The #1 Way Coaches Are Pushing Clients Away

Congratulations! You posted your latest offer on social media (along with some other top-notch content). You’ve been working on this idea for weeks, and now the moment has arrived. You sit back and wait for the messages to pour in—only, nothing happens. No pings. No comments. Barely even a like if it weren’t for your best friend and that creepy guy who stalks your profile.

After a few days of putting your offer out there and having zip for sales, you question everything. 

“Did I say the right thing?”

“Is something wrong with my offer?”

“Do people just not want what I have?”

“Does my audience not like me or trust me?”

These are just a few of the questions that can take coaches down a dark spiral because they miss an important but simple truth.

Owning a coaching business is tough. Having an excellent service isn’t enough to drive sales. As a coach, you have to learn the business side of things so that you can do the actual coaching with real clients. That’s why you have to know what draws your people in and what pushes them away. Your messaging is the key to this.

Messaging is the most important and powerful component of your business outside of the results that you deliver. This is what separates you from every other coach, and what tells your audience that they can trust you. There’s just one problem—most coaches get this completely wrong.

Speaking to a disempowered version of your client

When you talk directly to the version of your ideal client that’s living in survival, using words that perpetuate any victim mentality they may have doesn’t allow your prospect to step into their possible future. It scares them to try to run from their present. 

If you speak to the parts of your prospect that feel like they’re in victim mode, it’s difficult to get them to make an empowered decision to change their life for the better. This pushes away sophisticated, high ticket clients. 

Instead, you want to be speaking to your prospects in an empowered state. They may have problems, but your people have a certain degree of belief that things can be different. They believe that the result they want is possible for them which is why they’re looking for help. These types of buyers make decisions in trust more than engaging in skepticism when you speak to their empowered sense of self.

“A coach is someone that sees beyond your limits and guides you to greatness.” – Michael Jordan

Unconsciously using Bro-marketing 

Bro-marketing consists of the old school rules of marketing that teach scarcity, false urgency, and codependent feelings in the prospects to drive conversions. These methods focus on the pain of the prospect and make them think, if I don’t have this I won’t be successful. The problem is this doesn’t work for the sophisticated buyers in the coaching space. Premium coaching clients need to be in a more empowered place. Bro-marketing is really victimhood snatching. It speaks to people who are in so much fear or pain, that they’re motivated by the chance of something changing for the better. These are often the people digging into the couch for quarters when things go wrong—they’re not clients who pay a premium for coaching.

However, premium coaching clients think differently. They’re aware of their problems, but they’re not motivated by fear tactics (AKA: the threat of staying where they are). Instead, you want to speak to the empowered version of your ideal client to inspire them to become more. Victimhood messaging attracts clients who struggle. Empowered messaging attracts premium clients willing to do the work and get the results.

Be consistent

If you feel like you’re repeating yourself over and over again and it almost feels boring, it’s a good sign. When you change your messaging over and over again, you don’t let your audience catch up with what you’re doing. 

What gets repeated gets remembered.

What gets remembered is what people trust. 

Repetition in your messaging creates trust and stability in your business.

Imagine if someone you were dating changed their feelings for you every week or every month. It would be hard to trust them. If you change your message every month, you break your audience’s trust. 

The more you repeat your message, even though you may feel like a broken record, the more they’ll trust you. They’ll think of you as the go to person for your area