MODULE 6: TRAINING CALL HOW TO ATTRACT COACHING CLIENTS TO YOUR BUSINESS & CONVERT THEM TO PAYING CLIENTS

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1 HOW TO ATTRACT COACHING CLIENTS TO YOUR BUSINESS & CONVERT THEM TO PAYING CLIENTS Hi, everyone. It s Karen Knowler here. Welcome to Module 6 of the Raw Coach Training. This module is entitled How to Attract Coaching Clients to Your Business and Convert Them to Paying Clients. This is a really important module for you, especially if this is all completely new to you, because getting this bit right is obviously critical when it comes to bringing money into your business as a raw food coach. Today you re going to learn, step by step, how to move people from that initial meeting or conversation, or from your website, into having a phone conversation with them and discovering whether you re a good fit for one another, assuming that you are moving them forward into working with you and investing money. We re going to be covering a lot today. With all of that said, let s go ahead and dive in. We have a lot to cover, and I want to make sure that you understand everything as fully and completely as possible. For introductions, getting clients for the first or next time can feel like a truly risky business if you don t have a client attraction strategy and client conversion systems carefully in place. The good news is that creating and employing this dynamic duo can be easy, pleasurable and fun. You just have to make sure that you re doing it continually in order to fill your client pipeline. This stuff is truly Raw Food Coach Business Building 101. In this module, you re going to learn why keeping your client pipeline filled and flowing is imperative for your business and financial success, how the client pipeline looks and works in flow chart form so that you can see why each piece of the system is vital and how it works together, and how to get really clear on who your ideal clients are. This is in fact the hardest part for many people, so I m going to help you get really clear really fast. You ll learn how to decide what you want to be known for. This is critical when it comes to people getting who you are and what you re about and being able to refer people to you. You ll learn where to find prospective clients if you want to be proactive, how to attract clients effortlessly just by being who you are and doing what you do without being especially proactive, how to set up your client conversion system RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 1

2 and exactly what you ll need within it, how to run a complementary call and make sure that working together would be a great fit for both of you, how to convert at the end of the call and enjoy an 80%-plus success rate, what to offer clients, how to decide what to offer and why, and how to handle I-can t-afford-it conversations and other common objections. By the end of this module, you will have your own attraction and conversion system mapped out so you ll know exactly who you want to attract, how you re going to do it, and how you re going to convert them to paying clients once they ve shown an interest. This is a really juicy module. There s a lot in it. If this is all new to you, you ll be amazed at how much is involved. If you already have a coaching practice and haven t been successful, my hope is that you ll find why that is. This will show you the steps that you need to take in order to be successful very clearly. I know that many people leave out a number of these steps if they ve never learned them because it s not all intuitive. Page 2 is what you need to know about why keeping your client pipeline filled and flowing is imperative for your business and financial success. Gaining a client here or there is easy if you market yourself and your services to the right people at the right time, but having clients flow into your practice consistently is something else entirely. Imagine the difference between working with one client per month versus eight clients per month. If your coaching rate is $100 per hour and you coach each client two hours per month, on just coaching alone it would mean an annual income of $2,400 in Scenario 1 versus $19,200 in Scenario 2. This is a simple example. I ll teach you to generate much more per client, but you get my point. What s present in Scenario 2 to make sure this happens is an on-going marketing strategy that results in a full practice. It s critical that you have this in place right from the start so you don t fall afoul of no-client blues. What I m essentially saying here is that the reason why this system is critical is because otherwise it s going to be very hit or miss. Some months you may not even get a client. Having a website up and saying that you re taking coaching clients is a strategy to a point, but it s very random. There s no extracurricular marketing going on in that scenario where you have it on your website and are hoping that people read it and take action. As we know, hope is not a strategy at all. There need to be other things going on here. This takes us to how the client pipeline works and looks in flow-chart form. You can see why each piece of the system is RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 2

3 vital and how it all works together. First of all, it all starts with marketing. That is essentially about how to bring people into your business. Marketing can take many forms. It can be public speaking, social media, networking, going to other people s events and meeting people there, writing articles for other people s publications or marketing through your articles and publications. The ways in which you can market are many and varied. You ll need to find the right mix for you. The right mix for you will be the things that you really enjoy doing and feel comfortable doing combined with the places that your ideal clients hang out. For example, it s no good doing a bunch of marketing on LinkedIn if your ideal clients are not business owners. It s really thinking about these two worlds. Having said that, not all marketing necessarily feels easy or comfortable at the start because it s like a foreign land. We re trying to find out the language, the lay of the land and how people do things in that particular world. There may be a learning curve for you in a particular area of your marketing activities. Don t let that be a license to say no to it because it may end up being one of the most beneficial places for you to market. Your marketing will bring people in to your website. On your website, you will have information about your coaching. There are many ways to approach this in terms of how much detail you go into and exactly what you say on that page. Bottom line, I recommend that you keep your information quite basic. If you have a lot of information about a lot of different coaching packages and options on your website, it can actually create confusion and overwhelm for your prospective clients, even to the point where they decide they re not even going to have a conversation with you because they feel they re already confused and overwhelmed and they don t want more of that. In brief, I always recommend that people make it known that they offer coaching and invite the prospective client through that website to book the complementary call with them. Effectively, the complementary call is a free, no-obligation conversation usually lasting between 15 and 30 minutes. I personally recommend 15 to 20 minutes to keep it tight and focused because your time is precious, and by then you should know whether you re a fit. Then you ll be in a position to potentially move these prospective clients into paying clients. This is how I used to do it myself. For my part, I would have very simple wording and language, letting people know that I offer coaching, having good testimonials, and then leading them into have this RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 3

4 conversation with me. The next step from the website is the inquiry. The inquiry may come to you through or telephone, and you need to know how you re going to handle that and have a structured system in place for every step of this so that you know how the inquiry is going to be handled, whether you are solo or have an assistant or team. The next step is the filtering process. This is the step that I actually left out back in the day, and it cost me dearly in terms of time, money and goodness knows what else. The filtering process is about being really clear on who your ideal client is and what specific things they have in common that would enable you to know if it is appropriate to have this complimentary call with someone. As an example, I used to offer complimentary calls to anyone who wanted to have one. To do anything just to have a client is one of the common traps that we fall into in the early days. The problem with that is that if there isn t a filtering system in place to weed out non-ideal clients, then you re going to spend a lot of you time on the phone with people where five minutes into the conversation you realise it s just not the right fit. This can show up in a multitude of ways. It might be a personality clash in some way. It may be that they don t have the appropriate level of knowledge or experience to work with you in the way that you work. It might be that they are trying to use the call as a free coaching session. To be clear, it isn t. A complimentary call is an exploratory conversation about how you might work together. It is not free coaching. It s really important that you make that clear on any communications that you have at any point in this process so that people don t get on a call with you and immediately bombard you with questions such as, How much of this should I eat? Am I doing this wrong? and What would you recommend I do here? This isn t what this call is about. This call should really only happen by the time that someone feels 80% sure or more that they want to work with you one-on-one, and this call is just a formality in seeing if you really can help them in the way they think you can help them, what exactly you offer, and if you like each other, could get along great and be a great fit. It shouldn t be the type of call where they re trying to find out who you are and what you re about. Your website should do that job. The filtering process can take many different forms. It might be an online form they fill in answering a bunch of questions. It might be a coachability quiz, which might be online. It could be through a Word document that they complete and to you. It might be a questionnaire or an initial phone conversation with RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 4

5 your assistant. You must be really clear on how you re going to filter. Some examples of that might be if you coach people who are over a year into their raw food journeys, then you need to know if they are over a year into their raw food journey. How long have they been? Where are they? What stages have they been through? These are all things that will help them process where they re at and enable you, when you do get on the call with them, to really dive in to the key questions that you want to ask them and be able to discuss their situation more completely without hearing all of their history. The filtering process is the step that I missed out. The way it also impacted on me is that people would ring up to have a conversation with me about working with me, and then we d get all the way to the end of the call and they d say, This has been really great. I know I want to work with you, but I don t have the money right now. They really didn t. I want to talk later about money objections and things like that. These people often wouldn t have the money. We spent 15 to 20 minutes of my time in my business, costing me money, only to find out that they weren t even in a position to have coaching with me. I don t want that to happen to you. There must be some kind of question in your filtering process that eradicates this possibility. That might look something like saying, My base rate for coaching comes in at X amount of dollars. Would you be able to pay this without undue stress? or something like that. On the flipside, it s one thing for someone to say they can pay you. It s another seeing them actually paying you, which I have found out, much to my frustration over the years. A lot of people will put down their deposit or first instalment. Then you come to the second one, and it fails. You want to make sure that whoever you do work with at that level has the funds, and knows that they will have if they opt for an instalment option, to pay you month after month without it being a problem. It s not fair for you, and knowing that they re in that position creates stress for them as well. It creates awkwardness in the relationship. The money question is one that must be addressed in this filtering process in whatever language and terminology best suits you. Some of you may be a little more direct in your language. Some of you may be softer in talking around it but still getting to the point. How you address it doesn t matter to me, only that you address it to protect yourself and be very clear with the client so there s no room for misinterpretation. The next step is actually arranging to have this complementary call, assuming that RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 5

6 they ve come successfully through your filtering process, they do seem like a good fit and they could afford the payments if they choose to work with you. Then you need to have that phone call with them. I don t recommend that you have this session face to face because it can be very distracting. If you plan on coaching that client face to face in the future, then it could work. Bear in mind that not many people are necessarily going to come to your home for a 15-minute conversation. It s much better to have it just over the phone, no matter how you mean to work with them in the future. Setting up the complementary call sounds very simple. It s like saying, Let s just set up a time to speak. That s fine if you do it over the phone and say, Here s what I have. Does this work for you? That can be done quite quickly. In all honesty, if you are looking to build a very profitable and successful business, you do not want to get into these kinds of conversations because you re really doing the work of an assistant. Yes, I know that in the early days we often don t have an assistant. Your goal is to get an assistant as soon as you can, someone who can have these conversations, handle s, etc. You don t really want to be the person who s setting up the call and then having the call later on. For that reason, I personally started and have continued to work with an online diary system, which basically means that someone clicks on a link on my website, books themselves into my calendar, and then I approve that date and time when that booking comes through to me by . It s a brilliant system, very easy to use and costs just a small amount of money every month. It eliminates the need for an assistant or third party. It also means that the client can choose from a range of available appointment times and dates, which is great for them. It also means that should the client or you need to change the appointment, it s only really a click of a mouse away, rather than having to pick up the phone and say, I can t do that anymore. Can you do this? or having any kind of miscommunication or back and forth with going on. My number-one recommendation is to go that route. There are a lot of online calendars out there now. They re not big investments. Some are even free. Obviously, I m pretty clear on what I recommend there. The main reason is because if you re doing this by , you can imagine if someone s you and says, Here s my form, and you decide they re a good fit. You them and say, Here are four dates and times to choose from. They back and say, I can t make any of those, so you back again and say, How about these? They RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 6

7 back and say, I m sorry. I can t do any of those either. This can go on and on sometimes. It s horrendous. You don t want to get into that. This is why I say an online booking calendar is the solution. What s also great about that is it will send out reminders to your clients, without you having to do anything, saying, You have a call with such-and-such in 24 hours. Here s the number to ring. Here s the time zone converter if you don t live in the UK. Everything is automated. Arranging the complementary call sounds very simple, but as you can tell from what I ve just shared with you, it can be anything but sometimes. It shouldn t be difficult to just set up a call with someone. Keep it easy, simple and straightforward. The next step is having that call with the prospective client. This is where a lot of people really lose the deal. That s because the way that this call shapes up will make or break the opportunity to work with someone. In this module I am actually giving you an example of how one of these calls would look. This isn t for you to just guess at. I think where a lot of people go wrong is they do guess at this and don t get the formula right. Then it doesn t flow, work or convert. For now just know that it s critical that you do have a structure to these calls, that you use the same structure every call, that you keep to time for both of your benefits, and that you re really clear that this is not a free coaching call. It is an exploratory conversation to learn more about the prospective client, what their problem is, if you have the solution for them, what that looks like, if you re a good fit and to make them an offer. This basically means to tell them what your options are and move them into investing with you. That does sound very simple. It actually is, but you d be amazed at how many people don t get this bit right. Even coaches who have been working with clients for a number of years still do not have a system for this. It means that every time they go to have this conversation, it s completely different. It becomes random and ineffective. Of course, ineffective equals low conversion. We don t want that for you. The next step is converting to a client or customer. I say customer as well because sometimes after having this conversation with someone, you may realise that in actual fact, having a one-on-one live relationship with them may not be the best thing for their particular problem. You may decide that even though you could help them one on one through coaching, you would rather move them into purchasing a home study, ebook or something of that nature from you rather than working with them yourself. This is because even though they might get through RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 7

8 the filtering process and seem like an ideal client, it s not until you speak with someone on the phone that you get a feel for their personality, attitude and things like that. You might realise that they re actually not such a great fit at all. Having said that, if your filtering process is good, the chance of this happening is very low. The good thing about this is that even if your filtering process isn t brilliant to start with, it soon will be. Every call that you have will give you some more insight into what else needs to be in that filtering process in order not to have a repeat situation happening. As I said earlier, for me it was the financial bit. I ended up setting up a system where we would have that conversation before the actual call or illustrate it through wording that this is the deal financially and you needed to be in that position in order to have this call. I think it s pretty obvious. You will learn on the job. It would be amazing if you got your filtering process 100% right at the start, even if that is possible because real-life experience really will take care of most of it. The final piece is taking the payment. This is really important. It s one thing to have a great complimentary call with someone and think, Yes, we re a fit. I really want to work with this person. We re going to have a great time and I m going to really help them, for them to agree with that and say, Yes, I want to work with you. It s another thing entirely to actually receive the money. You need to make sure that as part of this system, you have the ability to take payments in a way that is simple, straightforward, quick and easy. The potential pitfall here is that you might say, We ll be in touch. No. You either have a system where you take the payment on the spot and literally write down their payment details, or you have a follow-up that you send immediately afterward that lays out exactly how they can pay and makes it clear that they must pay within a certain timeframe. During this module, we re going to talk about fast-action incentives or bonuses. That basically means that you will make an offer to them that is time sensitive. It might be something along the lines of saying, If you commit to this right now, I will give you an extra. It might be a copy of your book or ebook. It might be a home study programme or an extra coaching call with you. It might even be a 10% discount or savings. That s for you to decide. It must be relevant to the size of the investment that they re making. It s no good if they re investing a few thousand pounds or dollars with you to offer them a free ebook. That s not going to make them pay on the spot. It would need to be a much juicier product or offering than that. Usually in those situations, it would be a 10% savings or a juicy hard copy RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 8

9 item like a home study product. If they re coaching with you, it may be a threesession package. Then it might be appropriate to say, If you sign up right now, I ll extend your sessions from 45 minutes to an hour, or something like that. You can be really creative with this. This is the final piece of the equation, and it would be all too easy to get all the way through this system and then leave the money bit kind of hanging. A) It s not good for you in your business. B) It s not professional. C) It leaves the client confused and wondering, What happens next? Every piece of this must be thought out and in place before you move into this process. By the end of this module, you ll know exactly what you re doing with all of this. Let s move on to how to get really clear on who your ideal clients are. This is Page 3. Many new coaches fall into the trap of thinking they should work with anyone and everyone who comes knocking on their door. Certainly this is one way to learn a lot of lessons hard and fast. You don t have to do it this way unless you really want to. My preferred recommendation is that you get clear on who your ideal clients are first and then only allow those people to have a private conversation with you and to work with you one on one. To be clear, your ideal clients are the ones who are a perfect fit for you and vice versa. They may share similar personality traits, beliefs and eating preferences to you. For example, they may have the same or similar eating profile to you. They may be going through exactly the same thing that you went through a few years ago, so you completely understand the issues involved. You may simply click for no obvious reason. You just intuitively feel that the fit is right and will happily work with them for that reason alone. Having said this, without a doubt it is still imperative to get crystal clear on what your ideal client is all about. Knowing this information will change everything for you, as it will affect the products and services you create, the copy you write, the money you bring in and absolutely the level of joy that you experience working in your business. On the next few pages there are some really powerful coaching exercises to get clear on what your ideal client is like. It does take time and energy to work through them properly, but please know that skipping these exercises would be madness. I m serious here. Everything that you offer in your business, especially at the higher levels, should revolve around these people. Without this information you really will be doing yourself and your business a huge disservice. You simply won t create the kind of business and income that you desire. RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 9

10 Before you turn the page, I just want to add a couple of things. I ve already made it very clear that you must do this work. Otherwise, you ll get what I outlined at the top of the page, which is saying yes to everyone, having these complimentary calls with people, potentially moving into coaching with them, and then realising that you really are not working with the right kinds of people. You need to be really clear on what this ideal client looks like. You will be by the time you ve done these exercises. The reason why there is more than one exercise is because you want to come at this through lots of different angles and really work through to get to know your ideal client intimately. By the time you ve done this, you will. Then that person will see real to you. You really will end up with a name for your ideal client. When I have a conversation with you in the future about your ideal client and say, What do you call your ideal client? you ll be able to say, Her name is Cathy, or His name is Simon. You want to make this ideal client real in your mind so that every time you come to write an article, create a product or write some copy for your website, you re writing or creating that for Cathy or Simon. This will make life so much easier for you. Hopefully, by me just saying this out loud to you, you re having an aha moment, saying Oh my gosh. This is why I haven t been attracting clients. If you are having a scattergun approach, that means you are trying to speak to everyone at the same time. You re trying to speak to all different types of people and saying the right thing to all those people so they will all be interested in working with you. That is a strategy that doesn t work for any business let alone raw food coaching. If you think about it, every business that is successful is really clear on who they re speaking to. Some of the most popular and well-known businesses are branded so strongly and have such a strong message that they actually rule out huge percentages of the population. That s their intention. Because their language and brand are so powerful, it means that it speaks to just the right group of people: the ones who will adore their product or service. You need to know who you are, what you are about, what your passions are and everything to do with you in order to know who you are a good fit for. Your ideal client will be someone who, when you think about working with them, you just can t wait. It s almost like you think you shouldn t be getting paid for it because they are such a dream client. For you to even believe that these people exist, you have to give yourself permission to believe that these people exist, because they do. You know as well as I do that there are so many different types of people in this world, and you ll be able to think of people that you know or have worked with who really would be a good RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 10

11 fit for you. When you come to do your ideal client exercises, think about these people. What it is about them that is so great and why they re such a perfect fit for you? Give yourself permission to only work with ideal clients because if you accept anything less, you will feel it. It also may impact on the impact of your coaching. If you try to work with someone who you are not feeling the love for, for whatever reason, you re not going to be the best coach you can be unless you are a true professional. Honestly, true professionals wouldn t get themselves working with someone they really do not want to be working with. Imagine for a moment that you have a full coaching practice, and it s full of people that are a great fit for you. You love working with them and every coaching call you have with them is a joy. They re moving forward and getting closer all the time to what it is that they signed up to gain from working with you. They re loving the process. They re doing their homework. They re telling people about you. Other people are coming to you because of them. They are buying other products and services from you. They re raving about you, and they re paying the money that you asked for. These are ideal clients. If you ve got a smile on your face right now, that s good. That s how it should be. Without doing these exercises, you won t know what you re aiming for or what ideal clients look like, and you won t get to have this experience. With all of that said, on Page 4 you ll find the ideal client basic profile. This is your starter exercise to warm you up. We re not going to talk through that now in the interest of time. All of these exercises are very self-explanatory, so it should be very easy for you to complete. Page 5 is A day in the life of. This is a very powerful coaching exercise for you to get very clear on what this ideal client goes through in their typical day, the kinds of thoughts they think, the kinds of issues that come up for them and much more. Page 6 is What are they looking for? This is where you get to brainstorm the kinds of terms and search words that they might put into Google to try to find a solution to their problem. Page 7 is A conversation with. This is a fill-in-the-blank for you to imagine that after finding you via Google or some other way; you then get on the phone with them. They just called you because they re curious. They want to ask you questions about how you can help them. It isn t the same as a complimentary call, by the way. This is more informal and something that they ve just done because they found RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 11

12 your website and may not be bothered to read it. Maybe they were so excited that they just picked up the phone and said Oh my gosh! I have to work with you. This is not the complimentary call, but it will still be incredibly helpful to you to get clearer on this ideal client. I m going to leave those with you. Remember, they re imperative. Page 10 is How to decide what you want to be known for. Although this may take some time to figure out or decide upon for most coaches, my intention is that deciding what you want to be known for, also known as what you want to be the go-to person for, will come quickly and easily to you. First of all know that just like any other aspect of your business, you can always change your mind. Granted, you don t want to change your mind very often. Otherwise people get confused and a confused mind says no. Do take some time to consider this carefully, but don t take too long. Before we go to the examples, this particular exercise is one of the most important that you ll ever do. It s one that most people do not do. They don t think to do it. This is what excites me when I train people in business. It s being able to share these extra things that most people don t know that will make all the difference to you. What I m saying is that you want to be really clear on what sets you apart. This is different than simply niching. Niching is about being clear on what kind of subsection you re working in within raw food. For example, one niche within raw food might be personal development. Another niche might do with the environment, training chefs, working with mothers of babies who want to eat raw or helping kids transition to raw might be another niche. You get the idea. A niche is like a subsection of the niche of raw foods. In terms of being known for something specific, that is so much more focused. The reason I believe you want to nail this as quickly as possible is because when you come to create your website, evolve an existing website, brand yourself or rebrand yourself, depending on where you are in your business, you want to revolve everything around what you want people to say about you. When people are talking about you to other people, you don t want them to be lost for words and think, How can I best describe what he or she does? I know they coach raw foods, but I don t know if they would be the right coach for this person or not, so I m not sure if I should even mention them. If that person could say, She s the person to go to if you re just starting out with raw food, or He s the person to go to if you want to eat raw food while training to be an athlete, you can see how RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 12

13 much of a difference that makes. By being this clear on what you are the go-to person for, not only do you make it easy for other people to refer other prospective clients to you, but it also enables you to tighten up very strongly within your business around your strengths, passions and the things that make you different. In turn, this sets you up to be interviewed more frequently, for your marketing to be much strategic, powerful and impactful, and for you to know what you re about. There are so many websites now and not just raw food coaches but life coaches and other coaches who are so generic that the average person can t really discern whether they re a good fit for that particular coach. This is where most coaches go wrong, honestly. They are trying to speak to everyone in the hope that they will pull in a client from this whole roster of people. Because they re not speaking very pointedly to a certain type of person, it means that no one that s reading it is going to be able to say, They re speaking to me. The language is so vague, generic, wishy-washy and general that it s not really saying anything. Can you imagine when you decide what you re the go-to person for what this would be for you and your business? It would change everything. You can tell I m excited. I do tend to get excited about things like this. I hope you are too because this is a game changer. Let s go back to Page 10 and look at the examples. By this point I ve given you fair insight into what this could look like. Here are some concrete examples of what a go-to statement might look like. The first one is, I m the go-to person for raw food coach training and highly profitable business building. I put, Guess who, but it s obvious, I hope. The next one is, I am the go-to person for the Christian woman who wants to overcome body and food issues. This is Ginny Edwards. I am the go-to person for mothers who want to introduce raw foods to their kids in a way that s creative and fun. This is Nina Dench. I m the go-to person for busy entrepreneurs who want to eat raw food for health and performance reasons, but don t have time to figure it out. I ve put, Is this you? because at time of writing I don t know anyone who has niched and branded themselves for that type of market. To my mind, that s a very hungry, eager and excited market that needs servicing. You get my idea. You re going to now be in a position to figure out what you want to be the go-to person for. If you re new to this stuff and thinking, I have no clue at this point, Karen, before you start panicking, just know that you can change your mind. Once upon a time when I worked with a branding expert, she told me that it takes just three months RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 13

14 in the minds of the general public to take on and accept a complete brand or identity change in a company or individual. In my history, I switched from being the director of The Fresh Network to being The Raw Food Coach. I m in the same field, but it was a very different positioning and business. If you asked anyone today what they saw me as, unless they didn t know what I do now, they would definitely say The Raw Food Coach. They would have said that very quickly after I sold The Fresh Network because I was all guns blazing with and my identity was very strong. What I m saying is start somewhere. Even if you re brand new to this, start with what you know and what you feel confident in. Start somewhere and know that if after a few months, a year or two years you decide that it s no longer the right fit for you or you want to do something different, you can. If you start off with this generalised marketing approach that I just outlined, you re not going to get the results that you want. Hang your hat on something and go for that. The very worst that can happen is that you learn how to do that brilliantly, and then you apply it to something else in the future. The exercise that I have for you is outlined in Page 10. By the time you get to Page 11, you ll know what that is. I m not going to go through it now with you in the interest of time and because you need to sit down quietly, focus, fill in the blanks and work it out for yourself. It s going to be a game changer for you, so get excited. On Page 11, we re talking about where to find prospective clients if you want to be proactive. As it says here, I m all about the Law of Attraction, but at the same time, I believe that you have to show willingness to get out there in some way, shape or form. Throwing up a website, as I like to call it, is not being especially proactive in my mind. I really think you have to engage with people. Whether this is via a newsletter, ezine, blog, social media, online videos and audios, live networking, attending or running events, or even proactively targeting people or organisations and making them an offer, real contact, whether it s online or offline, is what s needed to be seen, heard and hired. People can fall into the trap of thinking that once they have a website, they re all set. I really get that thought process because I used to have it in my first business. The only reason why it actually worked was because all the other things were going on around it. People were talking about us. We were doing things that got us seen and heard. They were bringing people to the website, but just having a website up is not enough. You need to be out there and RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 14

15 engaging with people and showing them that you exist, what you re like and that you can help them. My experience is that public speaking is one of the best ways to get clients. The reason for this is that you are showing up in person and people get to hear you, see you and be in your energy. People are much more likely to buy from people who they ve met in real life than they are to buy from someone online who they may not be able to even see or hear. As an aside, I don t recommend that you ever have a website without a photo of yourself and things that reveal to you to your prospective clients. People just won t work with faceless people. Going back to what I was saying, public speaking is fantastic for this because people come up to you and say, Oh my gosh! You were great. I really get you. I resonate with your message. I love to work with you. How can I do that? My experience has shown me every single time that this is the case. Just be aware of that. If you don t like public speaking, and I understand that because it used to be my biggest fear, video is also very good. The bottom line is that you always need to grow as a person to grow in business. You will be called to do things at different times that you think, I really would rather not do that. Just know that the growth of your business is dependent on the growth of you as an individual. I ve had to overcome a lot of stumbling blocks and challenges along the way for me to get where I am today and face a lot of fears and get over certain things to do what I do. Even though there may be trepidation, when you are really committed to service, to doing what you do and to helping people, providing you use that constructively, you can move beyond these fears. You can actually do things that you never thought you would do because you want to help people and you know that facing this fear will enable you to do more of that. On Page 11, I ve listed out some good examples of places to find people who could be requiring raw food coaching. How to attract clients effortlessly just by being who you are and doing what you do without being especially proactive is on Page 12. You must be clear on who you are, what you re about, who you serve, how you serve them and why they should choose you. This last point really ties into the go-to person stuff again. I m talking about how you move yourself into a position where you can actually be almost horizontal. It means that you ve done the work and the work is now working for you. I ve gone into detail here about the importance of having a website and a mailing list that you build. This is really important. You ve RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 15

16 all seen it. If you don t have a website yet, obviously you need to get one. If you don t have an opt-in, which is where people put their name and address to get on your mailing list, then you must get that as soon as possible. You need to build your list so that you can have conversations with people on a regular basis through and let them know what you have, how you can help them, engage with them, send them free samples of your work and things like that. We can talk a lot more about that. Having that system in place means that you can have the system working for you. People come to your website, sign up to your list and usually get a free gift. I do encourage that. I wouldn t just simply have an optin. You want to give them a taste of who you are and how you can help them. It s a brilliant opportunity. It works really well. Just that can actually move people into this whole flow system where they end up potentially booking a complimentary call with you, working with you one on one or buying a product from you. On Page 12 is how to set up your client conversion system and exactly what you ll need within it. In the interest of time, I m not going to go through all of this. It s very clearly laid out for you. It s like a step by step process so you re really clear on what pieces need to be in your system for this system to all pull together and move people from being interested to actually investing with you. You also will have a separate sheet which maps out a checklist of all the different things that you need to do and have in place for this system to work properly. I ve created that for you because I want to make sure that you re 100% clear on what you need to do and you can literally just tick the boxes and work through all these things. By the time you ve ticked all the boxes, you re all set to go. How cool is that? Page 13 is how to run a complimentary call and make sure that working together would be a great fit for both of you. Here is an actual script. This is an imaginary conversation of me speaking to Jane. I ve mapped this out for you so you can see what this call would look like in real life. This is a very good example of how a call would run. Even though I ve made up the conversation, I ve had so many of these conversations that I know how they run. What I m effectively doing here is illustrating the flow of the call and the language. You ll see it s very conversational. It s not stiff and very over-the-top professional. For the most part, the raw food coach industry is not one that is super uptight and rigid. It s a very heart-centred occupation. It s service-oriented. It s about helping people and being real with people, meeting them where they re at, helping them where they want to go, and recognising that for people on a raw food journey RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 16

17 it can be a very emotional process because of the types of shifts that people go through when they bring more raw food into their diet. What we re going to be talking more about in future modules is these different stages and how to work with people at each stage. On Pages 13, 14 and 15, you will be able to read that conversation and get a feel for how it works. By the end of that, you ll think, I could do that, which is important. That s what I want you to say. I want you to feel that you can do this. You ll see how easy it is. It s just really important that you can see how the call is structured. Even though it appears to flow very conversationally, there is a structure. The structure is the critical piece. On Page 16, we re talking about how to convert at the end of the call and enjoy an 80% or more success rate. I actually think 80% is a low number for what you could achieve with this system. I just wanted to err on the side of caution. Especially when you re new and your confidence may not be what it will be later, you might have the odd moments and I think, I forgot to say this, or I didn t do that. That can happen. That s fine. Don t give yourself a hard time. We ve all done it. Just learn for next time. The great thing is that you can always someone afterward or pick up the phone and say, By the way, I forgot to mention. It s not the best way to approach it. You really want it to flow and be seamless wherever possible, but don t think that if you forgot to tell someone something that you can t go back afterward and tell them. Of course you can. They ll appreciate the fact that you did that. In order to convert successfully, you need to know the following: what the client issue or issues really are and what they really want instead, how specifically you can help them to attain that, what product or service is best suited to yield the desired result, and an idea of your client s budget so you re making offers within the right ballpark. Here s a special note. People can and often do find money for something that they really want or need. Do not jump into any conclusions about what they can or can t afford or what they would or wouldn t be prepared to pay. This can backfire for both parties. There s a lot I could say about this, but in essence, we ve all had times in our lives where we ve told ourselves, I can t afford that. It might be a pair of shoes or a training programme. It could be anything. Then we ve gone home, sat and thought about it, or kept reading or thinking about it and ended up turning around and thinking, But I want it so much. I m going to have it, and we ve done something to be able to afford it. We might have sold something, borrowed RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 17

18 some money or even gotten some unexpected windfall. I think all of us have had times in our lives where we ve said one minute, I can t afford something, and the next minute we ve found a way. Please don t take that possibility from your prospective client. They might have come through your filtering process and come to the call and in their mind thought, I m just going to work with him or her at their basic level because I only have this much money, but during your conversation something might have transpired where you ve realised that what they really would be suited to is a bigger package. It s not because you re trying to make more money or sell more stuff but because with everything they ve outlined, you genuinely believe that what they re trying to purchase isn t going to be the best fit for them or get them the results they want and really just isn t the best choice. At that point you can say, I understand that you ve come to this call with this in mind and a set budget. That s absolutely fine. Being completely honest, if you were to sign up for the potion that you have in mind, here s what you reasonably could expect to achieve in that timeframe. Then you would go on to outline that. However, I do have a package called such-and-such package. It is more money and more time with me, but by the end of that programme, you will have achieved X, Y, Z. Would you like to hear more about that? They might say, Yes. Now I m starting to wonder about this. I don t really have any more money to invest in coaching. You can say, That s fine. I m just going to tell you about it. If you feel you really want to do it, we can talk about ways that you might be able to manage it financially. With that said, it s not your job to figure out someone else s finances. You can certainly assist them in coming with ideas for how to get the money, but don t take responsibility for the money side of things. It s their responsibility to find and pay the money. Remember, coaching is a two-way street. People sign up to coaching in a position where ideally they are very much seeing this as a team situation. They re the ones that are going to do the work. The coach is the one that s there to support, guide, inspire, motivate and cheer lead them and all those cool things, but at the end of the day they must be the ones that figure out the money piece. It s part of the deal. It helps them stretch and grow in doing that. The final piece is what fast-action bonus you re going to offer. We ve talked briefly about this already, so you know what we re talking about. These are all the things that must be in place at this conversion stage. At the bottom of Page 16, you ll RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 18

19 see what to offer clients and how to decide what to offer and why. I ve listed out all these different options. This is more than you may have considered before. That s a good thing because sometimes people say, I don t know what to offer. I don t really have anything. The fact of the matter is you will always have coaching. You don t have to have a coaching programme mapped out. You can literally have someone come on a call with you and ask you lots of questions, and you help them and move them from A to B. That s coaching. You don t have to have a system yet. When I work with clients at a really high level, we map out their proprietary system. You ll find out more about what that is exactly through working with that, but you don t have to have that to get started. You can literally be on the call with someone and help them with everything you have right now. I want you to take a look at that. Page 17 is how to handle I can t afford it conversations and other common objections. This is just my stance on this stuff. At the end of the day, I m teaching you things that I do and believe in, but your business is your business. You must choose how you re going to work with things. When I share things with you, it s because they ve worked for me and I believe that they re the right way to approach things. I know that s what you ve signed up for. That s not a problem in and of itself. I just want to be clear that if something doesn t feel right to you or you don t agree with something that you don t just do it because you think, Karen has told me to do it. Therefore, I should do it. Anything that you feel incongruent about will backfire on you in your business. You must be true to yourself and your brand. Yes, there s a possibility that if you don t do something that I recommend it may backfire and you may learn a lesson, but you ve learned a lesson and you ll do it differently in the future. Stay in control of your business. Run everything that I suggest through your filter. See if it feels good to you. If it does, apply it. If it doesn t, do something else. From Page 18 onward, it s the format that you are now getting used to, which is how to utilise what you ve just learned and apply it to your own business. Everything you need to consider is here waiting for you simply to fill in the spaces. In doing so, you ll have the definitive blueprint for how you re going to take care of this side of your coaching business. As you can tell, doing this work will prove invaluable to you. Without further ado, I encourage you to grab a pen, complete the exercises on the previous pages and get started on creating your unique blueprint. Have fun. RAW COACH TRAINING COPYRIGHT KAREN KNOWLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PAGE 19