subject: 3 Skills To Being A Successful Life Coach: Part 2 [print this page] Being a successful life coach hinges on your ability to sell and attract clients into your coaching. Period. Learning how to attract clients is the second critical foundation to building a successful life coaching practice. This is where many life coaches struggle. Perfecting sales is an ongoing, life-long, continual process and practice. Included within the realm of sales is all relationship, influence, persuasion and a lot more. Sales is how you interact with every human being. Being effective at sales is absolutely critical to your success as a life coach. And a big key is mastering the first foundation of your thoughts and feelings.
There are six components of mastering sales and you must hone and practice each step one by one in order. The first step is the Coaches Claim. You must claim the space of being a trusted advisor and friend. You must be confident and be able to claim that space from within. You must also come from the space of having a deep desire to serve and contribute to their lives. This is why mastering the first phase is so critical.
The second phase is actually talking to people, consistently. If youre going to get better at sales and grow in your capacity, you must have time in the cockpit. Time in the cockpit means you are actively talking to people in a sales conversation. Anything besides this doesnt count as time in the cockpit.
When youre actually talking with the people, the third step is to get in their world. Understand them as a human being. Be in relationship with them. Have the desire to be of service to them. Dont judge them. Dont say, hey Im a life coach. Dont tell them about your services. Just simply be with them, in their world, not yours. And when you do, make breakthroughs for them. Serve them. Coach them. Remember, the first step is to claim that space. And this is how you coach them. You serve them and you make a difference for them right then and there. Selling should feel the exact same as when you are life coaching someone.
Once your clients have experienced a breakthrough, they begin to trust you and are naturally attracted to what you do. They are open to you. This is the point where you connect the breakthrough to their dreams. The only reason they would want to hire you as a coach is so they could achieve their dreams. So you connect the dots on how they can achieve their dreams. You teach them what they need to do, the steps to take, the obstacles theyll face, etc. And part of what theyll need, I imagine, is some help along the way. A life coach.
And once they really get and experience that they could achieve their dreams, that its possible if they have some help and some coaching, then theyre really in a space where they want your life coaching. And you havent even said, hey Im a life coach. You havent told them anything about you do. Youve just served them.
This brings us to the fifth step, the invite. You dont ever invite without doing the first four steps. By this time theyre already thinking and wanting to coach with you. They should be expecting and wanting you to invite them to coach with you. Because of the first four steps. The invite should be a formality and not much more. Theyve already been sold because of the difference youve made. You just have to make sure you claim your prices and you feel comfortable with what you charge.
The last step is to resolve any concerns. Concerns are good because theyre interested and trying to find a way to make it work. This is where you finalize the commitment. And this is where youll also practice and get better in serving and enrolling your clients.
If you can master all these steps bit by bit, day by day, youll be successful. But you have to practice. Lots. You may be awkward at first. You may get rejected. Lots. But youll learn through repetition and practice and by constantly getting better. Good luck on your journey in building a successful life coaching practice!
