YouTube advice video by Katie McManus arguing that offering free coaching sessions is a poor client-acquisition strategy. She gives three reasons: it attracts "freebie" seekers, feels like a bait-and-switch which discourages the coach, and conditions people to expect free work. She recommends clear "strategy calls," niche clarity, and direct invitations to book paid work instead.
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Here's the absolute worst advice that I ever got from my coach training program on how to get clients and what works instead. And hi, I'm Katie, your practical business strategist and I help new business owners replace their six figure salary and leave their corporate nine to five by selling their expertise. The worst advice I ever got in order to get clients was to just give away free coaching sessions and at the end just ask the person to become my client. There are three reasons why this doesn't work. Now reason number one, why this does not work is that when you offer a free thing to the world, you know who you attract? Freebie chasers. These are the people who will go to Costco and eat every single free sample there because it's free. Okay? They are not actually interested in becoming a paying client of yours. They're only interested in getting the freebie service that you're offering. Okay? So when you go through this whole process and you give them something free and then you ask them to become a client to pay, like they're not going to become a client and then you're going to end up feeling so super shitty because you're going to think that you did something wrong throughout the free session and your self esteem about your service is just going to absolutely tank. The second reason why this does not work is that it feels very bait and switch for you to do. Now I know when I was in the midst of giving away a free session, the whole session I'd be like, oh my God, like when do I ask them to be my client? And then it just felt like, like a trick, like I tricked them into doing this free session and then I was going to ask them for money and it feels so, so energetically warped that you're just not going to do it. Most of the time you get to the end of that free session and you just completely chicken out of asking them to become a client. And not to mention you're going to feel so much stress throughout this whole free session to really like prove yourself and prove that you're really good at this, that you're not going to feel good at the end about the service that you delivered. And the third reason is that when you give away free sessions, you don't train the world that you offer a high ticket service. No, no, no, no. You train the world that you do this work for free, right? So people are just going to expect to be able to get free services from you whenever they want, which doesn't help you build a business. Now thankfully, when I was starting my coaching business. I was coming off of a career of working in sales and marketing. So when I very quickly realized that this strategy did not work, I tried a couple things differently. Instead of giving away free sessions, what I did was I invited people to a strategy call, and I made it very, very clear that on this call, we. Their goals and the things that were getting in the way of them getting there on their own. And I'd make it clear that at the end of this call, we would talk about different ways to work together if it was a fit for us. So there was a very clear expectation that this was not a free session and that there would be a sales conversation at the end if we both felt like it was the right fit for us. The other thing I did was I got really crystal clear on my niche. And instead of just offering a free session to everyone, I got specific about the problems that my ideal client has, and that if they have that problem, they should probably book a call with me to see if I could help them fix it. And ultimately, I just had to stop being a weenie about putting myself out there and talking about my ideal clients and just inviting people to book a call with me to see if I could help them. Remember that there are people out there with serious problems who want a solution that will actually work for them. And if you have that solution, it's pretty selfish of you not to talk about it. And I'm curious, what bad advice have you gotten in building your business?
