#243: I'm Telling Them and It Still Ain't Working

3 conversation changes that turn casual chats into client conversations.

You're posting. Showing up. Telling everyone you have a coaching business. So why aren't the clients coming?

In this episode, Michelle breaks down what your social media content is actually doing (and what it isn't), why client acquisition takes longer than you think, and 3 specific things you can change in your everyday conversations starting today to turn casual chats into sales conversations.

Plus, a free masterclass invitation to help you get your first paying clients.

Kicks off May 5th.

🎁 FREE MASTERCLASS — Get Your First Paying Clients

Two recorded videos plus one live session with me where we'll write your "who" statement together (who you help, with what, and how). This is step one of my 7-step Client Enrollment Method.

Sign up at clientenrollmentmethod.com

Meet Your Host: 

Hey, I’m Michelle — The coaches’ coach.

I'm a Business and Visibility marketing Coach who helps female life coaches build a coaching biz, get seen at all the right places, and attract paying clients.

I believe your coaching business should feel beautiful and profitable — without sacrificing your sanity, your weekends, or your personality.

Using my 7-Step Client Enrollment Method, I help you build a coaching business that clients can’t help but say, “OMG, that’s who I need!”

More clarity, more clients, more champagne moments. 🥂

Because building your dream business shouldn’t be a nightmare — it should feel like coming home.

 
🐦 SOCIAL STUFF:

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Book a strategy call with Michelle ➔ http://coachwithclients.com/strategycall

Transcript

No Traction After Posting

Michelle Kuei 0:00

A client of mine said this to me last week. I'm telling them and it's still not working. Here's what she means. So she's been posting, showing up, giving away free values like it's Halloween candy, but there's not much traction. There was no like, no comment, no DM, and a lot of her followers are just her friends and family. And there's no, hey, can we actually hop on the call? And if that's where you're sitting right now, just this episode is going to be for you because I'm sure at some point in your content creation as a coach, you might feel that you're not doing anything and there's no traction. What's the point of all this? So here's what I would say: before you're thinking about lowering your price or changing your coaching offer or even changing your niche, the problem is your client acquisition skill. So that's what we're talking about today. Hey coach, welcome back to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, business and marketing coach for coaches. And if you're new here, I teach coaches how to build a coaching business and get their first and next paying clients. You became a coach because you are good at this. Really good. And the world needs what you have. But being a great coach and knowing how to build a coaching business, well, those are two complete different skill sets. That's what we fix here on this podcast. Every week I'm breaking down the what stops you from being visible in front of your audience, giving you simple marketing strategies that works, and showing you exactly how to show up so the right client feels like, well, you're already reading their mind. If you're ready to start building a coaching business that pays you back, grab a drink and let's get into it. Welcome back, my friends. So today we are going to talk about why posting on social, doing all these things, but somehow you are not seeing clients coming through, and you're having doubt that whether or not this is actually working, or you're having doubt that this is helpful. So before we get into it, I want to say that this client who has shared with me last week that I've been telling them, I've been telling everybody. I post, I tell them that I have a business now, and I tell them like all these things, but they're just not responding. And they're all my friends and family. I never had to go out there and sell. And so selling is not me, it's just not who I am. If you're thinking that and you've been doing posting and you try to use social media to get clients, I want you to know that you are not alone. And honestly, a lot of time when you're not seeing traction, it can feel very discouraging. But before you go on and start changing everything else or everything in your coaching business, here are the three things that I'm going to talk about that would improve your client acquisition skills. Now, let me just say off the back that when you're posting on social, it's not so much of selling. The way that you sell on social, it's creating a conversation. And while you're creating that conversation, what you're also doing is you're positioning yourself as the authority and you're building your authority, you're building your credibility. So all the stuff that you are doing on social is serves a lot of different purposes. It's not just selling alone. If you're just selling on social, then it's pretty much like selling a shampoo product or a product that you see on the website or anywhere that you go. But you're not selling a product, you're selling a service. Now, behind the service, you I'm sure you have all heard the no like and trust. Now, how do you build that no like and trust? Knowing that you have a business, that's only one step. Knowing that you are an expert in this service, that would be another step. Knowing that you have credibility behind what you are saying, that's another step. So I just gave you three different types of content that you should be creating and not just, hey, I have a business, here's my package, would you like to sign that? I gave you two more, which include authority and building your credibility. So there's a lot of behind the scene of why you do what you do on social. It's not just slapping a package on social and saying, hey, I got a business, I opened a business, and if you want a coach, here I am. You can book a call. It doesn't work that way. And most of your buyer, most of your clients is also not thinking that way. What they're thinking is, tell me more about your methodology, tell me more about how you were clients, tell me more about who have experienced this change that you're talking about. So all these need to sprinkle throughout your life cycle on social, and which is why a lot of us we provide values, but behind that value, there's a reason of what kind of value and what type of post that we're creating. Now I can go on and on talking about how to create content and how to create social media presence, how to establish your authority, your expertise, your authority, but that's going to take me a long time, which is why I have coaching programs that walk you through these steps because it's going to take me more than just the time on this podcast. But here's what I see. I see coaches having the misaligned expectation of what they do on social versus the time that it takes for your audience to find you, to know you, to like you, to finally trust you and wanting to take out their wallet and pay you. There is a misaligned expectation of how long that process is going to take. So you're sitting there, you're doing all these things, and you're expecting your underlying expectation is that if I do all this, I should be getting a client, right? But in reality, it doesn't work that way. Some of us may take six months, a year, or some of us are still tweaking. Even I myself, and I was talking to my best friend, she and I have been in business for a while, and every single day, every single quarter, we still sit down and strategize in what we want to do in our business in order to align the journey that we're currently on. And so the other day I had a conversation with her, and we were talking about how long it took us to finally get this business going. And I kid you not, she and I have been partnering together. She's my business bestie, and we've been talking about this for years. And it would take, so realistically, it would take a six-month period of time in order to get you started. It would take a whole year to finally feeling, oh, I know how to start having these sales conversations. Coaches will come to me and thinking, I just want to sign up for a month and see how it goes. If you're not serious about your business, and that's not something that you want to build, a month is not gonna get you very far. Three months is not gonna get you very far. Okay, so at least six months to put your business into a shape and form that would be something that you feel proud of, and that you can do the things that we talk about inside our conversation to carry on and throughout your business. And it would take about a year to finally feel comfortable in sitting there and having that sales conversation if your background is not sales. So I just want to set that framework for you because I see a lot of coaches and including my clients who have this misaligned expectation of how long it's going to take in order for my business to be on a good foundation so that I can keep building on it. So if you're wondering how long does it take, it takes about six months to a year to finally feel comfortable and knowing that hey, my message is clear, and if I just keep repeating the process, if I just keep showing up with the intention, with a purpose of I know what this post is going to do for me. So I talked about authority, credibility, and also sales posts, what these posts that I created and put it out into the word is going to do for me. That would take about a year to get clear. Now, knowing all that, what I do notice is that a lot of coaches are missing a lot of opportunity on the everyday conversation. They go out, they have the opportunity to meet new strangers who may be their ideal potential clients. And honestly, right now is probably a great time because there's a lot of uncertainty, stress, and people are feeling burnt out. And there's a lot of people also going through transition. Transition from in life, in career, whatever that their life living experience is. This is a great time for a lot of coaches, especially if you're a mindset coach, career coach, business coach, and life coaches. This is a great time to have that conversation. And your client is already looking, and they're looking constantly on a daily basis. So if you are not able to have those conversations on a daily basis, then you're missing out a lot of opportunities. So I want to talk about the three things that you can change starting today, and hopefully, by going through these three things, how you converse with your potential prospects, or even not potential prospects, how you engage conversation is going to help you facilitate that client acquisition process. And like I said, client acquisition, the time, time frame, it varies from one niche to another niche, also from one prospect to another prospect. Some prospect you encounter, some conversation that you have, uh, people are already looking, right? People are looking for solution. People know that the value of having a coach in their life. So that client acquisition process and time is going to be shorter, versus some of the clients that you encounter, or some of the conversation that you encounter, maybe they're never came across life coaching, coaching in general before. So that client acquisition period is going to be longer. So knowing that, there are three things that you can do that starting today that's going to help you to facilitate that conversation altogether. I do have my notes on the side for me so that I don't miss anything. So the first thing is when people ask you, so what do you do? They go into this like really tense, intense feeling of, oh, they're asking me about my IHELP statement. So they really tense up and they blurred out something like, Oh, I help, I help women in their 40s going through life transitions so that they can get what they want because they know there's something bigger and better out there for them instead of what they have. And you just spend basically you cover everybody. So it's vague and they have no idea. They just want to know what you do. So instead of getting all tense when people ask you, so what do you do? It's a great opportunity for you to actually position yourself as the authority. And you can say something like, So, for example, I'm going to use the example of mindset coaches. Okay, so let's say you're a mindset coach who's working with confidence and you're tackling the imposter syndrome, which is very common. I know a lot of you uh are going down that route of that self-talk, the self-doubt. So when people ask you what you do, here's something that you can do right away. In your everyday conversation, you can say something like, as someone who struggled with imposter syndrome, I realized that one of the most effective ways to tackle this imposter syndrome is working and naming that negative cell talk. So nowadays I help my clients to tackle that negative cell talk. And that's what I do. I'm a confidence coach. And just leaving that, people were like thinking, oh, so the imposter syndrome, the cell doubt, I got that, and I have that voice too. And you can proceed asking conversation and be curious about so when's the last time that you heard that in their voice, inner critics that shows up and you were like about to do something big and major in your life. Tell me about that. And so you just opened up the conversation, but what you did was also telling them that not only do I help clients to do this, I have the authority of doing this because I was someone who's struggling with the imposter syndrome and negative cell talk. So you have the authority built in there because you utilize the fact that you didn't just wake up next day and then say, you know what, today's looks like a beautiful day to be a mindset coach. You are someone who has experiences, you work through it, and now you're helping and working with clients who also struggle with this particular mindset problem. That's how you position and start off that conversation. You don't go all tense up and say, I help women in their 40s who's going through a transition and they're having negative self-talk or they're in struggle with imposter syndrome so that they can do you want your everyday conversation to be natural, to be something that would open up more conversation. And that what do you do is a great opportunity for you to open up that conversation. So same thing apply to your social media. When you're on social, the intent is it's social, right? So you wanted to treat it like a social. It's a great place to meet new people, it's a great place to get to know your audience, to get to know who is following me, who is struggling with something, or who is finding that they're going through some transition, maybe it's a divorce, maybe it's relationship change, or maybe it's career change. That's a great opportunity to ask your people like, hey, what are you guys up to? I want to know, and not so much of who is going to buy from me. That's not the intent, that's not what social is built for. Social is built for social, socializing, get to know people, invite them to conversation, stop selling. So the intent on social is never to sell, it's to offer your service. And how do you offer your service? You start by understanding what people want, what people are interested, what people are going through in their life that you can be of service. So, knowing that, I want you to do an audit on your social media. When's the last time you invite people to have a conversation with you? Like a genuine conversation. Just, hey, I know the weather has been really rough, things have been very difficult, gas prices very high. What are you guys going through? You don't have to comment, you can send me a message, that's okay too. Just having a conversation, or maybe it's your friend, your colleague. Just get into the conversation. You get to meet people on a day-to-day basis, and you can start your conversation there. That's the first thing that I would invite you to change. The second thing that we invite you to change is you want to start listening for the problem and not an opening to pitch. And I say this because I was someone when I first started out. I kept listening for the conversation where I can slide in my sales pitch, right? I'm listening for where's the opportunity where I can say, I'm a coach, I can help you with that. I was listening for the conversation loophole where I can slide in my sales pitch, but that's not the intention. When you meet someone, a complete stranger, or having a conversation with someone, what you want to listen for is their problem. What are they talking about? What are they not saying out loud? But it's something that they're struggling with. A soccer mom who is running around bringing kids to the soccer field, and she has to go and pick up another kid. And you can imagine her day-to-day life is probably very tight and very busy. Maybe she's saying there's so many things in my life right now, and I'm so busy. One of the questions I would ask her is so when's the last time you took time for yourself? And I'm just gonna be very curious about when's the last time you took time for yourself. And she might chuggle, she might say, Never, because my life is so busy. And you might get curious about why not. So a lot of you out there, great coaches, and you have coaching skills, but somehow you're hiding your coaching skills behind a paywall. You're thinking that I need to get that client in order to start using my skill. But in reality, your skill can be applied in everyday conversation. If there's someone standing in front of you and sharing that she has a busy schedule, why not ask her and be curious about how you can serve her in that moment in time? Why not? Why are you not allowing yourself to take time for yourself? I'm just curious. Let's have a conversation. And right there on the spot, you can actually help her to feel a lot better and she actually feels seen and hurt because you genuinely care about her well-being, not so much about her busy schedule. So that's number two is I want to invite you to start listening for the problem and not so much about when I can sliding my I help statement or my package or talking about I am a coach. Just genuinely be there and listen for the problem that people are not saying that you can feel and sense. And maybe you are their soundboard and you are the perfect person who allows them to feel seen. So that's tip number number two of how you can shorten that client acquisition period and how you can turn your casual conversation into a sales conversation. Listen for the problem, use your skill, and it's a great way to practice using your coaching skill. Now, I will say that one of the things I teach my client to do is as you're listening and using your skill in your conversation, at some point you want to create an invitation. Obviously, a coaching session is gonna take an hour and multiple sessions. So clearly, you cannot be that person being there and give away all these coaching sessions every time you see that person. So you're gonna use your judgment. At some point, you're going to invite that person to an official discovery call so that you can see if you guys can partner up and she can officially hire you as her coach. So that's what I will say about tip number two is you don't want to just go out and start providing free coaching for everybody. You gotta use your intuition. Okay, this is where your intuition comes in, and you wanted to at some point invite that person into a sales conversation. All right, so tip number three is what you want to do is you want to open up, like I said, to more. Conversation. This is related to tip number two. At some point, you don't want to just keep giving out free coaching sessions to this person, right? Because that person may be feeling really seen on that first conversation or a couple of conversations after with you. At some point, you're going to be really transparent and you wanted to say, it's great that we're having these conversations, and it sounds like you got a lot on your plate. And I work with women like yourself who's going through exactly this. So, would it be more helpful if we actually make this a conversation, an official conversation where I can walk you through how I work with clients, and if you see it's a good fit, then we can actually partner up together. Like I said, tip number two is great. You're using your skill, you're opening the conversation, but through that conversation, at some point, you wanted to invite that person and say, hey, it sounds like you have a lot and we need to unpack this and not just one session, but two sessions and maybe more. Can we just set up a time so that you can learn more about how I work with clients like yourself and how we can partner up together? Now, same rule applies to your social. So a lot of what I just talked about focused on your conversation, but I want you to start thinking about your social media as a place for conversation. Maybe it's one client, or maybe it's one follower who are following you and reaching out to you, or maybe just keep liking your comment. Send that person a DM, a message, and just say, Hey, I noticed that you keep following on my social. What did you think about it? What's coming up for you? Are you just going around and liking everybody's post or what's going on? Just be curious about why people do certain things and you'll be surprised how much you open up the conversation that way. So just because it's social media doesn't mean that you have to like hard sell. You have the analogy that I used the other day was that life threw you a whole bunch of lemon and you turn them into lemonade. Now you have the lemonade and now you want to sell the lemonade, but you don't want to feel salsy or you don't want to feel pushy. So you hold on to the lemonade until it rotten and expired. No, you made lemonade out of all the life experience that you have gone through, and now you have the skill to help other people making their lemonade. So go out there and offer your lemonade. And so that was the analogy that I used that you made the lemonade, and now people need to buy your lemonade. So go out there and offer your lemonade. But the point is that when people follow you on social, it's the same way, right? If people keep leaning in and listen to your conversation, you're like, you're going to in real life, you're going to look at that person and say, Hey, would you like to join this conversation? So, same thing on social. Social media is not your enemy. You need to stop treating social media like it's your enemy. So if you see someone have a commenting on it, or that you don't know that person very well, or you haven't had the conversation with that person, even your friends or family, you want to go out and invite that person. Hey, what's going on with you? I haven't talked to you for so long. What's new? Well, what's happening in your life? Tell me about it. And just be curious and inviting. You want to go out there and invite those conversations in. Just be curious about what's happening in people's lives. You never know behind the screen what's going on in that person's life. Just because you have a business doesn't stop you. It should not stop you from caring about other people and being genuinely curious about what's happening and what's going on in their life. So just send them a little nice message and say, Hey, I noticed that we haven't talked, or it's been a while. What's going on in your life? And here's what's happening in mine. And it's a great two-way conversation, two-way conversation. So that one, you put yourself out there, two, maybe that person is going through something. Now you have the opportunity to help that person, and that person feels seen, and that person is going to go out and talk to more people about what you just helped that person do. And that's how you spread the word of mouth. So, no client acquisition is not going to happen overnight, but it's start one conversation at a time. So today we talked about the three things that you can do today to shorten that client acquisition. And again, a lot of coaches feel that I'm posting, I'm doing this, I'm creating content, but there's no conversation. Conversations are something that you create, it's not something that comes to you. Conversation doesn't come to you. You need to go out there and create conversation. So a lot of what you do on social, it's about creating conversation. And if you don't see something that's happening on your social, then you want to just stand back and look at what is it that you're doing on social that is not inviting conversation in. Maybe it takes as little as changing the way that you're creating content. Maybe it's not posting every single day. Maybe it's asking some empowering question, right, to your audience. Maybe it's just being genuinely care and ask people, hey, there's a lot going on in the world right now. What's going on in your world? And something like that just to spark conversation going. If you can't find conversation where you can position yourself in, create those conversations. So just quick recap of today's episode. We talked about, so this episode was inspired by one of my clients who share I'm telling them, but nothing is happening. First of all, you're not alone. There's a lot of us who's feeling that way, and the client acquisition during uncertainty time is certainly takes a little longer than what it used to be, right? Used to people used to maybe sign up in a shorter amount of time. That's because the market has uh less opportunity out there, people have less way to shop. So maybe that client acquisition period was a lot shorter. Now things have changed. There's options, and you become an option, but you do want to become the choice. So, how do you become the choice? You want to position yourself as the authority, as the expert, and share your unique perspective on where you stand and what you stand on. That is going to help shorten that client acquisition period. So I share the three things that you can do to facilitate and to shorten this client acquisition period. One is to change how you answer what you what do you do, and you start leading with, first of all, your authority as someone who has struggled with imposter syndrome for many years. I now help other women who struggle with imposter syndrome to find their confidence. That would allow you to open up the conversation so that people see that you're not just someone who pops out of nowhere and you're not just a self-proclaimed life coach or mindset coach or career coach. You actually had live experience or you got training through this that makes you legit. Two is you want to listen to real problem in the conversation, even the problem that people are not seeing. A lot of us real, we don't go around and complain about our problem, right? But we do signal what we are struggling with. And you're a great coach, you have the listening skill, you're a great listener. So be sure to listen for the problem instead of waiting for, oh, when can I slide in my sales pitch? Just be curious about what people are going through before you offer them the sales. Now, that being said, you once you start that conversation at some point, you want to invite them right to a deeper conversation officially on a discovery call or officially learning more about what you can do to partner up with this person because there's going to be a lot on that person's plate. And one of the last things that you want to do is when you get to step number three or tip number three, you're feeling, well, I don't want to sell that person. You just had a great conversation, you offer great advice or strategies or things that person can do. So, in other words, you just offer your service for free for this many times that you see that person. So the last thing that you wanted to do is allow that person to walk away and thinking that, oh yeah, I got this. Uh, she shared something very valuable for me, and I got this, I can do this on my own. They can't. And you and I both know that's not how coaching works. Same thing if you're watching this video and you're thinking that great, Michelle shared all this, I'm going to do all that. You have to remember this is a 30 minutes podcast, and can you do this on your own? Sure. Will you experience obstacle? You will. Are you going to experience Roblox? Yes, you will. Essentially, we all think that we got this, we can be on our own, we can do this, we can figure it out, but that's not how coaching works. So if you want to get there faster, easier, then that's what my coaching program is for. So if you want help to build your marketing skill out and having conversations that feel genuine, feel valued, feel making your prospect feeling seen that will lead into a paying client. That's how I help with coaches to help them build their coaching business and attract their clients. If you're starting out new, you just got certified, or you are a coach still in training, I am offering a free masterclass. It's called Get Your First and Next Paying Clients. It's going to kick off on May 5th. You're getting two recorded videos plus a live session with me. On that live session, we're going to write your who statement. So who you help with what and how you're helping them to do. And that is basically the first step in my seven steps client enrollment method. So if this is something that you would like to start doing and being more intentional about what you do on social, and like I said, it takes about six to a year to build out that coaching business. So the sooner that you start, the better off you are for your business. So if you like to sign up, there's a link in the description. Go to client enrollmentmethod.com and you'll be able to save yourself a C. And until then, I will see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening to Make It Visible Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasted time and money. Filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevateelifecoaching.org and grab a free strategy out of today.