#300: Mastering Health Coach Consultation Calls

Hello there, health coaches, thank you so much for joining me today. It's hard to believe, but this episode is number 300, our 300th episode of the show. So I just want to say thank you so much for listening and for making us the number one podcast in the health coach business space. That is correct. Pretty incredible. And you know what? The show has always been about you and what our community of health coaches needs and is asking for. So for this episode, I tossed out a poll to everyone on my insider texting list. I do have a way to text you. It does go directly through my phone and I'll tell you how to get on that list in just a second if you're interested. But anyway, I polled our coaches about what today's topic should be and the clear winner for episode 300 was how to hold a powerful consultation call.

So thank you for your votes if you voted. And I agree. I mean I was thinking this is a pretty darn important topic. We haven't talked about it on the show for at least a year and since most coaches are relying on consultation calls to sign our clients and earn money and yeah, actually do the work, let's do it. Today we're going to talk about what to do and say before, during and after the call. So stick with me. I can pretty much guarantee you're going to pick up at least a nugget or two to help with your next consultation. Now, if you would like to be part of our insider texting list, and if you don't mind getting a text message from me every so often, you can go to healthcoachpower.com/text and sign up for free. Again, we're pretty infrequent with the text messages. I mean, I don't even send one every week. I mean it's probably every couple of weeks unless we have something big going on and they are all meant to better support you. That's healthcoachpower.com/text and I will drop that link right over here into our Facebook group in case you all want to hop on that list. Okay, so consultation calls. These go by many different names. Discovery Call, we got the health history consultation. Sometimes there's called a sales call. I often like to just call them a chat, like let's chat, let's set up a time to chat and just keep it casual. So if you're joining me live as I record this into our Facebook group or if you're watching later, tell me in the chat what name do you like for these calls? What do you use when you're talking to potential clients? And again, feel free to ask questions as we go along today. I got my eye on those comments over here.

So regardless of what you call it, we're talking about a call that is typically done for free to figure out if someone is a good fit for your practice and your services. And I'm going to say that last part again because it's really, really important. So I don't want to just blow by that. These calls are meant to figure out if someone is a good fit for your practice, you are interviewing them, you are in the driver's seat. Got it. And the reason I say that is because most health coaches, we approach these calls like we're the one getting interviewed and the client is determining our worth and we have to hope to make the cut so to speak.

Quick story. So once I was on a first date, and you know how terrifying that can be. Well, I got there and the guy was at the bar, he was already drunk. It was like two o'clock in the afternoon. So I suffered through, I don't know, 20 minutes of small talk and then made an excuse and told him that I had to leave. He asked for a single remaining nacho on his plate to be wrapped up so he could take it home. One nacho and there you go. I got the information I needed. It was not a good fit the end if only all relationships could be sussed out in 20 minutes. But that's what I want to help you with today because when you're having a discovery call or a consultation or I see Deanna over here calls it an initial consult or a quick chat, you got to maximize that short time that you have together both demonstrating your value and auditioning them for the role of your next client. Now here's the mistake that most coaches make and I was just talking with Julia, she's one of our healthy profit university members. She's talking about handling a situation where she was referred to a new client by an existing client, so that's always nice. And this new person, they seemed really enthused and they had questions and so Julia was excited and she sent this person a bunch of information and then guess what happened? Nada, right? Absolutely nothing. Crickets happens all the time to health coaches. Julia was ghosted and so now she's trying to figure out how to best reconnect and say, oh hi, remember me? Are you still interested? You can see that energy just kind of comes across as desperate, right? We don't want that.

So instead, anytime somebody expresses interest in coaching with you, the move that you want to make is sending them, directing them to an application First step. So if they say something like, Hey, do you work with teenagers? Do you work with men? Do you work with whoever? You say, thanks for the inquiry, please complete this brief application. It's the first step. If they say, I'm looking for help with x, Y, Z health topic, can you help me? You say, thanks for the inquiry, please complete this brief application as the first step. And if they say, and they will, you're going to get this one, how much do you charge? How much are your coaching packages? You say, here you go. The first step is completing this brief application. And then if you want to know more about that application, by the way, I talk about it in episode 2 52. If you head over to wherever you listen to podcasts and find episode 2 52, you'll get more details about that. The point is, we are really trying to vet someone during and even before the consultation call itself because if someone can't be bothered to answer a handful of questions on an application, I mean it will take them all of five minutes, they're not serious anyway and you already know it's not worth your time. Similarly, if they show up and they're drunk, it's not worth your time. You got it? You are interviewing them. Now I do teach the entire application process soup to nuts with specific questions and a simple tech setup inside Healthy Profit University fast track. And for more on that you can go to healthcoachpower.com/blueprint.
Okay, so we've kind of reset the conversation. Now you're feeling more in the driver's seat, you understand the assignment, you're doing the interviewing. Now what happens? It's very common and if you're here live, tell me if you've had this experience where a consultation can turn into an hour or even longer of somebody picking your brain or giving out advice, you're just giving it out in an attempt to prove your value. This is not what this call is about. We're not supposed to be doing a free coaching session. And the more you treat it like one and the more you allow your brain to be picked in this way, the less they're going to see the value in hiring you. They're going to think, oh, well I got some answers. Let me try what this coach said on my own. And this is not good for your business. Obviously it's not in service of the client because as we all know, a little piece of advice here and there, that's not the way to create sustainable change. They probably will not figure out their issues with just a couple pointers from you and then they will continue looking for help elsewhere. So this is not a brain picking session. I want to get us out of that habit immediately.

Here's another story. I am currently, they're just wrapping up today, so you might hear a little bit of banging in the background, but hopefully not too much. I've been getting a bunch of work done on my house, so happy that this is going to be over soon. They're just putting on the finishing touches today. Anyway, when I was looking for a contractor, different people come to the house and some of these contractors showed up and I would tell them what I was looking for and they would answer my questions and then they would give me a price. I mean, of course, but I hired the one who showed up and he really took active interest in the house. He asked me questions. He asked whether I wanted to replace the gutters or not or had I thought about this or had I thought about that And no, I hadn't thought about any of it before he asked me what my timeline was again, he was leading me down the path further than I had gone on my own. Now did he do any work during that first time he was here? Of course not until he gave me a quote and I paid him, but he owned the process start to finish. That is why I hired him and not the other guys. And that's what we want your consultation call to do. You want this person to think about their health problems in a new way because they've spoken to you. You want them to articulate for you but also for themselves how their life is being affected, why they haven't been able to solve this problem on their own so far, because everybody can Google. Everybody can find information. Why are they still struggling with this? It's not for a lack of info, that's for sure. And you don't have to say too much during these calls, you'll be taking a lot, a lot of notes, but your main objective, at least in the first part of the call, is to hold space and lead them down the path further than they've gone before and they will talk themselves into hiring you if you ask the right questions along the way.
So if you're here with me live, any questions about this so far? There's so much that can be said about these types of calls and I see one here from Deanna. She says, lemme put on my glasses to read this. She said, I need to practice though, and I don't know where to ask. I asked one colleague, but she hasn't responded yet. I told 'em it's just practice and it's free. How do we get people to practice? You can absolutely practice with other health coaches and I encourage that very much because not only will you be able to practice being a coach, you can practice being a client and see how it feels on the other side. It's perhaps not as pure practice as if you were really doing a consultation with a real potential client, but I think in some ways, in ways better because the other coach knows how to play along. They know what the scenario is all about and you just ask your mom or your sister or somebody to practice with you. Sometimes they don't know how to play the part because they've never been in the role of having a consultation with a health coach before. So I would definitely recommend that for sure.

And the part that it tends to be the most tricky is the point during the call where you might, and I'm going to underline, might pitch your offer. It is not a given. You might not offer this client anything. If you've done a good job and you've ascertained that this is not a good fit for whatever reason, you can and you should point this person in another direction. I've done it so many times it sounds like I'm not sure that I'm the best practitioner for you right now. I'd like to refer you to someone else. It could be anyone, it could be a doctor, it could be an acupuncturist, whatever, who I think could be more helpful. And then that's what you do and that's it, call's over. Or you could say something like, I'm not feeling like you actually need coaching right now. What I would recommend is going ahead and getting that blood work done that you mentioned, and I have a book that you might find useful. Let me send you a link to that. So use your intuition. Sometimes people don't know who to turn to because they've turned to you does not necessarily mean that you are the right fit for them. You can be honest with yourself and honest with them about that, that you can be very grateful you did. There's nothing worse than signing the wrong client.

However, if you do think that this person would make a wonderful client and you know that you can help them ask, I want you to get in the habit of asking if they would like to hear about your coaching program and it's just as easy as that. Would you like to hear more about my coaching program? That's the question. That's all you have to say because there gets to be that weird pivot point in the conversation where you're asking a lot of questions or telling you a lot of things about themselves. Hopefully you're leading them down that path. And then you do have to pivot if you're going to make your pitch. So ask, it makes that pivot point so much more comfortable for them and for you. This way you have their permission before you launch into your spiel. It's a sign of respect. So we're going to get permission before we try to sell anything. We want to make sure you're on the same page as a client. I mean if they're nodding their head and you're getting a good vibe at this point, I've never had anybody say no, but I did hear a sense of relief like I'm not being tricked in this call. This is someone who respects me. It just sets the tone. And if they're feeling that vibe and they've been nodding their head along during the whole conversation and if they want to work with you, I want to assure you of something, I want to assure you, it doesn't matter if your coaching program is 10 weeks or 20 weeks, it doesn't matter. Not going to influence their decision. It doesn't matter if your coaching sessions are one hour or their 45 minutes or they're every week or they're every other week. These little details don't make the difference to someone saying yes or no, and it might not even matter what your price is.

Alright, who gets nervous naming their price? Like my least favorite thing to do, I would just sweat and my heart would hammer in my chest. I mean, I know, I know. And the best thing I can tell you is that whatever you are thinking about money, that's in your head, do not put your money story on other people. What I mean by that is money is completely subjective. So if you said my coaching program is $50, that's it, five, zero, $50, that might be literally more than somebody can afford to spend. If they were to hire you, they wouldn't eat this week. So there's that. But to other people, if you said my coaching program is $5,000, they'd be like, okay, no big deal. They spend that kind of money all the time on various things that they want to do. So there's that, right? We all have a different money story, we all have different bank accounts and we just don't know who we're talking to. So don't put your stuff on them. Next thing to someone who does not see your value, does not see the value of what you have to offer. I know that's a hard pill to swallow, but if we have not demonstrated our value thus far, any amount you say is going to be too expensive. So if someone says, oh, that's too expensive, it might be that they literally do not have the money in the bank, nine times out of 10, what it tells you is that you have not demonstrated your value. And that's a good thing because that means that you can improve.

You can get more skilled at having this conversation about putting all the pieces in place so that when by the time you're on the phone with someone, they're already halfway to yes, that's what we want. That's why this whole process, starting with the application, it's geared around demonstrating your value, earning respect, right? We need to do that each and every step of the way because when somebody does see your value, even if they got to borrow the money, even if they have to move things around in their various bank accounts or whatever, they're going to make it work. They want to make it work. And I've experienced clients everywhere along that spectrum from those who in my mind, I looked at them or I made a judgment that they were very wealthy or whatever, had plenty of disposable income. What do I know? But we're always making these judgments in our head and turns out they weren't willing to pay anything. And then there were those who I'm like, oh, this person again, in my head making judgments, this person doesn't seem like they have a lot of disposable income. I'm not expecting them to say yes. And they're like, great, here is my credit card. And maybe they pay in full or maybe they do a payment plan, but they really want to make it work. So we can't assume that our values around money are shared by whoever you're speaking with. I want you to just name your price as evenly as you would say, my program is 12 weeks, right?

You're not going to be all up in your head about that. Oh my gosh, can they do 12 weeks? Is 12 weeks too long? Maybe I should say 10 weeks. Maybe I should say 24. We don't get that way about the other details. You would just say, my program is 12 weeks. Or you could just say, my program is $2,000 or whatever the amount is and keep going. Now, I know it's a lot and I do have an exact recipe for this sales call inside Healthy Profit University's fast track if you want all the right questions in the right order to ask on that application. And once you're inside the sales call, I do teach this in great detail and you can get details about signing more clients with fasttrack at healthcoachpower.com/blueprint. But I'm not going to leave you today our 300th episode unless we talk about what to do after the call because it's not necessarily over just because the call is over.
So let's back up. If they said yes, they're in, what you're going to want to do is collect their payment and book their first session while you're still on the line, like, don't hang up. They say yes. That's just verbal until the money's in the bank, it doesn't mean anything. Many times a health coach will hear yes, and when you go to collect payment like the next day, they're nowhere to be found. So book that first session while you're on the line, collect payment while you're still on the line if at all possible. And what you'll do afterwards is you're going to send your onboarding or your intake forms. Cool best case scenario, right? If they gave you a no and that's going to happen sometimes, then there's no follow-up necessary. They presumably would be on your mailing list when they've completed that application form. They're giving you an email address, they can continue to be on your mailing list and maybe down the line they'll buy something else from you. You never know. So that's kind of the only thing you need to do after that. And what about all those times that they say maybe or I have to think about it or I got to ask my, that's okay too. What you'll want to do in that case is schedule a time to reconnect in the next couple of days after they've had a chance to do whatever they have to do, have those conversations. You got to respect that people do need to talk to their spouse sometimes. So what you want to do is plan to meet again once they've made a decision. So you want to book a time on the calendar to reconnect this way. There is a planned follow-up. So before you get off the call, you're going to book the next call and you can continue to hold space for this person and actually hold them accountable to having that tough conversation and making a decision that's best for them. Alright? We did it before the during and the after of a really powerful consultation call.

Like I said, these take practice. I highly recommend practicing. Do it with your friends if you can, do it with your family, if you can, and definitely with other coaches. Our fast trackers, by the way, they always do a lot of practice with each other, and that is enormously helpful because none of us are born knowing how to do this. We all start awkward. We all start stammering and tripping over our words. It took me years, years, and years to figure this out. So I want you to take what you've learned today and apply it little by little and for the entire play by play, which is part of a 12 week marketing plan. Again, you can go to healthcoachpower.com/blueprint. Boom, episode 300 in the can. Thank you for joining me so much and I'll see you again next week. Everyone. Take care.