17 Dec 2025 · 6 min
A coach with positive feedback on her firefighting-themed program gets no sales. Steve Chandler says coaches sell the idea instead of letting people experience it. He recommends over-giving free content, sample sessions, and live demos so prospects feel what they're buying before committing.
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I've been using the prosperous coach approach which I love. I have created what I think is a super fun program that kind of combines my love of firefighting and some playfulness. And I've gotten some great feedback, reaching out, trying to connect one person at a time and everyone's loving it. But I haven't sold a single thing yet. So my question is, what am I not seeing? What am I not doing? What am I not thinking?
Okay, so I can relate. Absolutely. I had programs no one bought and what had to shift for me to turn that around was are they loving it or are they loving the idea of it? The concept of it? Because most coaches, when they create programs or groups or events, not, not just one on one, they, they try to sell the idea of it. They try to sell here's what's going to happen and here's why it's good. And so for people to join your program takes a real leap of faith. And they think, well, that all sounds really good to me. And I'm loving the idea of it. I love how she talks about it, but I'm going to pass for now or I don't. You know, spending a weekend away from my family, it's kind of a hard thing to sell to them. And whatever reason they think they have or I don't have that. So what I had to do over time, through trial and error and through learning from trying to only sell the idea of what's going to happen here is give people a way to experience some of it. You, you cannot over give content from your program to begin with. So. So, for example, Brian has YouTubes for free out there for the whole world. If you want to know what it would be like to come in and get the freshest and newest ideas and optimize, go look at what he's done here and you can spend hours with it. You really. Wow. If it's anything like what I've experienced by watching his, his, his little tutorials on my books are better than the books. They're like, I watch them like, wow, that I'm taking notes. That is a great idea. That's one of the five big ideas. Ideas are good. I didn't know those ideas were in that book. I was just Trying to finish the manuscript. So the more you can give people an experience in advance. So I have a friend and a client who does a school right now, but prior to the it's a six month school, it's a group program. Prior to the program she does webinars that give people a 90 minute experience of what will happen when they're in the school. She does face times, she writes, sends content from the school to people on her email list. When you come to our school, you will learn this. And other people, marketing advisors tell her that's stupid, don't give it away ahead of time, they'll never pay for it. But actually the more they get. People intuitively know that when I learn something on the level of information, that's only the first step in having it be part of who I am. When I learn it on that level, read a book about it or whatever. That's step one. Step two is to really get it on the insight level, have it drop in. And step three is having a way of practicing it regularly so it becomes a part of who I am in the world and what I do in a, in a way that really works. So when they get all the information from your program, you think odd giving it away? What, what's the use? They, they. If they really love it, they're actually more likely to attend your program, not less so because they know I want to be there, I want to hear Shannon answer my questions or I want to be with other people learning it and I want to work with it, not just know it. So that was the big thing for me with programs. I don't know if that's useful to you.
No, it's very useful. It's an experience. And so I think what I actually need to do is video some of the experience and video some of the group so that they can see the experience.
Yeah, they can see it. And if somebody is a high likelihood candidate for your group, like when I had people coming to the prosperity school or wanting to come but not sure, I would say, well, let's set aside 90 minutes or two hours and I will have you be in the school and you'll bring your questions on how to make your practice grow. And I'll work with you the same way I'd work with you when you're in the group and you raise your hand and you'll feel and experience what the school is like. And so I'd give them the school ahead of time. Here's two hour version. Not just let them see it, but I'LL work with you. So if you do things in there where you work with people or you give them a process or something, someone who you feel is really interested, not just random people, but say, let's do one of the processes that you'll see in the school together. And so you're right. It's how can I give them an experience of the school and not just the idea of the school.
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