Free Coaching?

The Success of your life coaching business relies on good marketing, building rapport and developing lasting relationships. One of the ways to do this is to offer free life coaching sessions to your prospective clients to “coach” them on why they need you and your services!

Free sessions alone, however, won’t sell you.  If, in your prospects mind, they got “fixed” during the free session, they see little reason to sign up for your whole program!  So give them an outline of your program, and plenty of reasons – both emotional and logical – to continue with you.

By using the right tools, you can better demonstrate your techniques, highlight your talent, and add greater value to your prospective clients. This also gives them another sales “touch” to remind them they need to get with your program.

This article explores how, by adding value to your free life coaching sessions, you attract a lot more clients.

In order to generate the maximum interest in your life coaching products and services, you need to be transparent and open. The easiest way to do this is to show prospects you are a real person, and offer real value.  Giving away free valuable information related to your free sessions is simply the best way to build instant rapport and trust.

There are three platforms or tools that you can instantly use to showcase your talents and capture new customers during and after your free sessions with them:

Free PDF Report

By giving away a free report or information session specific to your coaching niche, it shows that you are both serious and knowledgeable about your topic.  Probably the best time to offer this is BEFORE your free sessions, giving them a reason to sign up.

This PDF, however, should not be some half-baked text document that no one cares about.  It needs to be a well structured document that poses a meaningful question and proceeds to answer the question in a concise and well documented manner, complete with diagrams, flow charts, etc.

Have you ever read a document that wets your appetite so much that you sign up for more information or their newsletter?  I know I have . . . I signed up, even though I knew what they were doing!

Your coaching “sales letter” needs to have a WOW factor to it.  Don’t just give out information.  Give your readers a REASON to get their free session or call.  The document should contain links to your website or lead capture page.  The whole point is to give them a reason to sign up for more, using great content to spark their interest and emotions.

Free Audio Giveaway

The well rehearsed spoken word in the form of an audio program after the session gives people the flexibility to listen and review without the hassle of reading. Your coaching becomes the central reason  WHY they need to sign up for more.

Your tone and excitement can have a very strong influence on people. They instantly get to know your character and to some degree your personality, which is extremely powerful for a life coach.

Give access to this private audio posting to your prospect after the session, giving them a reason to return over and over again.  I would also recommend you get a written release from them to use their session as a public demonstration (or at least parts that can serve as a testimonial).  They may say yes without conditions, or you can offer them extra sessions or some kind of bonus as incentive.

A simple audio mp3 coaching session recording saved on your website needs to be easy to play by clicking a button. This way people can literally get to know you and fulfill their questions – which is why they seek you out in the first place.

Free Video Giveaway

A picture is worth a thousand words, goes the old saying.  In my view, a video could be worth a thousand pictures!

Video is here to stay, and can be so useful to you as a coach in selling your services.  Create video slide presentations, a video of your speaking gigs, testimonials, a narrated compilation of pictures or animation, a “talking head” video of you simply explaining your value to prospects, or a combination of all of these methods.

Prospective clients will also learn so much more quickly by watching video coaching sessions. By hosting and promoting your videos on Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo or Amazon S3, you can become the expert in your niche in no time at all, and persuade people to follow you and sign up for your services.

The sky is the limit when it comes to video but – as with audio – you need to get permission from your clients or prospects in the form of a signed release if you plan to post or publish.

In Summary

By using these three platforms in conjunction with your free life coaching sessions, you gain instant credibility. Your visitors can see who and what kind of life coach you are, and what you have to offer.  Assuming these giveaways are full of great content, and are well structured, you will end up driving most of them to your lead capture page where they sign up for more stuff from you.

If, on the other hand, you do nothing other than free sessions, your prospects will neither remember you or have a reason to connect with you in the future.  Your sessions, then, become lost opportunities.

It’s really a no-brainer:  Use printed, audio and video giveaways to build your reputation and capture more new customer leads and sales.

If you want to learn more about how to setup and use the giveaway platforms I mentioned above, then register for my free coach training webinar to get step-by-step instructions on how to really attract more paying clients!