#92: What Do You Sell?

Well hello there, health coaches. I have a very, very important question that we are going to tackle in today's episode. What are you selling? What are you thinking? What are you doing now? What are you selling? And I mean this in very, very practical terms. Like if I had my check book in my hand and I walked up to you tomorrow and just handed you a blank check saying I want to work with you, I want to be a client, what would you sell, me? I know this sounds really, really simplistic, like duh Michelle, I would sign you up as one of my health coaching clients obviously. But, it's not that simple. And I find that many coaches do not have an answer to this question or at best they're like, yeah, I kind of have like a vague notion of what they probably want to sell.

It's like some sort of one-on-one coaching package and maybe we're trying to get a group together, but we're not sure yet. And we're not sure how much we should charge. And we're still letting the client dictate the terms. And in terms of like, uh, where do you want to meet? And, you know what, like the location and the times and all that sort of thing, we're kind of putting it all into their hands up. Often we're even putting the price into their hands. Cause how many times do I hear health coaches say that they are constantly discounting their prices on behalf of each individual that they speak with. So hello, this probably goes without saying, but it isn't exactly giving off a professional vibe. You guys. It's not. It's really not. And that is just one reason that you may be having some difficulty signing new clients.

So we are going to break this down today, but first I want to let you know that registration for my free five day create your signature program challenge is going to open tomorrow. So I can't give you the link yet, but if you're on my mailing list or if you're in my Facebook group or Instagram or any of these assorted places, you will be getting a link to join us tomorrow. And I certainly hope you will. Um, so the challenge registration opens tomorrow just to be clear, January 22nd, you're going to want to sign up for that. So just keep your eyes open. And there'll be some announcements, but the reason that I'm going to be running this challenge (yay!), and the reason that I'm breaking down this idea today of what do you sell and creating your own program and just getting really clear about your product basically is because of what I mentioned a minute ago.

Most health coaches does do not know what they're selling. And a signature program will take you far and it has made a very large impact in how I've been running my own health coaching practice. So let's get to the good stuff. Tell me in the comments, if you're joining me live on any of these mediums, just tell me in the comments, what do you sell? What would you sign me up for if I handed you a blank check today? And we're going to start just kind of going through the basics in this episode. But even the basics, you're going to be surprised at how powerful it really is. So the first and probably the biggest decision that you need to make is whether you're going to primarily sell individual coaching or group coaching. Now like I know, I know you can do both and I have certainly done both in my career, but hear me on this.

It is so much easier to refine one offering and learn how to sell it very, very well. Then to juggle like two, three, four or five different offerings and make them all successful, and I know this because I struggled with it for a very, very long time. Has that ever happened to you where you're just kind of making stuff up on the fly? You're like, you know, I think I'm going to do like a holiday program or like, oh like spring's coming. It's going to be like a spring cleanse program. Then you're like, oh no, I should like revamp my private coaching to be more like this. And I was kind of always changing and always like doing this cornucopia of offerings. I want you to knock it off and just get really focused this year as you know, or maybe you don't know, we've been doing a series up until this point, including this episode all about how to make 2020 your best year yet.

And a lot of that is focus my friends, focus. So what I want to encourage you first and foremost is to really get clear on one main offering. Okay. So that being said, how do you decide if you're going to focus on one on one coaching or like a group coaching as your, your main offering. How do you decide? So I would say there's like three different things that you want to consider here. And it kind of depends. It depends on a couple of things. So the first would be who is your target market? I know, I know. That's always the big question, isn't it? So who's your target market and which format one-on-one or group is going to best meet their needs. So if you're still kind of struggling with your target market, I know this is super, super common, you're going to want to go back just a couple episodes to episode number 90 and we talked about who do you serve and that'd be a good starting point for you.

But you always want to think not in terms of like yourself, like, well, I want to run a group or like I prefer one on one coaching. It's really much better if you're thinking in terms of your client's needs. Will this person best be served in a group environment or in a private coaching environment? Okay. Um, the next thing to consider when you're kind of sussing through these logistics is in which scenario, group or one-on-one, can you charge a premium? And I can't stress this enough because, uh, I think we always assume, well, first of all, we're not always assuming that we need to charge a premium. A lot of us are discounting prices trying to sell stuff for like $97 or $197 or a whole coaching package for six months for like $500. Cut that out right now. And I do want to say that depending on your target market, weirdly, right, you wouldn't necessarily think this a group can sometimes be more valuable than individual coaching even though typically something that's done privately is like the higher end option, like in anything that you might do.

But depending on the audience, depending on their unique needs, you may find that they are first of all much more inclined to join a group. And second of all, the group itself is such a value to them that that's actually the more valuable piece, which, which is, couldn't be lovely. So like one example that's coming to mind is one of our coaches inside healthy profit university. Kayla who um, hi Kayla. Kayla is offering um, services for military spouses. And so we've been talking a lot about what that's going to look like. This is a group that craves community and that does really well in a group setting. So we've been talking a lot about a group program for Kayla and I think that there is a possibility that this could be like her big thing instead of focusing on private coaching because of the target market.

Does that make sense? So you want to consider where can I charge a premium because I had a super duper important.. Now the last thing you're going to want to consider, and I'm just going to say a little bit about this, is what state do you live in? So if you're in the United States, yes, I know not all of us are. We have coaches from around the world who listen to this show and watch the show. But anyway, if you're in the U S and you are in a green state such as New York, which is where I live, then you are legally able to work with private clients as you would expect any health coach to do. But if you are in a yellow state or a red state where the laws are a little more strict or a lot more strict, you may decide that group coaching is a much safer option.

Now, like I said, that's sort of a whole rabbit hole that we're not going to get into right now, but I'm going to give you two resources that you can learn more about that. Um, so the first is the American nutrition association used to be called like the nutrition advocacy nutrition advocacy.org. That was the old site. Um, the new one is D a N a.org. And if you go to the letter a N a.org/advocate, that's where you're going to find a map of the U S and you can identify your state and figure out what color it is and what rules are applicable to you in that state. So that's resource number one. If you're concerned at all about what kind of state you're in. And the second resource is the lovely Lisa Fraley. Lisa offers a lot of help. She's come into our group before. We have a whole video with Lisa talking about legal issues for health coaches.

She's like the best resource that I can possibly recommend for health coaches because she is herself a lawyer and the health coach and you can get all sorts of contracts and legal documents, anything that you might need from Lisa at healthcoachpower.com/legal if you go to that link, you can check out all those resources, but also, you know, get in touch with her because Lisa herself will be able to... And her podcast and all of her stuff is a great, great, great resource if you want to understand more about what you can and can't do as a health coach. So, we're going to just leave it at that for now so that we don't go too far down the rabbit hole of legality. But I think those three things should really inform your decision on whether you're going to focus on offering one on one coaching or group.

Now after you've decided you're going to need to determine a price, this is where we get hung up every time. How many of you when you are doing a call, you're doing consultation and in person, sorry, I don't even know what it's called. That's how long I haven't been doing consultations in person. Um, you get to the part where you have to name your price and you suddenly start bringing down the price. Like in your head you're like, Oh, I don't know if they can afford it. Oh, she mentioned something about that car alone. Oh, and you're like negotiating a price within yourself before you even said it out loud. Yeah. Let's not be doing that anymore. 2020, you know your price. You say you state your price, you stick to your price. Okay. Nothing else is going to work for you in your business.

But I want to give you a little hint on pricing. If you're trying to make a living as a health coach. Yeah, I know I am. If you're even trying to make a decent part-time salary as a health coach by selling a, let's say a $99 program, it's not going to work. Like it's just not going to work. The money, the numbers, you can just do the math. I'm like how many sales you're going to make per year at that price and you're going to have enough to like buy yourself a couple of nice sweaters from the gap. And that's, that's kind of it. You know? So if you like, if you're going to have thousands and thousands of thousands of clients per year, you can think about offering something at like a hundred dollar or $200 or whatever price point. But instead, cause I'm guessing that you probably don't have access to that many people on your mailing list and whatnot.

I say this like so many times, I'm a broken record. You got a price high, you have to price high. I'm talking a thousand dollars plus because that's the only way that you're going to turn those sales. You know, from your relatively small to moderate sized audience of which I'm in the same boat, right? Like, yes, I have quite a few thousand people on my mailing list, but that's still relatively small. I'm not, we're not like Walmart, you know, or like, I don't know, Nike or something or Beach Body. We're not reaching like millions of people. That's just not the kind of businesses that we have are reaching like 20 people in the beginning. And then we're reaching like 200 people and then hopefully like a couple thousand. But like that's the ballpark that we're playing in. So because of that, it's just a math game. And I want you to trust me when I tell you to focus on pricing high, whatever's going to allow you to do that if you do in fact want a sustainable business.

Okay? I hope this is all starting to become a little bit more clear. If anybody who's here live has a question for me, please go ahead and ask, or any comments. That's why I'm here live you guys, so that we can do this. So back to that check. If I walked up to you and I'm holding that check and you told me very clearly, very confidently of course that I could buy a one on one coaching program with you for say $1,000 like wouldn't that just feel smooth? Like you just knew that answer. You were just able to roll that right off your tongue and I would be like, Oh okay, this person knows what they're doing. Sure I'm going to take them seriously. It just helps so very much and you would have real reasons for these things. You would have reasons behind why it's a one-on-one program, reasons for why it costs $1,000 it's not arbitrary.

It's not something that can be negotiated and we could continue right now we could suss out all the details like how long is your program going to be, what's included in the program. All that stuff would be helpful for sure. And that that needs to happen of course. But I just want to say that's also really short-sighted to focus too much on the logistics. Like all that stuff is important, like kind of blah, blah blah. It actually doesn't matter all that much when it comes to making a sale when it comes to working with your client and doing good work in this world. Okay. And here's why. I want you to think about what are you selling in terms of value. Like, what is the transformation or the result that you're selling? Like in my practice, I could say, I'm health coach, I sell health coaching packages.

Would you like to sign up for my health coaching package? Right? Or I can say I help chronically stressed women overcome anxiety and weight gain. Ah, which one sounds more compelling? Which one makes more sense to the average person who maybe has never heard about health coaching before? So I want you to remember that you are never selling coaching, nor are you ever selling your time. Uh uh, this is not like a one hour of my time is worth situation. You are selling a transformation which is worth that $1,000 plus price tag. Okay? So all of the details, the little things, is it a, is it a phone call? Is it a Skype session? Whatever. That stuff's not that important. The topics that you cover inside the program are not that important. When you're selling either like handing someone a curriculum is not going to make the difference between them signing on the dotted line or not.

All that stuff is like blah, blah. No one cares, no one cares. 10 sessions, 12 sessions, 14 sessions, it doesn't matter. What matters is transformation and that is what I want you to focus on the most. When you think about what you're selling, I want you to think about who am I selling this to? First of all, yeah, they're coming to me with a blank check, but is this someone that I can create a huge transformation for? Can I help them create a huge transformation for themselves and can I do that? And this is why having like a signature program that is positioned to help someone create a particular transformation in their life makes a huge difference. And that is why you should join me for my free five day. Create your signature program challenge registration opens tomorrow. Now if you can't wait and you want to jump into learning more with me this year, you can go ahead and sign up now for my fast track semester wait list, the wait list is open, it's free.

You're going to get a bunch of exclusive bonuses and opportunities there and that is available now. If you go to healthcoachpower.com/waitlist and then look tomorrow to sign up for the challenge. Super fun. Can't wait to do that with you. So before we go, I got a quick shout out to Shelly. Shelly left this five star review on iTunes, so Shelly, if you're listening, she said, "Coaches, this podcast is for you. I started listening to the health coach power community podcast a few weeks ago and I have not stopped. I'm an IIN grad but I haven't started coaching yet because I spend way too much time in my own head." Who can relate? "Michelle has over 10 years of experience and her podcast is helping me take action in my business. Michelle has a ton of great knowledge and advice for new and seasoned coaches. Thank you so much for all you do for us coaches."

Shelly, thank you. And please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference episode number, what is this 92? 92 so we can send you a little thank you gift. So grateful that you took the time to leave this review. You're awesome. And for everybody, thank you so much for watching and for listening and I so appreciate the reviews on iTunes. If you can take five minutes and do that, you can do it right from your phone inside the Apple podcast app. And who knows? I might be reading your review next week when we come back for our episode, we'll, we'll continue to talk about this idea of a signature program and how to sell your services because I'm pretty sure we all want to do more of that in 2020. So until then, take everybody and I will see you next time.