As we close out on another year, one that was packed with lots of learning and growth, even us coaches may feel inclined to discretely throw a dust sheet over our goals for 2025. We may hide them away, unfinished or refined, in the hope that any tasks we have been procrastinating on will look more appealing the fresh light of a new year. Manifesting the hope that something will magically change to make the big things feel easy. In this week's blog Laura O'Shaughnessy, Coaching Academy graduate, shares 5 crucial questions for your marketing and new business planning ahead, inspiring you to think ahead to 2025 with confidence.
Having worked with a few coaches over 2024, I have learnt more about what the tasks coaches tend to procrastinate on when it comes to their coaching business are. I have seen capable coaches twitch at the word ‘marketing’, shudder at the phrase ‘pipeline’ and audibly groan at the dreaded mention of ‘sales’.
Come on dear coaching friends. Let’s face up to our fears about an uncomfortable but critical part of our world. Let’s close out 2024 by being honest about the things we need to tackle in 2025, heads held high, practicing all we know about coaching, creative solution seeking and most of all about being beautifully brave.
My invitation to you is to push yourself there before the end of the year. Carve out an hour in a calm and quiet setting. Then force yourself to twitch and shudder by boldly facing up to the things about business development that you may have dodged all year. These five simple questions should get your heart racing and roll the dice quite nicely.
How many clients do you want to work with next year, what’s the client roster you need, to be happy with your income and growth?
Let’s go there. Yes, acquisition. It has such a corporate ring to it and may very well be the kind of word we’ve been aching to detach from in our new independent, free-spirited coaching career. However, identifying how many clients we need to onboard is the most front-footed thing we can do as business owners moving into a new year.
Just as our clients need aspirations, we need to know what we’re aiming towards, in terms of both our direction and vision. We need to know our own benchmarks, so we know when we’ve done well. And just as our clients do, we need destinations in our sight, so that when we’ve climbed to the top, we can rest easy with the view.
What does that look like each month and each week, and how will you know when you’ve achieved what you set out to?
We can’t manifest our mission into clients, we need to apply planning and action to drive us into play. There are important considerations when planning our goals. We need to be mindful of how long it takes to convert a prospect, any seasonality or trend in terms of recruitment as well as any personal boundaries such as holidays or other commitments.
Breaking down the big vision into smaller achievable goals helps us apply the discipline of ‘SMART’ to create more manageable monthly actions. It helps us appreciate the gaps, the challenges and the interesting opportunities, so that we can honour our plans in more realistic ways.
How will you connect and resonate, and what is your process for converting contacts and leads into meaningful real-life relationships?
Many of us hope that once we qualify and wave our ‘hello’, there’ll be a stream of enquiries and bookings. However, recruiting clients takes time, work and care. And this is totally ok. It doesn’t require you to have a master’s degree in marketing. It requires you to understand your audience as real people rather than anonymous recipients of social media messaging.
Posting daily on social media is not a marketing strategy, it’s quite simply, posting daily on social media. Not only this but sending messages out to an unqualified audience who may or may not be looking for a coach can be mortifying for us when nothing converts.
Productive marketing involves smarter thinking. It involves looking at where your prospects might be, where the ones who are actively thinking about coaching are, who they are talking to and what challenges they are facing. Don’t be afraid to ask around, to boldly ask questions and research your way to a place of deeper insight.
Who are you talking to and what is the most important thing that you can consistently demonstrate to them in your words, content and actions?
Research suggests that we are exposed to over 5000 marketing messages per day. A daunting statistic that may well be true! It’s a stark reminder that reinforces the fact that we need to cut through, with clarity, consistency and confidence. Creating pleasant posts that seamlessly ‘fit in’ may make us feel comfortable, but may get lost in a tranquil sea of tame messaging.
Be sure of your audiences’ challenges. Do your groundwork on how they feel and what their issues may be. Task yourself to find out what it is that you do and can offer that uniquely taps into their need. Then carefully curate your message back out, with a considered tone and succinct message.
Can people find me when given a recommendation and do I consistently present my personality, values and benefits in every visual and verbal thing I do?
When people look for a coach, they move through a journey from consideration to sale. It typically starts with a general awareness of coaching, then a desire to be coached, some research about relevant coaches, a potential short list and then a final selection.
Our task is to make sure that we have a presence through the journey, so that when prospects are selecting, they can reach out and find us and if we are recommended to them, not only can we be found, but we present a cohesive and professional ‘shop front’ that allows them to soak up what we do and buy-in to and believe in our message.
It's not all about big investment, singing and dancing or bells and whistles. It’s about checking every point of contact, from your email signature to your voicemail, your free Google listing to your invoicing header. Sanity check that at pre-sale, purchase and post-purchase, your prospects and clients feel safe. That they can trust that they have invested their money in a professional business. One that that takes pride and care in the consistent impression that it projects, an impression that is true to its values and its honest service offering.
If you are not sure where to start, simply research it or ask. Reach out into this wonderful network of considerate kind coaches and ask for a leg up or lead. There’s always a trade to be made for wisdom and knowledge, so don’t underestimate the fact that you may have skills and insight to trade with a fellow peer.
Let’s remember that businesses survived and thrived before social media. Perhaps 2025 is asking us to have the courage to step away from our desks and leave our screens. Calling us to go and connect in real life, forming deeper human bonds and forge lasting face to face client relationships. Here’s to that!
Heartfelt wishes for a happy Christmas and positive start to the new year🎉
Bio:
Laura is a Coaching Academy graduate, who now runs her own successful coaching business called The Good Vibrations Project. With a background in branding, she’s spent her career helping businesses develop their identity and communicate effectively through an understanding of what sits at the heart of their brand. Armed with these enriching skills and her coaching qualifications, she’s now helping individuals understand what sits at their core. Laura is passionate about helping people connect with their authentic selves to build inner strength and lead fulfilling, purposeful lives.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
