Coaching Biz Tips

How to make your blog more “subscribable”

While putzing around recently with FeedBurner/FeedBlitz and the whole question of how to make my blog more "subscribable", I came across some great tips for getting more blog subscribers:

What makes you want to subscribe

Feed placement and design tips

10 effective ways to get more blog subscribers

4 simple steps to more blog subscribers

A secret to finding new subscribers for your blog

And for newbies who are still scratching their heads about what the heck RSS means:

Beginner's guide to RSS

 

 

7 Ways to Wreck Your Sales Funnel

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Simon Allard on one of my favorite subjects: Marketing a coaching business (specifically, sales funnels and multiple streams of income). Listen to the interview for free here.

I thought I'd outline some of the tips we discussed here on the blog, only instead of doing the predictable thing and listing what TO do, I figured it might be interesting to look at this from the "what NOT to do" perspective.

First: "Tell me again, what's a sales funnel and why do I need one?"

A sales funnel is simply a way to describe how you get, keep and grow the lifetime value of customers. It defines the stages that people move through in your business and the strategies you use to help them move from one stage to the next.

Without a well-planned sales funnel, you're much more likely to have gaps in your marketing system -- and gaps can be fatal.

So if your business is not what you want it to be – if your list isn't growing; if getting clients seems harder than necessary; if your marketing is landing on deaf ears – check to see if any of these techniques for wrecking your sales funnel sounds familiar.

7 ways to wreck your sales funnel

#1: Just say no to a target market.

What do you say when someone asks, "Who do you work with?" If your answer begins with "Anyone" or "Everyone," or if you can't outline the problem that your business helps them with in a simple sentence, your market is probably too broad. And the broader your market, the less relevant you'll seem to individual prospects.

Unfortunately, a broad market is something few self-employed coaches can afford. It eats into your profitability, because proving that you're relevant to a variety of people with widely different goals and needs takes more time and effort.

It's far more profitable (and easier!) to focus on a well-defined target market – a group of consumers who share certain key characteristics, including a common problem or goal. You'll find that it's easier to connect with potential customers and help them get the results they're looking for.

Bottom line: Make sure you have a clear understanding of your target market and the problem that your business solves.

Twitter Roundup

I've been stumbling around in the land of Twitter for a while now, and am really enjoying myself! Just today I happened to come across a terrific beginner's guide to Twitter – it's a 48-page ebook called "A geek's Guide To Promoting Yourself and Your Online Business in 140 Characters or Less with Twitter". 

I've made some great connections with other coaches, and seem to get at least 1-2 new followers most days. It's fascinating to see who follows you – sometimes I really wonder how on earth someone found me or what they saw that sparked their interest.

Twitter has turned out to be very different than I expected, and definitely more rewarding than I imagined. Probably the biggest "aha" is that I'm feeling more inclined to blog more frequently because I finally "got" it that shorter posts can be both helpful and fun. (140 characters is a great way to train yourself to keep it simple!)

The biggest surprise about Twitter is that I've been using it to experiment with Haiku poetry. The 5-7-5 syllable rhythm lends itself quite nicely to the 140 character limit. Here are a few of my better  attempts:

• The flowers riot/colors panting and hot, while/the grass begs for mow.
• One cricket alone/is annoying enough, but/two are making more.
• She sits and dreams of/rocks & dirt giving up their/succulent secrets.
• This light's far too bright/I cannot see the angels/God sent to bless me.
• I know that I should,/but it's not in my nature/to finish my peas.

Lastly, here are some of the Twitter gadgets, apps and resources that I've found useful:

• TweetBeep sends Twitter messages to your email inbox; I set up an alert for @Spiritspring so that I don't miss any replies or Tweets about me, myself and I.     =^)
• I use Tweetlater to automatically thank new followers for following me.
• I haven't tweeted from my cell phone yet, because – 1) I have a really crappy cell phone, and 2) I'm almost always in front of my computer when I feel a tweet coming on – but I like variety, so when I get tired of tweeting on the Twitter.com site, sometimes I feel like a Twhirl, and other times I feel like a TwitterFox.
• Looking for people to follow? Use Summize to find people who are talking about stuff you're interested in.
• Caroline Middlebrook has written a Big Juicy Twitter Guide (it's actually a series of blog posts). Scroll all the way down to the bottom for the really basic stuff.
• John T. Unger of TypePadHacks.com has posted several great blog articles on Twitter accessories. Here's the first one to get you started.
• Here's a great video from CommonCraft, "Twitter in Plain English".
  

P.S. D'oh! almost forgot! You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/spiritspring.

Should you call yourself an expert?

This very interesting question was posted recently on the New Coach Connection discussion board. I think there's a sort of underlying bias within the profession against coaches marketing themselves as experts, but it seems to me that most coaches ARE experts, whether they market themselves as such or not.

I think of an expert coach as someone who knows enough about a specific issue or problem to ask the right questions—the questions that help the client accomplish their goals.

Many coach training schools focus on training coaches to facilitate personal growth. Schools such as CTI, Newfield Network and CoachU have created some amazing curriculum that breaks down personal growth into a process that can be expertly facilitated—and by that, I mean a process that consistently produces desired results.

I don't think it would be wrong to say that many graduates of those programs qualify as experts in facilitating personal growth.

But personal growth is not the only possible agenda. Sometimes clients want other types of results; for example, executive clients may want specific bottom-line business results, like increased profits, reduced turnover, or a more efficient work team. That takes expertise of a different kind, and if you don't have it (or are afraid to market yourself as having it), you're going to have a very hard time building trust and credibility within that market.

If you don't believe me, just try selling personal growth to a busy executive who's rear is on the line unless he or she meets their quarterly projections. Personal growth may in fact be the key to their success, but if all you can say is that you'll help them find their own answers, I doubt you'll even get a meeting.

We live in the age of information and access. Clients have access to an overwhelming amount of information; when they start looking for someone to help them solve a problem, there are more options than they can possibly sort through. So they tend to look for concentrations of expertise—networks of information that form around a topic. And then they look for who's at the center of the network—who's recognized by others as being a credible resource. Whoever is at the center of the hub stands a much better chance of getting their business.

Many coaches have been taught to stay out of the client's way and make themselves invisible. That may be appropriate during the coaching process, but it's the worst possible thing you can do in the marketing process.

To me, "expert coach" is about positioning yourself to stand out in the marketplace. I think this makes good sense from a marketing standpoint, and I encourage my clients to get established as an expert coach in their niche.

How about you--do you call yourself an expert coach, or do you feel uncomfortable with the idea?

Perfectionism leads to creative constipation

"May I ask if/how your clients get bogged down or might struggle to complete some aspects of their signature coaching program?"

Probably the biggest obstacle to creativity that I've seen is perfectionism. People can get positively paralyzed when they think that they need to do, be or have MORE _______________ in order to ______________.

Perfectionism leads to creative constipation. You keep working on something, refining it and honing it, but it isn't going anywhere; it's not fulfilling it's purpose out in the world.  When you make your gift so precious that it can't be shared, that's a problem, because it kills the gift. It's kind of like being pregnant and trying not to give birth until the baby is all grown up!

At one time, I thought it was because people were afraid of being judged by others; but I've come to suspect that it's really our own judgment that we can't tolerate. The gremlin voice is whispering that what you're creating isn't finished, it's not good enough yet--YOU'RE not good enough yet.

The answer is to turn down the volume on your gremlin, and let things happen naturally--stop holding back. No one is ever going to benefit from your gift if you keep it to yourself, right?

Having said that, I also feel that it's healthy to strive for excellence. I'm always looking for ways to improve my offerings; the key is to get whatever it is OUT THERE in the world AND keep working on it; let it continue to evolve. I think there's much more grace in that approach than in holding it back until it's "perfect".