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The Secret to Getting More Coaching Clients with Luke Charlton

by | In the Magazine, Luke Charlton | 0 comments

I’ve got my good friend Luke Charlton with me, and Luke’s about to unveil some pretty incredible strategies to help you guys take your coaching business to another level. Luke is a very good friend of mine and has been for a long time. We’ve done lots of business together and he’s someone who I respect greatly. Luke has a 15-minute/day marketing system that generates leads and sales basically while he sleeps which allows him the opportunity to focus on the stuff he loves to do. He’s going to share the things that have made him successful with us today.

Karl: So Luke let me ask you the big question which seems to be on the minds of most coaches these days. What do you think are the reasons why coaches and consultants struggle so much to get clients?

Luke: That’s a great question. I think it comes down to a few key reasons. I was listening to a podcast a couple of days ago by Russell Brunson and he was talking about how he can tell who’s going to be successful and who’s not within the first couple of minutes of speaking to them. The ones who won’t succeed are those that are in it for the money and the people that will succeed are those that fall in love with the coaching profession. They love helping business owners increase their sales and their profits.

Unfortunately, one of the things they don’t seem to love is marketing. Just like you Karl, I speak with dozens of coaches every day and the coaches I come across literally detest marketing their services. All they want to do is coach, which is fine, but marketing is a big part of coaching. You can’t coach if you don’t have clients!

The really successful coaches – the top 5% – have no problem marketing their services. They’ve developed a process for doing it, and they keep their coaching ranks filled. So the first reason why coaches struggle to get clients is they don’t develop a system for marketing their services. When you really stop and think about it, marketing is just explaining what it is that we do as coaches in a way that our dream client can see and understand the value we can bring to their business.

We have to convey to them how we can literally transform their business and help them become the dominant player in their profession. That’s what’s really exciting about marketing to me Karl. When coaches learn how to successfully market their services, their coaching practice takes off big time.

One of my favorite ways I use to get clients is writing one email per day that only takes me about 15 minutes to complete. That’s my main piece of marketing that I do every day. I don’t go to networking events and I don’t do blog post. I write one daily email to my list that tells a story.

Sometimes that email teaches them a little bit of content and other times I write it to entertain or maybe to suggest a different way of looking at something. I may discuss a challenge that they have and offer a solution; then at the end I will sometimes place a call to action to buy one of my products. That might be a Facebook course or an email writing course, but the point is I really enjoy writing that email because I know it’s going to help my audience.

When you market effectively using free content, you can really transform someone’s life. So by reframing what marketing has the power to accomplish, that can transform the way coaches view it, and that can help them to do it consistently and become successful coaches. So that’s my first suggestion for helping coaches get more clients.

Number two, understand who it is that you’re trying to attract as a coaching client. Have a really clear understanding of who that dream client is. How old are they, where do they live, what does their family life look like, what are their fears, their frustrations, their desires, what does their average day look like, what are their top frustrations as they go through their day, what challenges do they wish could be solved, etc.

When you’re very clear on who your dream client is you’ll be able to create a crystal clear marketing message that will attract them to you. If you have an undefined, muddy idea of who your dream client is, your marketing is going to be muddy and your headlines are going to be undefined. They won’t really speak to anyone, so by defining who your dream client is it’s almost like having a bull’s eye targeting your dream client so when you write your marketing message you’ll hit the right target.

If you don’t have that dream client defined, then it’s like shooting a bow blindfolded with a moving target. I can get really great results with a coach that has a good idea of who they’re selling or who they prefer to work with. These are typically coaches that have made a few sales but they just need to refine their marketing message and have a funnel in place. So identifying your dream client is my second suggestion for getting more clients Karl.

Number three would be understanding what it is that the coach is selling. Most coaches and consultants think they’re selling their processes, their goal-setting sheet. They think they’re selling coaching. You’re not selling coaching, you’re selling a transformation; you’re selling a result or an outcome. So you need to pick an outcome that your dream client wants and sell that to them. Once you’ve sold them on that and they’re interested then you can talk about your process. Here’s step one and we’ll get this done in week one; then here’s step two and so on. So you sell them first on the transformation, then you talk about the steps that you’re going to take them to achieve that transformation.

My fourth suggestion is for the coach to have a proven and tested strategy they can use over and over again to get results. This would be a strategy where you know that when you take X action you’ll get Y results. For example, I mentioned earlier that I like to write one email every day. I know if I send one daily email with a call-to-action for one of my products I will increase my revenue. When I send that daily email I know it equals a consistent flow of new people coming onto my email list. That’s my strategy.

My fifth and final suggestion Karl is to just focus. Stay focused on your strategy until it works and completely avoid chasing the bright shiny objects everyone seems to get distracted by. I’m guilty of making all of these mistakes myself and it took me years to realize that it’s all about focusing; stay focused on one strategy until you make that strategy work.

Karl: Those are excellent suggestions Luke. So look let me ask you this. What would you say would be the very best strategy that coaches could use to get clients online?

Luke: You know Karl, it depends on where you are as a coach. I would say for the beginner coach that email is a good place to start. It’s super simple to set up. Perhaps you place an ad on Facebook that offers your target client information they would consider valuable. A free checklist, a free template, a free report or a free guide – something that’s actionable and that your prospects would want.

I recently saw someone offering a Facebook ad template library that contained the best and most profitable Facebook ads they’ve used over the years. I once offered coaches the 27 most profitable coaching niches that coaches can make the most money from. That’s obviously really valuable to coaches and it’s compelling enough to get them to request it and I build my list.

I call offers like this a client carrot, but in reality they’re lead magnets that can work for years. You only have to create one that works and market it on an ongoing basis. Prospects opt in for it by giving you their name and email and then you set up a drip campaign so everything is on autopilot. So once you get this set up then it’s just about writing a daily email to your list. That doesn’t take a lot of time but it starts to produce some impressive results. A 15 minute daily email can grow your coaching practice without investing much time or effort.

Another favorite online way to get clients is one I really love and use all the time and that’s webinars. A webinar is good for coaches and consultants who don’t like marketing because you can record one and then put it on autopilot. But the catch-22 with webinars – you have to market them. Not only that, but to make a webinar work properly you need to practice it over and over and over again so you get really good at positioning your value. Then you must drive traffic to it and that takes marketing. But once you have everything in place, then you can put it on autopilot and watch the leads pour in.

I love webinars because you can sell very high end products or services to the right market. You can market $1k to $2k products via a webinar on autopilot, literally go to sleep and wake up with lots of new sales. We’re running a webinar right now where we’re spending close to $100k per month on ads and making back $200k a month. Webinars, just like email, are a proven predictable online methodology and they’re going to be around for a long time. So email and webinars are the two best online strategies that I recommend for coaches the consultants.

Karl: Great, so those are obviously great for getting clients, but what if a coach wants to seriously scale their practice? Is there another strategy that might work better or would you recommend those same two?

Luke: Probably the same two. What I love about email is I can spend a set amount of money each day using Facebook and pump leads into my email list. This allows me to scale my business and it doesn’t require any more extra work. Then I send out my one daily email that I know will produce results. Same thing with a webinar. That’s also a strategy that you can scale without you having to be there. You just have to be ready to handle the additional business that will come when you start spending more for advertising or whatever you use to get traffic.

Karl: You said that email is a great way to help coaches get clients and to help them scale their business, but if you talk to most of the pros they’re all saying that email today has really gone downhill as far as conversions. I’ve read where the open rate for email is now in single digits, but obviously you’re using it very successfully. What are some tips you can give the coaches that would help them get clients using email.

Luke: I don’t listen to those kinds of statistics. Email is still the most profitable marketing method by far and the reason why is it’s personal. Everyone still reads their email. But the secret to making it work is to write really great emails. Think about how people behave in general. People are watching hours of TV every day; they’re socializing on Facebook and spending hours on YouTube watching stupid cat videos. In short, they’re looking for entertainment. That’s really what people want; to be entertained, so the worst thing you can do is send emails where you constantly pitch them.

Instead, send emails that people actually look forward to receiving. Write emails that will get people excited to go to their inbox each day to read?

You don’t want to send emails that are like blog posts. Your prospects are bombarded every single day with massive amounts of information. They’re on information overload. They don’t need more how-to step-by-step type stuff. So don’t think that with each email you have to come up with great new content. If you send them important and valuable information, talk about what they should do and why they should do it.

But also write to entertain them as I just mentioned. There are a myriad of ways that you can entertain someone – you can tell a joke or a funny story. Stories are great and people relate to them. That’s how most of my emails are. I’ll be working and come across what I think is a silly comment on Facebook and I’ll reference and comment on that in my next email. Think of funny stories, sad stories or scary stories that have happened in the past to you, and then make them relevant in your emails.

Stories are a really great way to entertain people. Another really great way to grab people through email is to really understand your dream prospect. If you stay in their world so they know you understand their fears, their frustrations, their desires, they’ll eat that stuff up.

Also, write like you speak in the real world, not like they do in the corporate world where it’s all professional and you sound like a robot. This can be hard for a lot of people to do, so one easy way around this is to record yourself speaking and get it transcribed. This will capture your true personality and that’s what people want these days.

Karl: Good tips. So Luke, where would coaches go to learn more about your systems.

Luke: We have a really great workshop called the 48 hour client (www.the48hourclient.com) and there you’ll find a free workshop on the ways we use simple automation to find, attract and sign $1k to $10k clients in 48 hours. That’s a really great training and it introduces you to who I am. It delivers a ton of great free training.

At 26 years old Luke Charlton decided to quit his comfortable 6 figure a year corporate job, move halfway around the world, and start an online business as a Coach. Thinking he knew enough about marketing to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world (London), he quickly realized this online thing wasn’t as easy as it looked. Through years of trial and error, struggling and nearly going bankrupt, Luke finally discovered the formula for online success. He now spends in excess of $250,000/mo in advertising, has an international magazine featuring Jack Canfield, Kendall Summerhawk, Michael Port and more, and has a 15-minute/day marketing system that generates leads and sales in the background so he can focus on the stuff he loves to do.

 About Luke Charlton

At 26 years old Luke Charlton decided to quit his comfortable 6 figure a year corporate job, move halfway around the world, and start an online business as a Coach. Thinking he knew enough about marketing to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world (London), he quickly realized this online thing wasn’t as easy as it looked. Through years of trial and error, struggling and nearly going bankrupt, Luke finally discovered the formula for online success. He now spends in excess of $250,000/mo in advertising, has an international magazine featuring Jack Canfield, Kendall Summerhawk, Michael Port and more, and has a 15-minute/day marketing system that generates leads and sales in the background so he can focus on the stuff he loves to do.

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