worth?