If selling your 1:1 coaching package feels challenging you’re definitely not alone. The way that most coaches approach selling their coaching packages can make it especially tricky to attract clients. Maybe it feels like you’re selling all the time, but never making sales? In this blog post I’m going to share how you can use sales cycles to improve the way you sell your 1:1 coaching packages. Let’s go!

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What is a Sales Cycle?

A sales cycle is quite simply a specific period of time you decide to actively sell (as opposed to passive selling) an offer.

While this blog is focused on 1:1 coaching, the principle remains the same for other products too. Many coaches simply let their coaching packages sit passively on their websites, hoping for spontaneous client enquiries. While this can work, especially once your business reaches a certain level, sometimes it’s just not enough. This is where sales cycles come into play, providing a structured approach to selling your services.

Why is 1:1 Coaching so Tricky to Sell?

Selling 1:1 coaching can be particularly challenging because it typically involves a higher price point. Most coaches tend to just have their coaching offer sitting on their website and don’t really do much active selling. Often, we might direct traffic to our coaching pages via emails or social media – or let’s face it, we might forget to mention our coaching package at all!. Reaching the point of spontaneous enquiries is really helpful, but before you get there having a more strategic approach can make a big difference.

Using Sales Cycles to Sell 1:1 Coaching

Sales cycles create specific periods where you actively sell your coaching packages, often leveraging urgency or scarcity to help inspire action – basically giving people a reason to move.

While a lot has been said about the ethics of using urgency and scarcity, they can make a big difference when it comes to sales.

When you create sales cycles and ‘cycle’ in and out of periods of active and passive selling you can get much better results.

Active vs Passive Selling

To use sales cycles it’s really helpful to understand the difference between passive and active selling.

Passive selling tends to be the selling that is fairly low effort. Think links to your coaching offer or calls to action to book a discovery call in your regular newsletter emails or automated welcome sequence. It might be occasionally mentioning your offer on social media or while networking. Passive selling is still really important and we want to always be passively selling.

The issue is, passive selling might just not be enough to get clients, especially in the earlier days of your business.

When you actively sell, you’re showing up in a whole new way. You’re using urgency and scarcity, perhaps you’re utilising conversion events like challenges and webinars. You may also be sending more emails to your list.

The big difference between passive and active selling is that you couldn’t sustainably be in ‘active’ selling mode for a long period of time without burning yourself and your audience out.

Using Urgency and Scarcity

Sales cycles often involve using urgency or scarcity to encourage potential clients to act. This might involve limited-time bonuses or special offers, creating a sense of urgency. Scarcity could be as simple as announcing a few remaining slots in your coaching program.

Not everyone feels good about using urgency and scarcity, but a good way to approach it is to use genuine urgency and scarcity – for example, don’t just say you only have two coaching slots left if you could easily take on 5 more clients. But if you genuinely only have two slots then make sure everyone knows! If you want to offer a discount or change the price, you’re allowed to do that too.

Whatever it is you use, it’s about giving people a reason to sign up now and not later. That urgency and scarcity doesn’t always need to be something you create for them, you can also trigger people’s internal urgency. What might be going on for your ideal clients that makes now the right time for them to invest in coaching?

Launching

Sales cycles can be very similar in nature to a launch or mini launch. I do think there are distinct differences and a lot of it depends on how you want to show up and sell. I cover a lot of this in my program The Launch and Sales Fix.

Mapping Out Your Sales Cycles

To put this into practice, take a look at your calendar for the year ahead. Consider seasonal trends and align your active selling periods with times that make logical sense for your audience. Having a seasonal strategy can be particularly effective, such as focusing on New Year’s resolutions in January as a health or life coach.

Next Steps

Think about how you could incorporate sales cycles into your business plans. Schedule these periods into your calendar and plans so you can create key periods of active selling and see how many more clients you’re able to attract!

For more support on getting sales and launches right in your health or life coaching business check out The Launch and Sales Fix.

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