#164: Mistakes to Avoid When a Client “Has To Think About It”

We have all been there. Tell me if you know what I'm talking about. You're talking with a potential client. They're showing massive interest in working with you. You're having a great conversation until you name your price, or until you share those final details about your program. Now they have to think about it. Now they got to talk to their husband. Now they have to check their finances. This is okay. This happens first of all, but I want to make sure today that you're not making some really common mistakes so that you will increase your chances of that client who had to go think about it coming back with a yes. How does that sound good? We're all on the same page. All right, let's do this. So as a health coach, there's so many different things we can be doing to market ourselves. I'm doing like 12 of them right now, for example, you know, live streaming and recording to a podcast.

You know, we do all this stuff. We do workshops, we're blogging or writing emails, posting to social media. We're getting PR maybe. And it's all. If you think about it, it's all leading up to this final moment. When we heard that offering our services to somebody again, who has expressed interest, who we've had a conversation with, and it feels like a good fit. So when they say, yeah, I've got think about it. It's like their voice flattens. You know, I know my energy tends to drop. I'm remembering so many occasions, especially in the earlier years of my health coaching business, like back in the stone age, I would just fall flat.

Now, if you're here with me live, go ahead and just type me in the comments. If you've had an experience like this. I know it can feel a little disappointing. So, if you've felt that disappointment before, again, just type 'me' in the comments.

So, I'm not, I know I'm not the only one. It's disappointing because it means this is going to be a no, right? Like, or this, this is going to lead to an eventual no. I think that's what we tell ourselves. Or at the very least it's just anticlimactic, isn't it? At the end of a great conversation that you've had with someone, if it just kind of trickles off like, well, let me think about it. Well, some other excuse or some other very valid thing that they have to say, but in any case, they're not saying yes. And we want them to say yes, right? Especially if it's someone that we really want to be working with.

So, Shirley's here and Shirley says hello to everybody. And she says that.. She typed me. So I know she's had this experience mindful wellness. Nina also typed me. So, Nina's had this experience too.

And I know so many of you listening have been there. So, first, what I want to say is it depends how your conversation has gone up until this point. Like, depending on how that goes, you can be more or less likely to hear the, I have to think about it thing these days in my practice, right? I've been doing this for 12 years now. So most of my clients do sign up on the spot. I don't have a lot of the, I have to think about it anymore. That's because I've led the right people through a very specific process that allows them to see the value of what I offer. And it makes the decision a no brainer. They're like, oh my gosh, like, where do I sign basically? So, if you want to learn that specific process, it's something that I've, you know, lots of trial and error through the years, but I finally got it down, pat, please sign up to join us for my free five-day challenge.

It is all about turning consultations into paying clients. And you can sign up for that. At healthcoachpower.com/payingclients. We start September 25th. So that's right around the corner. Even if you're hearing this a day or two late, you're watching the replay or listening to the podcast later, you can still join. You can get access to anything you missed, even if you're a day or two late. So again, that's health coach, power.com/paying clients. But let's say that you've done all the things, right? You, you followed the formula that I'm going to give you, and yet you still have a client. Who's like, ah, I got to think about it. All right. It's cool. It's cool. Relax. It's good. We're going to breathe. Totally legit for somebody to have to think things through, talk about an investment, talk it over with their partner, their spouse, or even just with themselves, right?

This, this is normal. This is good. This is good. We want them to feel really solid about making this decision to work with us, but here's what you don't want to do. And I say this because it's so easy to let these clients slip away, right? How often has that happened? They say, I have to think about it. And then there they go. Goodbye. So that's not what we want. We don't want that for our business. And it's also not in service to them. Remember that they came to you for help with a health problem that they're having. So if you give up on them, it's likely that they're not going to get the help that they need anytime soon. All right. So we've got this, 'I need to think about it' situation that's come up. Here's my first don't, don't assume it's a no.

How many times did we just kind of default to, 'all right, well, it's over with this one.' Some people are going to say this is true. Some people are going to say that they have to think about it just to be polite when they already know that they can't afford it, they already know that they're not interested, whatever it is, sometimes it is going to be a no, of course. But a lot of times, a lot of times they need to shuffle around some finances so that they can say yes, or they need to have that conversation with their spouse or with their partner. Who's going to psych them up and give them the push that they need. So many times it can be a yes, if anyone's here, live, tell us in the comments, have you had an experience where someone has says, I have to talk to my husband or have to talk to my wife, whatever. And then they come back with a yes.

I absolutely have had that experience many, many times. So don't assume it's a no, don't let your energy flag. Right? Cause they can feel that even if you've already hung up the phone or whatever, they can feel it. If you're giving up on them, don't let your mindset be like, oh, I'm getting rejected. Because very often that's not, not what it's about at all. So many people will say, I have to come think about it. And then they come back with a yes. And I want you to just think about in your own life. I don't know if you've ever hired a coach of any kind, but think about something that you had to really ponder before you spent money on it. Something that you may have had to talk over with someone or have a conversation with yourself.

You know, that happened to me just pretty recently, with all this work that I'm having done on my house, by the way, I asked them to please turn down the music just while I'm doing this recording. And they did. And I'm so happy about it. But anyway, when I was first getting quotes on this project, you know, I got the quote and I was like, okay, thank you. I have to go look at my finances. And I think my voice went up several octaves, just like that. And then I got back to them with a yes. And the project happened, happens all the time. So with that in mind, the next don't is, don't make the mistake of letting I have to think about it. Be the end of the conversation. That's right. Your conversation is just getting going. If they say they think about it.

But before I say any more about that, I just want to read a comment from Laura. You said I'm not so worried now about getting them to invest. I need to know how to get them even interested. We have so many resources for you, Lori. Oh my goodness. If that's where you're at, hit up the archives of the podcast. There's so much there, but the worst is that when you put, like I said, all of this effort into your marketing, into getting someone into this conversation, the last thing they want to happen once they're there is for them to say no, and it happens a good percentage of the time. Like I'm not in your business or like in the room with you right now. So, I don't know exactly what happens in your business, but in my business, I know in the early days my closing rate was maybe, uh, I don't know.

It was definitely under 50%. I wasn't paying attention back then to do the math, but I would say definitely half of the time they declined. Right. And it may have been more than that. Maybe I was only closing at like 25% of the time. So I think this is like one of the most important things that we can be worried about because all the other work that we're doing, like this is the moment that matters. So we want to make sure our closing rate is up there as high as possible. And these days I'm very pleased that my closing rate is around 90%. That way I know it's worth doing all the other marketing to get them interested in the first place. Okay. So sometimes we think about it from the front, oh, I have to build my website. Oh, I have to do social media.

How do I get people interested in me? And not that you shouldn't be thinking about that, but I almost want you to flip it around and work backwards. Like once I get someone to this part where we're having a conversation, is that working good? Now let me back out. How do I get more people into those conversations? And let me back out of that. How do I get more? People's even know who the heck I am. So sometimes you want to work forwards, but I really recommend thinking about it backwards as well. Okay. So when someone says, I have to think about it, well, we don't want to do is let it be the end of the conversation. Like I was saying, I think what a lot of us do, does anybody do this? I know I did in early years of my businesses were like, oh, because we want to be, we want to be nice.

And we are, we're very nice people. And we're like, absolutely. Um, you know what, email me any time, you know, just ask questions or hit me an email or give me a call and we put it on them to take the next move. So I don't want you to be passive like that. Don't say, okay. And then, uh, you know, maybe you send an email a few days later. How many of you do that? The check-in oh, I was just thinking about you, you know, oh, I saw this article. It reminded me of you. That was about as much as I ever did in terms of follow-up with the clients that I had to think about it again, back in the earlier years of my business. So why is that not enough? And if that's what you're doing, it's not that it's wrong. You know, you're not doing anything terrible.

It's just that it's not as effective as it could be, because here's why, when we just do a very passive like, well, call me anytime or email me, life gets busy. So even if that person has the conversation with their husband or that person went back and looked at their finances and in their head, they decided, yeah, you know what, I'm going to do this. But then something happened at work. Something happened with their kids, whatever they forget. So that's why we don't want to just sit back. Passively. People love to procrastinate. So even when they have the best of intentions for themselves, for their health, for working with you signing up right now, they may think, oh, you know what, I'll call her next week. Ah, yeah, I'll get up. I'm going to do that later. I'm going to do that later is like the worst sentence come up either verbally or in someone's mind when you're having a conversation like this.

So instead we want to actively be following up. And this is something that I'm going to teach more specifically during our term consultations, into paying clients five day challenge, which again, you can sign up for at healthcoachpower.com/payingclients. And you can invite your health coach friends, by the way, this is a great one to like drop into your coaching circle or your Facebook group or your alumni association or wherever. You know, you're hanging out with other health coaches that are struggling. I have never looked at other health coaches and thought, Hmm, you know, you're my competitor. You know, I always have thought like a rising tide lifts all boats. And when you succeed, the next health coach exceeds and the next health coach succeeds, you know, we all succeed. In fact, in like the past 10 years, I've been a health coach for 12 years, been working with other health coaches for about 10 of them.

And over that time, we now have a national board certification. Don't we, we now have health coaches who are able to bill insurance, don't we? We have so many more health coaches out there. We have so much more recognition as an industry. It's come a long way. I'm not saying I did all that by myself. I didn't do any of that. But what I'm saying is when health coaches succeed, right, it paves the way for more health coaches to succeed. So spread the love. That's early years of my businesses my point with that. All right. So to me and this, this also is about spreading the love, spreading the love to our clients. To me, signing a client is all about doing what's right for that client. Like, I don't want to sign a client that I can't help, right? Or who I can tell is not a good fit or who would be better served elsewhere, who I can tell really doesn't want to sign up with me, right?

I would never want that client because that's not in service of them. So I never ever think about selling, like selling. I think about selling, like serving, like how can I best serve this person? Which means when somebody says in a consultation that they have to think about it, I don't feel it's appropriate to pressure them into making a decision on the spot. And have any of you ever heard that you should, you should employ some sort of tactic to get, to push them towards making a decision right then and there, like, this is where a lot of different sales tactics come into play. I'm like, oh yeah, you should think about it. But if you sign up today, I can give you a 20% discount. Or uh, if you wait, the price is going to be going up in two days, right. It's kind of disingenuous.

And there's these like pressuring techniques to get people to say yes. Or sometimes you'll hear, if you walk away from this, I'm going to give your spot to the next person that I speak with right after you. Like, there's a lot of these kinds of things that happen in the coaching industry. And to me, that's no way to start a coaching relationship, not like the kind of work that I want to do. And I'm sure like the kind of work you want to be doing with your clients. So, my final don't is don't push somebody into saying yes. When they say, I have to think about it, don't make them feel bad. Don't make them feel awkward. You want to be on their team. Right. And you can actually help them make the decision that's right. For them. If you go about it the right way.

So I'm curious again, for those of you that are here live, and I'm so pleased when you join me live, because I love doing these sessions live so I can respond to you in real time. Answer your questions. Do you have any questions about anything I've talked about so far today? And have you ever been in a situation where you were getting pressured to buy something, to sign up for something to hire someone just think in all aspects of your life doesn't mean that you're necessarily hiring a hiring coach, right? It could be something totally different. We want to put ourselves in those shoes and remember what that's like so that we can handle it in a way that we're proud of when we are in the position of signing clients. So, for me... Oh and Diana's here, hi Diana. One thing that comes to mind for me when I'm thinking about like pressure situations and sales is the real estate market here in the Hudson valley, New York, where I live with COVID the market was like, just exploded everywhere.

There was, we had so many buyers coming up from New York city. And these are situations where people are spending an awful lot of money, making a huge decision and getting pressured into doing so very quickly because of the reality. But other buyers are like two seconds away from making a better offer. I don't know if any of you have been part of the housing market boom in the past couple of months, but it has, it has really been something. So I actually got extremely lucky and I found a house that was not on the market yet. And the experience was so much different for me, for me and for the seller, you know, we were, we are friendly. We made the moving process very easy for each other. Like even now, if a package gets delivered for her to my house, I just go drive it over and leave it.

You know, she does the same for me. And that's how I want my business to feel like we're friends here. Whether you sign up with me or you don't, we work together for three years, we worked together for one day. You know, we're all friends here. Um, yeah, we're doing business, but if your Amazon package arrived at my doorstep and bring it over to you, you know, and we can do that. We can do that in our business just as saying, I think that pressure can read very desperate. Yes. Um, I think that sense of desperation can really play out when we know we're so close to signing a new client and then they go, I have to think about it. We're kind of grasping at straws at that point. And the best that you can do is just be so cool. You're so cool.

You're like, absolutely. You should think about it. Definitely have that conversation with your husband. Right? We want to support people in doing what's right for them and not be grasping and trying to sign someone in a desperate way. Laurie says last week, a person called me to tell me about his program. After I signed up for a webinar, I was busy and I told him I couldn't talk. And he pressured me to give him another time. Then when he called back, I still couldn't talk. He had someone else call. Not only did I not talk, I also didn't go to the seminar. Okay. Yes. That's quite a bit. When you attend a webinar, do you expect to get a phone call after the webinar? That's unusual. I mean, I don't know what industry that was in Lori, but that's a good example of feeling pressured.

Um, just as Michelle, I'm curious your game plan for follow-up. Yes. We're not going to get into that today because we are short, you know, we don't have enough time to do the whole thing, but that is what I'm going to be covering during our five day challenge. Starting this coming Saturday. I'm going to be sharing the whole process leading into the consultation, the consultation itself, as well as the follow-up and the troubleshooting and the what if moments? Um, you know, we all come across here and there, so don't worry. We're going to cover all of it. Cause it comes as a package. Doesn't it? Okay. So what I was saying is we can absolutely run businesses that a don't feel desperate. Thank you for that. Just we can run businesses that have a heart, you know, like I don't think any health coach gets into this because we're like, ha ha, I'm going to make millions. I'm going to trick people. Like that's, that's ridiculous. That's not at all what this is. So, instead of pushing for the sale, we can set the stage for our clients to make the right decisions for themselves. And like I said, I'm going to be showing you how starting Saturday.

And you know what? For the very first time we're going to have a community event. We are the health coach power community. After all, this has never like the Health Coach Power podcast or the Health Coach Power, whatever, by Michelle, it's always been about the community. You know, I don't know if you guys know this, but Health Coach Power Community started with like about 14 of my friends. We were just all health coaches who were kind of sick and tired of working alone. Well, we've grown quite a bit if you haven't noticed anyway, for the very first time, whether you've signed up for our five-day challenge or not this Friday, which is September 24th at 1:00 PM Eastern time, we're going to have a hang.

We're going to have a real time hangout. It's going to be a community sort of connection event. It's not a webinar. It's not a presentation. Laurie, I'm not going to call you afterwards. It's going to be a chance for all of us to gather in a zoom meeting where we can see each other and we can speak to each other and you will be live. We'll be on camera as if we were gathering in a room together. We'll have a bit of a guided conversation so that we can meet each other. And so we feel like more of a community. Again, like I said, health coaches are often working alone. Does anyone ever feel like that? Like it just needs some water cooler chat. So we're going to gather, um, I want to foster this idea of community by hosting all of you. So, mark your calendar for that.

That's September 24th at one o'clock Eastern time. And make sure you are either on my mailing list or in the Health Coach Power Community Facebook group, because we're going to be posting and emailing a zoom link to all of you to join us on the 24th. And of course it's free and it's open to all health coaches and I hope to see you there. Oh my gosh. I hope this podcast gets released lickety split. Everybody who listens on Apple, Stitcher and everything will get that invitation. I'm very excited about this little party that we're going to have. Anyway, lots of good things coming within our community. Sign up for the challenge, join us on the 24th and either way I'll be back with a new episode very soon. It's been lovely hanging with you all this afternoon. Take care you guys.