How Established Coaches Can Sharpen Their Positioning Without Starting Over

Business, Latest

How Established Coaches Can Sharpen Their Positioning Without Starting Over

Business, Latest

You know you’re getting your clients incredible results. You can see it in their feedback, in the messages they send you months later, in how different their lives look compared to when they first came to you.

And yet, when people land on your website or scroll through your content, something isn’t quite clicking. They like what you share. They might even tell you they love your work. But they’re not quite getting what it is you actually do, and they’re not booking.

If that sounds familiar, I want you to know two things. First, you’re not alone (this is one of the most common things I see in my work with heart centred coaches). And second, you probably don’t need to re-niche or tear everything down and start again. Often, it’s just a few small tweaks to how you talk about your results.
Let’s get into it.


Listen to this episode on The Wholehearted Business Show Podcast: Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify

The gap between your results and your message

Here’s what I see over and over again with highly sensitive, heart centred coaches. Your clients are achieving really concrete things. They’re leaving jobs that were draining them. They’re getting promoted. They’re finally sleeping through the night.

But when you describe your work, it sounds something like this:

  • Find more balance
  • Feel more aligned
  • Reconnect with your body
  • Step into your confidence

Those are lovely things. They’re also really vague.

We tend to soften our outcomes because claiming the real results can feel a bit salesy. We worry about over-promising. We don’t want to come across like those coaches with the flashy income screenshots. And I completely get that.

But when we don’t really claim what we’re doing with our clients, we undersell ourselves, we don’t attract the right fit people, and our business just isn’t as successful as it could be.

Why “polite” positioning costs established coaches the most

When your message stays soft and general, people simply can’t grasp the value of your work.

Let’s get real for a sec. If you’re charging a decent amount for your coaching package (say £1,000, £2,000, £3,000 or more), very few people are going to pay that to “feel more balanced”. In most cases, what people invest in is a specific outcome, or a set of specific outcomes. That’s especially true with 1:1 coaching.

So when we don’t name those outcomes, we’re not communicating the value of what we do. And that makes selling so much harder than it needs to be.

Owning your results without over-promising

Here’s the reframe that really helps: being clear about the outcomes you help people achieve is not the same as over-promising.

You can be specific and ethical at the same time. It’s all about context.

On your sales page, you can share real client results and be honest about them. Something like: “These are some of the results my clients have achieved. I can’t guarantee the same for everyone, but this is an example of what’s possible.”

This is exactly what I do in my own business. I have a testimonial from a client who made £60,000 from a group programme launch. If you’ve been to one of my webinars, you’ll know I always introduce it as a unicorn result. It’s absolutely possible, but there was a very specific set of circumstances that allowed it to happen. Sharing it with that context is honest. Not sharing it at all would just be hiding.

The same goes for any kind of coaching. If you’re a health coach and a client lost 20 pounds working with you, you can say that. You’re not guaranteeing it for anyone else. It’s a real result from a real client.

And remember, your sales page isn’t the only place you can add context. Your discovery calls, sales calls or clarity calls are the perfect space to talk honestly with someone about what’s realistic for them.

The real problem isn’t how you phrase your results. It’s when you don’t say them anywhere at all because you’re too frightened to make the claim.

How to find your sharper message (without niching from scratch)

So how do you actually uncover that clearer, sharper message? Start with the people you’ve already helped.

Look at your last five to ten clients and ask yourself:

  • Where were they when they started working with me?
  • Where are they now?
  • What has specifically changed?

If you use feedback forms (and I hope you do!), go back through them. But try to go underneath the feelings. “I feel happier” or “I feel more balanced” matters, but what’s sitting under that? What’s actually different in their life?

Now, here’s where we highly sensitive coaches tend to trip ourselves up. We look at a client’s result and think, “Well, they did that themselves. There was so much else going on. I can’t take credit for that.”

Of course there were other factors. There always are. But coaching impacts people on so many levels, often in ways we can’t fully predict or trace. There doesn’t need to be a perfectly straight line between your session and their result for your work to have played a real part.

I’m actually working with a coach myself at the moment on something completely separate from business, and I’ve had so many positive shifts. I couldn’t draw a neat line from each session to each outcome, but I’d happily say her support has influenced those results in a really positive way.

So rather than quietly assuming you can’t claim something, ask. Try something like: “Would you be comfortable with me sharing, anonymously or with your name, that you got a new job while we were working together? Do you feel our work supported that?”

Maybe they already had the interview lined up. But maybe your session gave them the confidence to show up differently in it. You won’t know unless you have the conversation.

The “so that” question

Here’s one of my favourite little tools for sharpening your message.

Go through the outcomes you currently talk about and add the words “so that…” to the end of each one.

  • More confident so that they can do what?
  • More connected so that what changes?
  • More energised so that what becomes possible?

Words like confidence, connection, energy and vibrancy are understood by your audience, but they don’t create an emotional response. And when someone is deciding whether to invest in working with you, that emotional response really matters. Specificity lets them picture the actual outcome in their own life.

Compare “you’ll feel more energised” with “you’ll have the energy to actually get down on the floor and play with your kids, instead of feeling like life is drifting past you”. One sounds nice. The other makes someone go, “Oh. That’s me.”

Just go that one step further.

Where to use your sharper message first

Once you’ve got clearer on your specific outcomes, it’s time to put them to work. Here’s where I’d start:

  1. Your 1:1 coaching sales page. This is the big one. You should have a section that clearly lays out the outcomes people get from working with you. Go through it and refine every line.
  2. Your website as a whole. Look at your main message, especially on your homepage. If you help people with lots of different results, that’s okay, but can you drill it down into something that feels clearer and more specific?
  3. Your content and sales emails. Think about how you’re talking about your results week to week. Are you confidently sharing what your clients actually achieve?

The mindset piece runs through all of this. Own what you do. Check in with clients if you need to. Add caveats where they’re helpful. But don’t hold yourself back from sharing your results altogether out of fear of over-promising.

You don’t need to start over

If you’ve been struggling to convert clients, you don’t necessarily need to re-niche or change everything. You might just need to own the results you’re already getting and talk about them clearly, beyond “more balanced” and “more confident”.

If you’d like some support with this, it’s exactly the kind of thing I love helping coaches with. You can book a Clarity Call for a focused session on your messaging, or take a look at 1:1 Mentoring. I have a few spaces available as we head towards the end of the year.

And if you want to keep the conversation going, come and say hi over on Instagram. I’d love to hear what came up for you.

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