Designing an Effective Business Coaching Funnel
If you’re like most business coaches, you often encounter prospects who are interested in your services…but who aren’t in a position to hire you for a full-price, one-on-one coaching program. For average business coaches, prospects in this position are simply a “no”—a contact to file away and go back to a couple of times a year, just in case something changes. But for savvy business coaches, there are ways to engage these clients now, get them awesome results, and make (mostly) passive revenue in the process. It’s called a coaching funnel. And the basic idea is that you introduce varying levels of service for clients who are in various positions financially and move them deeper into a business relationship with you.
For savvy business coaches, there are ways to engage these clients now, get them awesome results, and make (mostly) passive revenue in the process. It's called a coaching funnel.
How does it work? Follow along!
Free Stuff
At the top of your funnel is free stuff. But don’t be fooled. As my friend and expert marketing copywriter, Bob Bly, shared here on the Coaches’ Coach: Your free stuff should be as good (if not better!) than your paid stuff. Invest in your top-of-funnel content. It’s extremely important.
What kind of free things should you develop?
Blog posts (great for SEO)! You don’t have to blog daily, but blog regularly, whatever rhythm you choose. Here, we post four times per month…and have been doing so religiously for years. You’d be amazed at the traffic that finds us just through blogging.
Free courses. These can be video courses or email courses. Should be short, actionable, and incredibly useful. No esoteric stuff.
Ebooks/Reports. One of our favorite ways to generate leads. Create a high-value ebook about a subject you know your target clients are struggling with.
Webinars. Do free, live webinars on topics that are timely. Market it to your prospect list and encourage them to bring their friends.
Low-Cost Info Products
The next level of the funnel is low-cost info products. Information products are a wonderful source of revenue because they’re cost-effective to produce–and leverage your time and efforts in creative and profitable ways.
The pricing for these can be anywhere from $27-$197. The idea is to keep it low enough to be an “impulse buy” whereby your customers can make a decision to buy instantaneously without engaging in a long, drawn-out budget and approval process.
Typical products include webinars, video courses, and membership sites.
Hot tip: We recommend that you immediately begin hosting free webinars and then segue into paid-for webinars when you feel ready. The great thing about webinars is that they’re a fantastic way to prepare your knowledge to be repackaged into other products. It’s super easy to produce video courses by compiling your actual webinar recordings and turning them into videos. Use something like Riverside.fm to get good video quality. You can also prepare worksheets to go along with them.
Membership sites are awesome because you can provide all your best business documents, exercises, and templates and have low-budget clients pay a monthly fee to access them. This is particularly helpful if they can’t afford higher-value coaching programs. Plus, you can use this same repository of content for your higher-paying clients to cut down on teaching time and maximize the results-driving implementation that will keep clients around long-term–a technique we’ve often recommended.
High-Cost Info Products
The pricing for these is typically $297-$2,997 and it includes things like psychometric or behavioral assessments, premium courses, live events, and conferences.
One of the best ways to make quick cash–and attract new clients in the process–is by conducting regular live training events, such as morning seminars or 1-day business growth seminars. These can be in-person, online, or hybrid. Conduct them anywhere from once a month to once a quarter, and charge a tuition fee of $297 to $497–with discounts if they bring friends! This gives your prospects a chance to “try before they buy” a more expensive program.
As you get more comfortable with live events, you can also roll out higher-cost, multi-day conferences where you charge thousands of dollars instead of hundreds.
You can also license tools to resell to your clients, such as psychometric assessments (we like the Teamalytics 360), business management tools, and more.
Low-Cost Coaching Programs
The next level of the funnel is low-cost coaching programs. The pricing for these is typically $497-$1,997 per month, and includes things like mastermind groups and group coaching.
Group coaching allows you to maintain high Effective Billable Rates (EBR) because it reduces the amount of time you spend with each client.
For example: If you have just four clients paying you $497 a month to receive coaching in a small group, you’re earning $2,000 per month…and it doesn’t take much more time than tending to a single coaching client! If you invest just four hours per month per group, which includes two coaching sessions per month and no more than two hours of logistics and preparation, you’ve got an EBR of $500 per hour, per group!
If you have just four clients paying you $697 a month for an investment of just four hours per month of your time, you’ve got an EBR of $697 per hour, per group!
And you’d be surprised at how effective group coaching is. Many clients even prefer it, because of the camaraderie that comes from the small group environment.
High-Cost Coaching Programs
The next level of the funnel is high-cost coaching. The pricing for these is typically $1,997-$4,997 per month (or more!) and is the bread and butter of your coaching practice.
You can also do exclusive, members-only retreats in exciting locations where your clients can get 1-on-1 facetime with you in a relaxed, social environment which they never get in their Zoom-driven coaching sessions. This takes coaching relationships to a whole new level and creates long-lasting, lifetime bonds with your clients. The investment for this kind of exclusive, members-only retreat can be as high as $9,997 or more, depending on the length of the event.
At every level, you’re generating more revenue, deepening your relationship with your clients, and creating a consistent stream of business. So build out your coaching funnel if you want to maximize your success!
