Finding Real Paying Clients

So you're trained up and sitting in your shiny new coaching room. You twirl in your chair admiring your certificates on the wall and feel proud of your achievements. Only the occasional gurgle from the water cooler in the corner interrupts the peaceful and relaxed environment that you have created for your clients. Ahhh - CLIENTS!

Yes, CLIENTS!. How does a new coach go about finding clients and paying ones at that?

The fact is that you don't find clients - they find you. Traditional selling techniques do not work for coaching. Clients are looking to buy a quality service from someone that they feel they can trust.

Follow these tips to create presence and trust and the laws of attraction will ensure that you have a steady stream of clients coming to your practice:

1. Make yourself available. Be prepared to carry out telephone coaching. With practice telephone coaching can be remarkably effective and does not present geographic barriers. Consider setting up your practice in a town or city with a large population so that you can maximise face-to-face opportunities.
2. Make yourself accessible. It's you that you are selling so make sure that people have plenty of time to discover more about you. Ensure that your website is personal and has pictures of you and copy written by yourself or in close conjunction with a copywriter. Express yourself on your website so people get a feel for who you are.
3. Ensure that you are in constant contact. Include a newsletter on your website that people can subscribe to. People WILL subscribe if they find what you have to say interesting. You can then use the newsletter to stay in their minds through regular mailings.
4. Make yourself known. Be present in as many people's lives as possible. Do this every way you can think of. Join face-to-face networking groups, participate in networking evenings (consider running one), participate in internet newsgroups that your target audience use, set-up referral schemes, put adverts in complementary retail outlets, partner with complementary businesses, contribute articles to other peoples websites or newsletters, start a blog. Invest lots of your time in activities that get your name out there.
5. Measure your progress. Keep regular track of the number of web hits and subscriptions to your newsletter. You will start to notice a correlation between your activities and increases in these important metrics.
6. When you notice that something works - do more of it. If you contribute to a newsgroup and your web hits go up. Keep posting.
7. When you notice that something does not work - do something else. Don't waste your time in areas where you getting little or no feedback.
8. Maintain. Keep up the effort in all these areas. Ensure that your schedule accommodates your need to produce new content and expand and maintain your presence.
9. Charge well for your time. You're a damn good coach - charge for it. If people are saying that you are too expensive work on your presentation when you discuss costs. Have facts to hand so that you can be confident in stating your charges and why you represent good value. Be prepared to turn people away that don't want to pay your charges - your time is your most precious resource - don't undervalue yourself and work to the bone as a consequence of cheap fees.
10. Stick to it. It takes time to build a reputation but it will happen.

Mark Spall is a Coach and Leadership trainer. More on Mark can be found at www.markspall.co.uk .