How to Find New Clients For Coaches and Trainers [By Networking] | Jack Canfield

Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield and I want to give you a few tips to help you learn about how to find new clients for coaches and trainers. You know, business is booming these days for personal coaches and trainers as more and more people begin to realize the benefits of having an expert help them improve their mindset and more quickly reach their personal and their professional goals. Still, as with any business, attracting clients as a coach or trainer isn't as simple as just hanging up your sign and expecting them to come pouring in. To succeed as a coach or trainer, you're going to have to learn how to find and enroll new clients. And to help you with this, I'd like to give you five tips for how to find new clients and customers. You might have heard it said that success is not about what you know, but who you know. And while this is not entirely true, it is very important. In an industry such as coaching that is driven by personal connections and relationships, effective networking goes a long way to helping you find new clients. So the first tip is this. Get out of your home and your office and go to events where success driven people gather. And go to events where your fellow coaches and trainers gather as well. You don't have to be overtly marketing yourself the whole time, but but take the time to get to know the people there and forming connections with them. In many cases, these connections can later turn into new clients in a variety of ways you might not even have anticipated. My friend Ivan Meisner, the founder and former CEO of BNI Business Network International and author of Networking Like a Pro, says the networking consists of three steps or stages. Visibility, credibility, and then profitability. So first you have to show up and be seen. You have to introduce yourself to people. That's the visibility. The second step of successful networking is creating credibility. You gain that by contributing something of value to the other person, often by making a promise and then keeping it. So ask people what they're working on at the moment or what their biggest challenge is at the moment. And then later you can refer them to a resource like a good book where you can send them an article or introduce them to someone that can help them. Now, once you have credibility in their eyes, then you can ask them for referrals to your coaching business or your training business. Unfortunately, a lot of people go to profitability before they establish credibility. So don't rush it. Build that credibility over time and then you can take advantage of it. Now, another great way to network is by forming and joining a mastermind group. Now they're becoming increasingly easier to find and should be an integral part of your business plan for getting started. Now, these groups and the advice that they offer are able to help you grow your coaching or your training business in a number of ways, including finding new clients. So join one if you have the opportunity and learn everything you can from it. You can also form your own if there's enough to join in your area. Now, my second tip is make use of advertising to bring in more clients. It's worked for businesses for decades and now, thanks to services such as Facebook ads and Google AdWords, it's more important and more effective than ever. And that advantage that Facebook ads, AdWords and a few others bring to the table is that they allow for highly specific targeting. Rather than paying to send your ad out to the masses, you only have to pay to send it out to those that you've already identified as your target market. Now, if you've managed to carve out any sort of niche with your coaching and training business, this can be especially useful for gathering qualified leads that you can later convert into paying clients. My third tip for beginning to build a coaching practice is one I learned from David Wood, a very successful coach and trainer of coaches. It's amazingly simple and it's amazingly effective. You start by making a list of everyone in your life who's ever contributed to your success and in any way. Colleagues, teachers, mentors, friends, people at your church, temple or mosque, past customers and clients. And then you call them and say that you really appreciate the difference they've made in your life and you have just become a coach. And as a way of thanking them for their contribution, you'd like to offer them a free coaching session. Now, my experience and the experience of my students. Almost everybody says yes. And then many of them, assuming you provided real value in that coaching call or that session, you can ask them if they would like to continue and do more sessions. And if they say yes, you now have a new client. Now in the business world, this is known as a loss leader. You're taking a loss on the first session or a sale item that you're selling at a retail store to gain a future stream of income later. Now, you can also do this if you have a mailing list of any kind by offering a free group coaching call or or a webinar on a particular topic, such as how to lose weight or how to become aware of and release the unconscious, limiting beliefs you have that are holding you back in life. The key is to make it available to the first 20 or 30 people that sign up so you create an urgency and an exclusivity to the event with the promise of some individual interaction. My fourth tip is one I learned from one of my friends named Marsha Weider. I consider Marcia the Queen of Enrollment. Here are a couple of her ideas that I found useful. Number one, in order to be successful at anything, you need to connect deeply with what you care about and then communicate succinctly why other people should care about it too. And when you're talking to someone about your work, offer them a compelling invitation for them to join you. Now, the emphasis here is on inviting. You have to offer them something they can participate in. The compelling part usually has to do with a sense of urgency. Urgency around the offer, which is usually around special timing or special price. You're creating a sense of scarcity, but it always has to be the truth. She once told me that she is enrolling new clients all the time, no matter where she is, even at the checkout counter of the supermarket or in line at Starbucks. She strikes up a conversation with the person in front of her or in back of her, and at some point she asks the question, do you have a dream that matters to you? If they answer yes, she asks them more about it and then she tells them briefly how she can help them. And if they answer no, she mentions that people with passion and dreams live longer, happier lives. And then she enrolls them in wanting a dream that she can help them find and that she can help them create. And she gets them into her coaching practice or one of her workshops. Now obviously this question will work at any event you might be attending as well. So if you're attending the right events, networking with the right crowds, and really just interacting with curiosity and a passion for what you are offering people, opportunities for telling people about your coaching practice or your trainings are going to be everywhere. You just need to be ready for these opportunities and capitalize on them when they do present themselves. Now my fifth tip is this. You need to create a great elevator speech, a short 20 to 30 second pitch of your services, and that lasts about the same amount of time as an elevator ride. Then you practice this pitch, hone away the parts that aren't necessary, and learn to highlight the parts that seem to get people's attention. If you can pin down a great elevator pitch, you'll be able to spark the interest of potential clients when the opportunity arises and convince them to give you their contact information. In some cases, you may even be able to get them to sign up for your services right there on the spot. Never. Just answer the question, what do you do with I'm a coach or I'm a trainer? It tells people nothing. Instead, you want to craft a statement that tells people in a compelling way who you work with and how you serve them. You want a statement that causes people to say, how do you do that? Now my elevator pitch is I help authors, coaches, trainers and entrepreneurs double their income while while at the same time doubling their time off in two years or less. Now, at first, finding new clients can be one of the most difficult parts of running a coaching or training business. The real secret of how to find new customers and clients is that it takes consistent effort over time. But the effort is worth it because you get to make a significant difference in the lives of many people. Okay, here's your homework to complete. After watching this short video, go out and use one of the messes I've shared with you today to get more clients for your coaching or training business and let me know how they work for you in the comments section. So thanks for watching and remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel. For more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on how to find more clients, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.