Hey there coach, it's Jess and Carolin here and today we want to talk to you about why
you should only be working with ideal clients in your coaching or consulting business. We
also want to talk to you about why that's so important to get amazing client results
and make you happy in your business. And as always, make sure you click the bell so you
get notified when new episodes become available here every Wednesday,
All about helping you go from passion to profits in your coaching business.
In the beginning of your coaching or consulting career, you might be working with pretty much
anybody that comes your way, right? And that's totally okay because we all need to be making
money. In the beginning you want to get the experience, but over time you might notice
that it might not be worth working with people who are just not ideal. And we made the mistake
in the beginning and we learned from it. And now it's really important for us to identify
people who are perfect for our programs so that we know that we can enjoy working with
them and the clients enjoy working with us as well.
So let's talk a little bit about how we can identify these clients. What some of the criteria
might be, right, for your clients and how you can make a checklist for your business
so you work with more of the perfect people. As a coach or or a consultant when you work
with clients who are not ideal, you will quickly realize what that's like. For us we have experienced
things like refunds, right, clients are coming in and they quickly notice that it's just
not working out and you, you experience refunds which nobody really wants to deal with.
As a coach. It's also very disappointing when your advice falls on deaf ears and you feel
as though your clients are just not following through. And it may not even be their fault.
They may not have the resources or the knowhow or even the determination or the commitment
to do the work. So there is just a big mismatch and a big gap. Jess, from your experience
in dealing with clients as the Director of Operations, what have you noticed is happening
to clients who are just not ideal?
I think you can really see a mismatch and that mismatch can happen in terms of either
communication or in terms of mindset, right? In terms of style. So when there's a mismatch
in terms of personality or communication style, sometimes the client also doesn't feel understood,
which can create a problem and can create some animosity between the, the client and
the coach. Um, so that's one of the things we've seen. We've also seen a situation where
clients feel under pressure, so when they're in a situation where the program isn't a match
or the coach isn't a match, they feel really pressured to complete the work and that can
create a negative energy as they're moving through the program as well. Yeah.
When you're profiling your ideal client, you can actually make a list of criteria that
you can go through and check off as you interview an ideal client or you put together your marketing
or anything in your business. The first thing you should look at is your client's life circumstances
and I want to give you a couple of examples. For us as business coaches, for example, we
might look at a client's educational background, their work experience and maybe even their
life experience. We might look at what their goals are. You might look at their technology
knowhow and how experienced they are in working with tech or building websites or designing
brands and even copywriting. So we look at the client's skillset and we look at their
background to see if they really have what it takes to be launching out their own coaching
or consulting business.
Now what we want you to do right now is look at your ideal client and start to brainstorm
some real life circumstances that are really important for you when you make your ideal
client checklist. There are two more I want to talk to you about and that is financial
resources and time commitment or how much time your client has available to dedicate
to your program and working with you.
Of course, as a coach, you want to work with people who have the financial resources to
be investing in your program, but in certain niches such as maybe a business coach for
example, it's even more important that your clients have the finances to be investing
not only in you as a coach, but in themselves and all the other things they need to be launching
out their business. So look at your client's financial situation and their status to make
sure they are really ideal for you.
The second thing is time. You really want to look at how much time your client has available
to be investing into themselves and your program to get the results they're looking for. Your
client might be working full time, maybe they're a parent, they might even be retired or staying
at home. All these things will give them either a lot of time to dedicate to it or very little
time. So really look at all of these different aspects and factors in your client's life
to make sure that they have everything you're looking for to get the best possible results.
Now we want to talk to you a little bit about your client's mindset and what they're thinking,
which is just as important as their life situation.
So there are definitely some traits of success that help our clients indicate their success
having to do with their mindset from the very beginning and we actually go as far as to
talk about these right on the discovery call so we know what they're setting themselves
up for. One of the first traits of success is definitely their ability to be action oriented.
We want people that are going to set a goal and move toward that goal throughout the entire
progress in the program. We definitely also want people that are really committed so they're
willing to do whatever it takes to get to that goal.
We want people that are decisive in our program and those are people who are going to be able
to make a decision and stick with it. If you're in between and you're waffling, that's a horrible
place to be and that's gonna take you a lot longer to get to goals in your business. We
also want to work with people who are coachable. It's important for somebody to be able to
take advice and take it well, right? We don't want people that are going to be, um, thinking
they already know everything because then at that point, what are they here for? Right?
We're here to sort of have them stand on our shoulders and be able to guide them to that
end result to that, to that accomplishment that they want to achieve, right? We also
of course, want to work with people that are positive and that are overall just good people.
We also really want to work with people who understand that their success is their personal
responsibility and nobody else's. We want to understand that the coach and client relationship
is always a hundred a hundred, right? They need to go into it, understanding that their
success is their own responsibility and we'll do everything that we can to teach them our
system and get them to that point. But they also have to understand that it's not a guaranteed
outcome. They actually need to do the work and move through the program. Finally, it's
also really important that we have people that have a growth mindset that are open to
changing themselves and open to growing in the program versus that they're fixed and
they're stable and they just want to be in that one place forever. They have to be open
to having change. They have to be open to transforming. So Carolin, when it comes to
an ideal client, what are some goals and coaching expectations that we want to establish with
the client?
Absolutely. So in addition to your client's life circumstances and their mindset, you
want to get on the same page when it comes to their goals and their expectations on you
as their coach or consultant. When it comes to goals, really think about what you can
confidently promise or help your clients accomplish. Now this is really important. You will not
ever guarantee a specific result or a specific goal because you're working with people and
not robots. You're working with human beings who have strengths and weaknesses and a lot
of things happening and you can't control all these factors. So you want to ask yourself,
what am I confident in accomplishing for my clients without making a guarantee? And those
are your client's goals.
The last criteria you really need to get clear on is your client's expectations on you as
a coach. And that is the coaching expectation. And what I mean by that is how much coaching
you will provide to the clients or how many one to one sessions will you provide? How
long are those sessions? How many emails will you answer? What are your business hours?
All of these details are important so that your client is not disappointed when they're
not receiving what they expected in the beginning. So a good idea might be for you to create
a list of coaching features inside of your client agreement that says, here's how many
sessions you receive. Here's how many calls you can be on, here are my business hours,
here's the expected turn around time for a response, for example. So that again, right
from the start your client knows exactly what to expect. Jess, can you talk to us a little
bit about actual action items? What do we want our audience and our viewers to do right
now?
Absolutely. The first piece is to really spell out your ideal client checklist and in just
a moment we'll show you how to do that. The second piece is that you want to communicate
these expectations clearly to your team when you're training them, what to say on calls
and to know what to look for on those calls as well. The next piece is you want to build
it into your sales script as well. So once you've communicated to your sales team what
they should look for, go as far as to actually spell that out in your syntax, in your script.
So again, it flows effortlessly through the course of the sales conversation. And then
finally you also want to communicate this in your marketing for example in your webinar.
It's really a nice place to say "this is for you if this is not for you if." So, the clients
also are identifying themselves in the process and knowing that they want to build that relationship
and work together.
And now Jess and I have something really special for you. We want to make this whole ideal
client process really super simple for you and that's why we want to give you our ideal
client checklist. Our own coaching clients are using this checklist to profile their
ideal clients and this checklist will give you a long list of different criteria that
you can apply to your ideal client. All you need to do is click down below in the description,
download your checklist, and get started profiling your ideal client right now. Now we'd love
to hear from you. Why don't you drop us a comment below, let us know how it's gone when
you've worked with ideal clients and not so ideal clients. Let us know what that felt
like. As always, Jess and I want you to really stay focused on your goals. Do yourself a
favor, and really identify those ideal clients so that you get to enjoy the work you do every
single day and your clients get amazing results. If you like the episode, give us a like below
and leave us a comment. Subscribe to our channel and then we want to see you again here next
week. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you soon.
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