When someone—a potential client or referral partner—asks you what you do, are you selling the boat?

We know … right now, you may be thinking, “I’m a coach. I’m not in boat sales. What the heck are you talking about, Melinda?”

Stick with us, here.

You may remember our Pain Island/Pleasure Island diagram, which shows your ideal client’s Pain Island—his or her top 3 challenges, and his or her Pleasure Island—the top 3 desired results.

Your boat—the packages, programs, and services you provide—is what gets your ideal clients from their Pain Island to their Pleasure Island.

So here’s the thing:

If you’re at an event or on a call, and someone asks you what you do, you may be making a big mistake with your answer.

That is, you may be explaining your packages, programs, and services (the boat), rather than showcasing the transformation you provide.

So why is that a mistake?

They buy a transformation.

And that’s exactly why we’re writing this today: we want you to stop selling the boat!

When you’re asked “What do you do?”

DON’T (for the love of Pete, DON’T) say: “I’m a coach and I offer several different packages.”

DO: Sell the journey.

Sell the transformation you provide. Sell the trip from Pain Island to Pleasure Island.

That way, you’re inviting people to step into your boat, by focusing on the results your clients will experience when they do.

This goes back to what we talked about with regard to your niche in a previous blog post: that is, you must identify the group of people you’re passionate about helping, and then identify the challenge they most want to overcome.

Then, you present yourself as the solution.

Here are some examples:

• A tennis coach who works with tennis players who want to serve better and win games might say, “I help tennis players improve their serves so they can stop losing games.”
• A specialty dog trainer might say, “I help dog owners train their dogs effectively so they can live in harmony with their furry friends.”
• Here at TCC, we say, “We help start-up coaches systemize their businesses so they can get more clients and make more money.”

Bonus Tip:

Don’t guess!

Great marketing, great enrollment conversations never come from guessing.

It’s important to remember to interview your ideal prospects (or people like them) to uncover the specific words and phrases they use to describe their challenges and the results for which they’re striving, and use those same words or phrases when you sell the journey. If you’re guessing, you won’t get conversions. So, don’t guess. Ask.

As always, we’ll leave you with a few action steps you can take to practice selling the journey rather than the boat.

Action Steps

1. Identify your ideal client.
2. Narrow in on 3 specific Pain Island points—3 specific challenges your ideal client is facing and wants to solve … in their own words!
3. Identify the top 3 Pleasure Island points: that is, specific results your ideal client would like to achieve or experience… in their own words! (Are you seeing a theme here?)
4. Now, fill in this template: “I help [MY IDEAL CLIENT] achieve [PLEASURE ISLAND POINTS] by stopping [PAIN ISLAND POINTS].”

Voila! You can now answer the “What do you do?” question with confidence, focusing on the outcome and transformation someone will achieve when working with you … rather than focusing on your services. Therefore, you immediately draw prospects in, making them want to know more!

Next steps:

Sign up to receive our complimentary 3-part video training series, “Your Coaching Business Blueprint: Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Business On Track.”

You’ll learn the pattern you may be stuck in, which can sabotage your own efforts to reach your full potential and accomplish your goals, the 3 S’s to your success and why it’s critical to master all 3 (most coaches only master 2), and where your business is leaking money.

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If you read last week’s blog post, “The Truth About Follow-Up: Why 5 Is The Magic Number (Part 1 of 2)”, you likely have a new understanding when it comes to why you must follow up with prospects at least 5 times after they’ve signed up to download your free gift.

As we mentioned, just 2-10 percent of prospects become paying clients after the first 4—yes, four!—”touches,” but that number jumps to 80 percent after the fifth contact.

Meanwhile, almost half of entrepreneurs never follow up, and 90 percent give up after the fourth follow-up (which means 90 percent of entrepreneurs are leaving conversions and therefore money on the table).

(If you missed it, just click here now to read it.)

But …

What should you actually say in each of those follow-up contacts, or “touches”?

We thought you might ask. So, today, we’re telling you. J

Here we go:

The First Touch: Deliver What You Promised

The first time you follow up with people who sign up to receive your free gift, you should deliver your free gift. Pretty simple, right?

Make this email short and sweet. Congratulate the prospect on taking a step toward reaching her goals or making her transformation, and let her know you’ll check in within a few days, after she’s had the chance to go through the information.

The Second Touch: Questions and Answers

In the second follow-up email, share your answers to questions you hear frequently regarding a tip/strategy you offered in your free gift. Give additional information to answer the questions.

Let your prospect know you’ll be checking in again in a few days.

The Third Touch: A Heads Up

Think about the common challenges and pitfalls your prospects might face when they start their journey.

Offer this third message as a “heads-up” about some of the more common pitfalls, or the most devastating, or the ones that derail them the fastest … and more importantly, offer specific suggestions for avoiding them.

The Fourth Touch: A Powerful Testimonial

Introduce your prospects to your most powerful testimonial. Give real-life evidence of someone who has implemented the information you shared in the free gift … and the transformation he or she experienced as a result.

The Fifth Touch: Present the Gap

This is it: remind people of the gap between where they are now and where they want to be.

Outline the path they’re about to follow—where, as a result of them integrating what they learn in your free gift, they experience the results they desire (those points from Pleasure Island on your Pain Island-Pleasure Island Diagram).

Also, outline the alternative path: the one where they choose not to integrate what you share in your free gift, and where they experience the very real costs and disappointments associated with lack of action.

It’s like saying, “You’re not there, yet—don’t get comfortable. You have more to accomplish.”

Then, close it out with a strong Call to Action, asking them to join you for a strategy session. Yes, you have to spell it out—tell them exactly what you want them to do.

That’s It!

The best thing about all of this is that you can automate the entire sequence through a program like The Coaches Console. It’s as close to “set it and forget it” as you can get!

Sounds pretty good, right?

We think so.

Your next steps: sign up to receive our complimentary 3-part video training series, “Your Coaching Business Blueprint: Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Business On Track.”

You’ll learn the pattern you may be stuck in, which can sabotage your own efforts to reach your full potential and accomplish your goals, the 3 S’s to your success and why it’s critical to master all 3 (most coaches only master 2), and where your business is leaking money.

Sign up below:

Lately, we’ve written a lot about making money in the niche of your choosing, whether that’s tennis players who want to stop losing, or start-up coaches who want to streamline their businesses so they can make a bigger impact while enjoying the perks of business ownership (and anything in between!).

Once you’ve defined your niche and done your research about their main challenges and desired results—all in their own words, of course—you’ll likely offer your leads a free gift that begins to solve one of their main challenges, while opening the door for you to present your coaching programs as the avenue for even more, bigger results.

We could go on and on about the free gift idea. In fact, there’s so much to it that that’s a whole different blog post!

For now, we want to focus on what you do after someone takes you up on your offer—when he or she goes from being a warm lead to an even warmer lead.

You follow up.

Okay—that’s easy, right? You knew that.

But did you know that a single follow-up email or contact is simply not enough to inspire your ideal prospects, your warmer leads, to become clients?

Think about this:

How many times do you follow up with a prospect after that initial contact?

Did you know there’s a scientific formula that outlines the ideal number of follow-up contacts?

That number is 5.

Yes, 5!

Because we believe the numbers show it best, here’s a graphic we developed to illustrate just how important it is to follow up 5 times after someone downloads your free gift:

Do you see what we see?

Only 2 percent of prospects will convert into clients with a single follow-up contact. That number increases to 10 percent by the fourth contact but jumps to 80 percent by the fifth contact.

That’s right: 80 percent of prospects convert to paying clients after the fifth follow-up contact!

Meanwhile, almost half of entrepreneurs never follow up—not even once. And a whopping 90 percent give up after the fourth follow-up.

Which means that 90 percent of entrepreneurs are leaving money on the table because they’re not converting prospects that very well could become their next paying clients.

Here’s where things really get good: we’ve heard from lots of start-up coaches that they feel “pushy” or “salesy” or “sleazy” when they think about following up multiple times after someone downloads their free gift.

After all, if they’re interested, they’ll call, right? Wrong.

This isn’t personal. It’s not pushy.

It’s a buyer’s pattern. Period.

Our goal with this blog post is to help you shift your mindset: to help you realize that following up multiple times is a necessary part of your sales process. If you want to reach more of the people who need you, it’s key that you follow up 5 times.

You know what’s really SUPER-cool about this? Most likely you’ve already met your next paying client … you just haven’t followed up enough to help them see they’re ready to convert!

Most prospects simply don’t convert to buyers until after you’ve contacted them 5 times, and most entrepreneurs give up far too early, leaving money, opportunities, and potential impact on the table.

Now, you may be wondering what you should say in each of your follow-up emails.

Of course, we have you covered. We’ll talk about that in our next blog post, Your 5-Part Follow-Up Sequence: What to Say to Increase Your Conversions (Part 2 of 2). So stay tuned!

Meanwhile, sign up to receive our complimentary 3-part video training series, “Your Coaching Business Blueprint: Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Business On Track.”

 You’ll learn the pattern you may be stuck in, which can sabotage your own efforts to reach your full potential and accomplish your goals, the 3 S’s to your success and why it’s critical to master all 3 (most coaches only master 2), and where your business is leaking money.

 Sign up below