As part of my coaching services, I unpack business models for people. I help them understand what a business offers their clients and evaluate it. Once you understand a business model, you can make a wise spending decision. This post is about applying the same process to my services. Since this is a core value of mine and a core business process, I?m going to do an insiders look at the coaching business.
As of February 1st, I entered into a new agreement with Dave Ramsey?s office as a referral coaching partner. I?m pretty excited about changes and the benefits it brings to our clients. Dave?s office completed some extensive research and market reviews on the coaching program. In short, the advice isn?t changing. We?re still teaching God?s and Grandma?s ways of handling money. Old fashioned common sense solutions never go out of style. The only real requirement was that I start to offer a $175 per hour coaching session. Simple enough. However, Dave?s office presented some compelling challenges with the way most coaches ran shop. Most of us set up our practices and model after their in-house coaching to start with. Its time for us to confront the brutal facts about the good and bad of how we were doing things. It became apparent there were some elephants in the room that had to be addressed. We?re in the business of self-improvement and change. We all took a good look at ourselves and our practices. There were practical reasons why we did what we did. However, it a lot of felt like we had to do things this way to stay in business. Like the clients we served, we had our own justifications. A friend of mine Jim Munchbach taught me to always focus on what matters most. What matter?s most is serving our clients with truth, honor, integrity and truly acting in their best interest.
Killing the Sacred Cow of ?Free Consultations? The 30 minute free consultation at my coaching office is dead. I was never a fan of ?free consultations.? I usually ended up stressing to clients, this was their chance to interview me to see if they wanted to hire me. ?Free consultation? implies that the coach is going to offer advice and solutions. In reality, the only solution offered was ?I can help you if you buy my package? or coaching isn?t right for you, here?s where you should go to look for a solution. My time is very limited and extremely valuable. When I?d pack up after dinner and head up to the coaching office to meet a client, it was taking 2 hours of my time, spending my gas and putting 30 miles on my car to do a free consultation. ?Free consultations? aren?t ?Free? for myself nor the clients who drove 30-60 minutes to come and to hire a sitter.
New Process: 15 minute scheduled ?Is Coaching Right for You?? calls. One of the principles I teach career coaching clients is that on a job interview, people make a hiring decision within the first 7-8 seconds of meeting you. If ?free consultations? are a sales pitch by the coach or a job interview, why do I need to spend hours driving, renting an office space, maintaining all that overhead, offering beverages, etc. when people can make a hiring decision in 7-8 seconds? I owe it to myself and my family to lead the conversation in such a way you can make a wise hiring decision in 10 minutes. The research was pretty clear for hiring decisions about coaches ? no difference from job interviews. People are either interested and willing to hire you, or they are not. At the same time, there are a certain percentage of people who have no intent on hiring you but want to take everything they can. Limit those folks to 15 minutes and get back to my family.
New Process: Online Scheduling Tool. No more swapping voice mails. I have set availability and a web site that?s up and running 24?7. Let?s schedule a call. I?ve adopted a new tool. Clients can click a button on the web site and schedule a 15 minute interview. Get their questions about coaching answered and then make a decision if coaching is right for them. You Mr. Client can save your gas. You don?t have to hire a sitter.
Killing the Sacred Cow of Maintaining an Office. Some of my peers do 100% of their coaching over Skype from their home office. I can reduce my overhead by 40% by simply not renting an office space that was almost always guaranteed to be ?too far away? to a prospective client. (Keep in mind, my territory is all of Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and half of Monroe and Genesee counties as well. There is no ?good? spot for an office.) In person coaching is still an option but it is a premium feature. I?m going to have to work out details here but its going to be at least $25 more per session.
New Process: Phone, Skype and Apple FaceTime. A few months ago, I eliminated a phone number and I?m doing it again. I always encourage clients to use the most cost effective tool for the job. I?ve got an unlimited calling package from Skype that allows me to make and receive calls from normal phones or from other Skype users. Because we?ve eliminated the travel piece, I can offer extended hours coaching. I can start a session as late as 9pm EST. (This is after my children are in bed and after my clients children are in bed. Nobody hires a sitter. Less gas. More time with our families. Lower expenses all the way around. (~70% of my clients have an iPad, iPhone or Mac anyway).
Killing the Sacred Cow of Value Based Package-Only Sales. This one was the hardest change. If were doing any other type of coaching, I?d stick with value based packages. This model we charge a fee based upon the value of the anticipated results. The reality is, if you do what we teach, it?s life changing results that can easily make a 7 figure difference over the next 30 years. However, the clients still have to be able to afford those services now?. Because of travel, time spend closing a sale, the pure economics were that its better to get a big ticket sale than 3 smaller ones. However, in doing so we set the bar so high, a lot of clients could not afford to hire us (in their minds). I?m a financial coach and in talking with folks in one breath you hear, ?we cannot afford you? yet they still spent $250 a month on iPhones, $175 a month on 500 channels of nothing to watch, and spent $700 a month a restaurants. You can?t afford us because you have so much lifestyle clutter is one reason. You can?t afford us because you?re spending 40% of your income on interest to the banks. I?m still sticking with the long position here. Clients in those situations cannot afford to keep doing what they?ve been doing. They cannot afford the long term costs of bad decisions. Situations like that, I?m going to suggest we start on breaking the financial log jam in the first session. The stream lined sales process and lower point of entry should help address many of these problems. $175 is only $25 more than the average cable bill in America. Got financial issues? Can?t afford me but can afford $150 for cable? Call up the cable company and see if they can offer you life changing results.
Killing the Sacred Cow of ?No Quoting Over the Phone? because clients can?t buy over the phone. This is a long standing tradition in the insurance industry and has permeated into coaching. The argument goes that until a client sees the value of your services, they will only hear the price and say ?I can?t afford that.? This leads to the preception that we have something to hide or are trying to charge as much as we can. This simply isn?t true. (Establishing value before price is a very real principle. I?m hiring a former client who is a well known mass media producer in Detroit to help me create a short video to demonstrate the value I?m offering for $175. If I stream the sales process, I have to automate more of it.)
New Process: Start Every Client at an Introductory Session of $175. Going forward, this is the only package I will sell. I decided to live up to what I teach here, and make an offer that really is in the clients best interest. Hire me for an hour. If you like it and want more, we can look at the package model or you can go forward with hourly coaching. If you choose to go with a package, I?ll apply 100% of that sessions fee to an upgraded package at the end of that package. This makes my services more readily available to more clients. I?m a natural born skeptic. Its part of what makes me good at this. I thought about that and and this is what I would want to buy if I were hiring a consultant. The reality is that this is in your best interest. You the client have more options, up front pricing, and a lower cost of entry. It really is the right thing to offer people who are struggling with money. I may even be able to offer a free hour of coaching if you purchase an FPU membership from me. Still chewing on that one.
New Process: Standardize my favorite package at $1595. I still keeping my 6 month Game-Changer Coaching Package listed on the website. It?s listed. I?ll take an order for it, but I?m not going to actively sell it any more. I gave it a new name. However, I?m standardizing the fee at $1595 and tightening up what I offer. It use to be 1% of income. $1595 is higher for some and lower for others. We received a lot of feedback where clients wanted to know up front what our fees were. So I set a fixed price. I love this package. I love it because it allows me the freedom to lead you as a coach in a committed program. I love it because I develop a strong friendship and relationship with my clients. One so strong that I can push to new levels of success. I love it because I get to blend my entire financial planner training and background in a coaching package. I love teaching clients the 20 minute budget process. I love watching them grow over a 6 month period. I love the white-gauntlet-slap-across-the-face-challenge of getting ?free coaching.? That is incredibly motivating to a lot of people. The package is still there because I have so many fond memories of lives changed. I can?t bring myself to quit offering that package. Dave?s office said I didn?t have to quit offering it either.
New Process: Up Front, Straight Forward, Simple Pricing and PayPal and Square App. The reality is that we can take a debit card payment by phone. PayPal and the Square app for iPhone allow me to take payments anywhere. Some of the better web payment services I?ve seen even has an electronic signature where you can agree to the terms and conditions.
New Process: I?m not going to commit any more than 15 minutes of my time until I see two commitments from clients. This one is also a change of business practice. I?ll give away 15 minutes of my time to schedule a phone/skype/facetime session with a client. However, I cannot afford to give away more than that. Laura and I are less than 6 weeks away from bringing our third child into the world. The opportunity cost of time away from my family is getting greater. Under the new model of lower cost coaching, I cannot afford no-shows and people who don?t have their information submitted before hand. Clients need to commit to two things before I commit time away from my family. #1 they must pay for their coaching session. This is to ensure whoever pulls me away from my family is serious about me helping their family. #2 No appointments until I receive the client data sheet back. I want to review the data before our session so that you get the most out of the session. I?m really close to having some technology changes on my web site that collect payment and redirect you to an online form you can fill out on my site. Upon completing the form, you?ll be directed to my open calendar where you can pick a time for your coaching session.
In closing, I?m 100% committed to your success. My family has successfully worked every step in Dave?s plan. We paid off $268k in debt and even called in to do a debt free scream. I don?t coach because I need the money. I coached my way through an MBA in Financial Planning ? $46k program 100% debt free. I live the principles I teach. The MBA side of me states that this business model of serving people who struggle with finances on a fee basis is fundamentally broken. (Yet at the same time, doing it for ?free? is a complete waste of everybody?s time because people have no skin in the game. Been there, seen that, got the T-shift.)
More changes are coming. More changes are needed. Dave?s office has been more successful on the new model. Client feedback is extremely positive. I?m going to give it a shot as well. I?m all about making improvements. Not only for my clients, but for my own life and business as well.
I look forward to serving you.
Chad
Source: http://pennycoach.com/new-hourly-coaching-options/
greg mortenson jim marshall died 2013 toyota avalon the secret life of bees full moon aubrey o day masters live
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.