Ep #146: Why No One’s Booking Consults with You

The Confident Coaches Podcast | Why No One’s Booking Consults with YouSo, why is no one booking consults with you? 

No one seems to be reading your posts, getting on the phone with you, or booking a spot on your calendar.

I’ve coached too many people to know that too often, it’s the simplest stuff that’s being left out of the offer you’re making.

Tune in to find out four reasons people aren’t booking consults to work with you, and how to start showing them why they need to. 

 

The doors to Free to Paid Coach are officially open! If you’re ready to learn the foundational concepts of confidence that get you from being a free coach to a paid coach who makes six figures and beyond, join us right now! 

 

What You’ll Learn:
  • 4 reasons people aren’t booking consults to work with you. 
  • How you might be burying your strongest leads. 
  • How to start creating scroll-stopper posts if you don’t already have an engaged audience. 
  • The difference between creating aspirational, inspirational posts and showing your clients the results they can have. 
  • How to avoid vague platitudes in your copy.
  • The beliefs that might be stopping you from being bold in inviting people to work with you.
Listen to the Full Episode:

 

Featured on the Show:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode 146 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we figure out why you aren’t booking consults. All right, let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hey coach, this is Amy, your host here at Confident Coaches Podcast and I’ve got a super fun episode for you today. So this episode has come out of multiple coaching calls inside Free To Paid Coach. We have also been talking a little bit about this topic in the mastermind, but much more so in Free To Paid Coach.

So Free To Paid Coach is my paid ongoing, open all the time group coaching program. So this is for any coach who, I mean the name says is, Free To Paid Coach. So either you’re a brand spanking new coach, you haven’t even had free clients of any kind. This is the great place to start.

Or you’ve had free clients and you want to get paid because you’ve never become a paid coach before. And even if you aren’t a brand new coach, let’s say you’ve been tootling around in the industry for a couple weeks, couple months, couple years maybe even, and you just don’t know how to consistently and confidently create clients, get paid as a coach.

All of that is in Free To Paid Coach. And we talk a lot about believing that you’re a paid coach, how to deal with disappointment, how to have your own back, and also why people aren’t signing up to work with you. And by the end of this you’re going to hear all kinds of reasons why people aren’t booking consults with you.

Some of this stuff is action stuff, some of this is like really simply stuff, have you asked yourself this question? Does this not work here? Some of it is some deep-seated shit, which we will touch on by the end of this, which is like the bulk of what we talk about in the podcast and most of the coaching we do. But sometimes it’s like really simple stuff that you just need to make some quick tweaks with. So let’s dive into why people aren’t booking consults with you.

So first, right out of the gate, the number one reason why people aren’t booking consults with you is because they’re not even reading your shit. By the way, I’m going to be real blatant here. No one wants to read your stuff, okay? It’s really, really, important, no one actually wants to read it, they’re not like going, “Oh, let me get on the internet right now and find out what Jane Smith is writing about today.”

Now, eventually you might become a huge enough name that people are, like they would read anything of yours, but you’re not there yet. Okay? This is some of the stuff that I’m going to challenge you to do so you become that person where people want to read your shit even if it’s just blah, blah, blah, blah, right? You’re just not there yet and that’s okay.

So right out of the gate I’m telling you no one wants to read your shit. So if you just threw your hands up in the air I want you to come back. They’re not reading your posts or they’re not finishing your posts. It’s possible they’re not reading them at all because nobody is actively looking for you to share powerful stuff, you’re learning how to do that.

So a lot of times what happens, it’s so important, I want you to visualize right now how do you consume the internet? For most of us, maybe not every single one of you listening, but for most people it’s on a very small handheld device like a cell phone, and they are checking out from their life to scroll on Facebook, or Instagram, or LinkedIn, or wherever they’re scrolling right now, Pinterest maybe.

They are literally just mindlessly scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. There’s a lot of noise out there, it’s a crowded internet out there. You are competing with cute cat videos and videos of sharks washing up on beaches right now. And if they at all have a political interest those are 2700 different rabbit holes that they can go down. They are looking at what their great aunt Mildred is posting, they’re looking at back to school pictures right now. There’s a lot going on.

Not to mention all of those dang Facebook and Instagram ads that have me buying clothes that I don’t need, and products that are trying to be sold to them. And everybody else that’s got an online business. It’s busy out there. There’s a lot going on. And maybe they’re not used to you talking about life-changing stuff. Maybe they are kind of used to it, and we’ll get to if you are somebody who has been sharing for quite a while and they’re still not booking consults, I’ve got points for everybody here, okay?

But right out of the gate, would you read your stuff? For real, I’m not joking. Would you read your stuff? If you are bored reading your stuff, they’re going to be bored. If you’re confused as to what you’re talking about, they’re going to be confused. If you don’t want to finish reading your own post, they for sure don’t want to finish reading your post, right?

So right out of the gate, and I’m not saying this to be mean or to be cruel, but really understand that it’s a crowded field out there and how are you going to stand out? If your stuff doesn’t attract them right out of the gate, they’re not going to read it.

So you really need to start by reading your own stuff and legitimately asking yourself, would I read this if I hadn’t written it? Ask your friends if you need to. Ask your coach friends if you are a little unsure here because you’re still learning. It’s really important.

A lot of times here’s a lot of what might be happening, you are burying your lead, right? So the most powerful part of your post is like in the third paragraph. This happens so much. I literally just coached someone on that very thing in Free To Paid Coach today, where she spouted off the top of her head.

She writes amazing posts, but the most important part of her message is two thirds of the way through the message. So people may not pick up on that. You want to grab their attention right out of the gate. You want to have scroll stoppers. You want to create scroll stoppers. Again, literally, like cat video, shark video, ad, ad, ad, great aunt Mildred, here’s what’s going down in Washington. And what’s going to get them to stop and read your post?

Like here’s this thing that I was just thinking about the other day that I really thought would be really cool to share with you. Cut that sentence out. Don’t tell them that you’re about to tell them something that you want to tell them, right? So is it boring? Are you telling them what you’re about to tell them, a long introduction? Is your most important point buried in the third paragraph? Put it at the top.

Make them want to read more. Have your sentences sell the next sentence. One of the best ways to do this is to write out everything that you want to say and then immediately cut it in half and really ask yourself, what’s the most important thing? This could be its own side note but I’m going to go ahead and keep it in this one. And don’t try to cram too much into one post.

I coached somebody else in Free To Paid Coach today also, I coached her on the thought that she’s only got one shot. So this frequently happens when we put all of our eggs in like one post, right. You’re going to make lots of posts, so just share one central idea. Don’t try to pack three or four different things into one thing.

If you’re confused, they’re confused for sure. So be very clear, what are you trying to say? Can you say it simpler? What are the extra words that you’re using that you don’t need to? Really be brutal with your verbosity. How verbose are you? You don’t need to be that verbose. Make it super simple to read.

Yes, there are sometimes long-form posts with long intricate paragraphs and there are some people who say that they will absolutely read all of that. But really specifically for people who are, if you do not already have an engaged audience, don’t start there. Start with short, succinct, to the point posts that tell them what’s going on and the powerful impact that you want to share with them. Cut your words in half, they’re not reading it to begin with because there’s just too much going on or they don’t know what you’re trying to say.

So the next reason that they’re not booking consults, remember this topic is why they aren’t booking consults. The number one reason is they’re not even reading your shit because there’s just too much. They’re not stopping to read it and they’re not getting it all the way through.

The second reason is your posts are just aspirational or inspirational. They don’t understand that you are a life coach. Like it’s all inspiration. I know this is a trap a lot of new coaches get into, and this goes down to what we’re going to wrap up this episode with, of like what you’re allowed to do, and you don’t want to be too much.

But a lot of coaches will fall into this, well, I’m going to make a week’s worth of value posts and then the next one I’ll actually make an offer for them to actually get on a consult call with me. Well, they may not see that post, right? So I really want to debunk the myth that you have to do so many value posts before you make a direct offer. You don’t have to, there’s no rule about this.

Make as many posts as you can that says, I can help you, I am a life coach and people hire me to change their lives. I can change your life. Here’s the thing, they’ll like your messages. They’ll feel uplifted when they read your stuff. But they aren’t grasping in any way that you are actually a person that they can hire.

They just get the good feels from your stuff. Like maybe they understand what you’re saying, and they read the whole thing. But they don’t understand you’re a life coach and they can hire you. Tell them that you are a life coach, and they can hire you. Don’t leave that part out.

And I know this sounds like really basic, but I have read so much content from clients both at the mastermind level, because not only do I have Free To Paid Coach, I also have a six month at a time mastermind where we’re scaling to 100K. I’ve just coached too many people to know that sometimes the simplest stuff is being left out of the offers that you are making.

Number one, you may not actually have an offer in there, you’re just selling aspiration and inspiration. And again, when you are further along and you already have an engaged audience, and maybe you have launch cycles and sales cycles, like I do, if you follow me on social media, not every post I share has an offer attached to it.

Well, I might not be in a sales cycle. I might not be doing a launch or a push, I’m in a different part of my business. But when you’re first starting out, or when you are still scaling to 100K, you want to be telling people I’m a life coach and you can hire me, I will help you.

So the next reason that they aren’t hiring you is yes, they’re reading your posts. Yes, they understand that you are a life coach available for hire, but they’re not quite sure what’s being sold. So they don’t understand what they’re buying.

Now, obviously, if you are a coach who sells coaching to other coaches, they’re going to get it than the mom who is zoned out on her phone, because she’s just having an argument with her husband over the kids and the schedule et cetera. And she’s just checking out and she doesn’t quite understand what life coaching can do for them.

So yes, here’s this inspirational post. And hey, I’m a life coach and my clients love working with me. But they aren’t connecting that inspiration to a product, they’re not connecting it to a result. Remember, people buy the results that are possible from working with you.

It’s important to note here that results are not necessarily you are going to learn to change your thinking. Nobody wants to change their thinking. They do, however, want the benefit that comes when they learn how to change their thinking, right? They would love to stop thinking about food all of the time, you know, they would love to stop staring at their pantry at the end of the night when they’re stressed out.

They would love to stop thinking about alcohol all the time. They would love to have a more romantic marriage. They would love to stop fighting with their husband so much. They would love to stop fighting with their kids so much. They would love to have a better relationship with their stepchild. They would love to stop going blank every time they sit at the computer to figure out what they’re going to write in their next offer.

You’re selling those changes that are possible for them. You’re not changing them, well, first, we’re going to take a look at your thoughts and then we’re going to take a look at your feelings. Nobody wants to hear everything that’s going on in your life, the only thing that needs to change is you. They’re like, I’m pretty sure that’s not true.

But they do want to know that they can stop fighting with their husband. They do want to know that it’s possible that when they go to sit down at the computer that they can figure out what to say in their next post. So what’s the result that you are selling them? What’s the result they are buying from you? Do you know that?

In Free To Paid Coach I have a really simple step by step way to share or to understand what the result is that you are selling them. And at the mastermind level, we go way deep into that so that we get really super crystal clear. In Free To Paid Coach we’re just trying to get you to the place where you learn how to talk to people about what you do and how you help them.

So the next reason that they’re not buying coaching from you is they have an idea of the changes that are possible, but it’s still kind of vague. So this is some next step stuff. For the most part y’all get the first part, but this is where we want to take your aspirational and your inspirational post and we want to take this general result that they can expect from working with you, and we want to tie it to specific things in their life.

You want to be able to get a little voyeuristic here. And a lot of people are like, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” We want to be voyeurs in your client’s lives. This is the difference, and I’m going to get a little salty here, this is the difference between posting a bunch of inspirational porn that people feel really good, but it doesn’t actually get them anywhere, versus being like a voyeur into their life where they’re thinking, “Holy crap, how did she know that that’s the scenario going on in my house?”

Now we deep dive into this better copywriting inside Path To 100K, which is the mastermind. But just today, I still coached somebody on how to get more specific in their copywriting. How to bring their person in to a specific time and a specific place so that they could say, “Oh my goodness, this woman gets me, she knows what’s going on with me.”

I’m even turning this into a talk. I just taught this at the live event for Path To 100K mastermind, copywriting that lights your soul on fire and makes your toes curl, that’s literally the name of the talk. I am giving that as a workshop at the Fearless Business Workshop that’s coming up in November. The Fearless Business Workshop is somebody else’s big coaching event. It’s four days long, I’m going to be hosting a 90 minute workshop in there.

If you want to know more about Fearless Business Workshop, that’s not my program, but it is a four day event that you come and you attend and there’s a ton of speakers. If you want more information about that, just hit me up in my DMs or wherever you see these posts and I can get you a discount on the ticket.

But that’s the name of the workshop that I’m giving there. And like I said, just today in Free To Paid Coach I coached somebody on how to make their copy just a little bit better so that their audience actually sees themselves in the words that you are writing. Be willing to be a little voyeuristic. Be aware of vague platitudes.

Listen, everybody’s talking in vague platitudes. Help you get unstuck, help you feel better, let’s have a better life, how we think about things is what influences the way that our life actually looks. Listen, everybody’s using that language and at this point that is a little bit boring.

Tell them how coaching is going to change their life when they are in this situation Tuesday at 6pm, or Thursday at 1pm, or Sunday at 2pm. Let them know, I understand what’s going on in your life because I’ve done this work. This is how this work has helped me, this is how this work has helped my client.

So the next reason that nobody’s booking a consult call with you is because they don’t actually know what they’re supposed to do. Do not overlook this obstacle, it’s super easy to fix. What’s the phrasing of like, easy to learn hard to master. It’s super easy to fix, but do be willing to get better and better at it. Be willing to get better at this step.

And this is really about tying in your inspirational and your aspirational, your voyeuristic copy and all of that into why they need to get on the phone with you. Like really understanding, like you’re writing great copy, you’re getting past aspirational, and then at the end of the post you’re just slapping on a schedule a call with me.

No one wants to schedule a call with you. If you learn anything from this, no one wants to read your shit and no one wants to get on the phone with you. Like as soon as you realize no one actually wants to do that, I want you to think about that. Do you want to read a bunch of random stuff on the internet and then get on the phone with that person? Probably not.

So you want to start thinking about what would make you say I have to get on the phone with this person, right? And they may not even understand that the way they get started is a phone call. They have no idea why they need to schedule a call with you if you haven’t explained to them what the call is.

Simple sentences such as when my client was on a consult call with me. You want to think about seeding, you want to think about like if you’re sharing a story of work you’ve done with a client, make sure you’re mentioning like when this client was on a consult call with me.

So if we tie it back to the Tuesday at 6pm dinner and soccer practice situation, you might say something along the lines of this is exactly what one of my clients shared with me when we had our consult call six months ago. And now she’s cut these frustrations in half or that scenario doesn’t even happen anymore. You can book your consult call with me right here, follow this link.

Or maybe you’re sharing a great story of a potential before and after that you’ve experienced and you’re adding this as possible for you too, it all starts with a call. Book your call through this link right here.

So you really want to make sure you’re not just sharing this great post and then slapping book a call. Why are they booking a call? They have no idea what the call has to do with what you’ve just written. But if you’re kind of mentioning clients work with me, it all starts with a phone call, this is what we talked about in their consult call, and I can help you with the same thing and it all starts with this call.

You want them to understand what’s possible for them, and that their next best step is doing the action you’re asking them to do, that call to action. You won’t be great at this at first. Maybe you will be. Some of you might have come from a great copywriting background and you’re like, “Oh, I have been missing that and I know how to do that, I can figure that out.” Some of you might not be coming to this entrepreneurial business thinking, I’m a great writer.

Be willing to get better at this. You will start writing things and you’ll start saying, “Oh, I like that turn of phrase.” And you’ll remember that. One of my favorite ones is it all starts with a call. I can’t remember where that came from, but the first time I used it, I got it in my head, “Oh, everything I’ve just written is possible for you. The first step, it all starts with talking to me on the phone.”

Now the next reason that you’re not getting consults, and this is a technical, this is completely action oriented. But I am telling you right now, a lot of people aren’t getting calls because they miss this step. Does your link work?

So are you saying it all starts with a call, book your call through this link right here, and then they click on the link and then they don’t know what, the link either isn’t correct, it’s going to a bad page. Or it is correct but they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do when they get there.

So again, this may seem obvious, but the number of times that your link doesn’t work, I mean, I still do this sometimes. We have to always check our links. Make sure it’s super obvious and easy to enter their information whether you’re using, say Calendly or Acuity or whatever scheduler you use. Make sure that it’s super obvious that they’re supposed to choose a time and where they enter this information.

Calendly and Acuity makes it pretty simple. Make sure you have times available. If they have to go searching for times, like have you blocked off your calendar? I actually still use Acuity when people book calls for the mastermind. Free To Paid Coach you can enter at any time. The mastermind you have to book a consult call with me, at least as of this time. So before that link goes public, I need to check it. I need to make sure that I’ve designated when people can book calls with me.

Here’s some psychology, A, you want to make sure there are times available, you also want to make sure there aren’t like 100 times available. And this is a little marketing psychology for you. So you want to make sure that they don’t see that Monday through Friday, from 8am to 5pm all calls are open. All of a sudden, they’re like, “Am I the only one looking at her calendar?”

They’re actually less likely to book a call if all the options are there. So you do want to take a look at your calendar and make sure you have options, but you also want to try to concentrate them and maybe even not have consecutive times booked out. Play around with that.

But there is some psychology in there that if you, again, if you had 40 full hours open of potential times to call you for the next two weeks and they’re all open and nothing is booked, that might actually make them not book a call just as much as nothing being available. Okay? All right.

So all the points up to here have kind of been like step one, they’re not reading your stuff. Step two, they’re reading it, but they don’t know that they can hire you. So step one, step two, step three, but there is an overall reason why no one is booking your consult. And that’s because you secretly hate consults.

Or maybe not so secretly, maybe you’re like out in the open. Maybe you are an open consult hater. That might be a vibe you’re putting out of like, here’s all this great and amazing stuff, and do you want to get on a consult  call with me? I want you to imagine that in your head you’re thinking here’s this thing that I really hate. Do you want to come do it with me? Don’t have that air, that vibe in your post.

And here’s a little bit of what we can do about that. Understand this, you are selling them on coaching with you, but are you selling them on the call with you? We actually did this in Free To Paid Coach a couple of weeks ago, coached a client where she was solid, solid on why they should coach with her. And her posts were so sure in her coaching ability and what was possible.

But when I asked her why they should book a call with her, oof, she admitted, she was like, “I’ve never thought about why they should book a call with me.” She could tell me why they should coach with her. But why should they book a call with her? Her brain was really desiring to go from offer on the internet or in the email, to you being a client.

But there’s a really important step in the middle, and if you hate that step, all of the offers that you’re making are coming from this place of I hate this thing I’m inviting you to come do with me. So how can we get you to a place of not hating it?

So this last point kind of has two different things that I’m going to ask you to do. The first one is you need to sell yourself on the consult call. Why is this a great opportunity for them? Why is this the best way they can spend their time? Realize that a free call with you is still asking them to pay you. They’re paying you with their time.

Remember, nobody wants to spend time on the phone. Why do they want to spend time on the phone with you? Why is this the best thing for them? What can they expect from having this free call with you, even if they say no? What can you expect from having this free call with you, even if they say no? Why is the consult call awesome for them? Why is it awesome for you?

And not being afraid to tell them, yes, I’m going to offer my coaching to you. But no matter what happens, you’re going to leave this call knowing X. But you can’t have X unless you book a call with me, and you’re going to do that with this link that works. Make sure your links work. And you need to know the answers to those questions.

And you can even include posts or emails just about why consults are so amazing. So let’s say you’ve been making tons and tons and tons of posts. You’ve gotten past the aspirational, you’re really getting better at helping them understand what’s possible.

Throwing some posts in there just about like, let’s talk about this amazing consult call that I offer. It’s absolutely free, here’s everything that you can expect that happens. So if you want to go from point A to point B, know what your point A and point B is, then let’s book one of these calls for you. Here’s what happened when so and so booked this call, and you don’t have to name so and so. She left this call knowing this, I can do the same thing for you. It starts with following this link right here.

And obviously all of this comes back to what we’ve kind of been touching on the entire time, which is really your belief that people want to work with you, that you’re a good coach, that you can help people. That people would be willing to pay you money to work with you. That you have a right to be so bold to say these things.

Now, these are all technically separate issues to coach on. But this is why you want to be in Free To Paid Coach to begin with, because this is what we’re coaching on from week to week to week. All the other things is your willingness to notice if you’re doing it or not, and your willingness to get better at each of those individual things.

But if you don’t believe you have a right to say anything in the first place, if you don’t think it’s okay to ask people for money, if you are unsure if you’re a good enough coach, we need to get you in Free To Paid Coach and coach on that. Because that is the underbelly to all of the reason why people aren’t booking consult calls with you.

It works every single time. I don’t know why anybody’s not booking a consult call with me. Well, great, let’s talk about your coaching. Well, I’m a terrible coach. Well, that might be step number one.

Or I don’t know why nobody’s booking a consult call with me. Okay, let’s talk about it. Well, I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks because nobody was booking a consult call with me. Okay, so let’s think about this. You’re upset that nobody’s booking a consult call, so you stopped making offers. And now you’re upset that nobody’s booked a consult call since you stopped making offers.

Let’s talk about not making no consults mean you suck at this. Maybe it’s one of the things that I talked about above, which would come out during our coaching sessions. And we coach every Tuesday afternoon at 3pm Central.

There’s a Facebook group gets open for coaching all of the time. A lot of people attend live and get coaching directly. You can listen to replays, we put all the replays on a private podcast. Not to mention the actual concepts and tools that you can go learn on your own time. But Free To Paid Coach is what’s going to help you with all of the belief and the mental blocks.

So from this episode today, go back through, which things do you need to work on? Just pick one to work on right now, okay? You cannot follow any of the shit above and still get some consult calls. You don’t have to master any of this. Your willingness to do it imperfectly and then get better.

Just choose one thing you want to get better about and then get yourself in Free To Paid Coach so we can work on that belief that people want what you have to offer, and they want to work with you. And that you are a good coach, and you can help them right now. And you have a right to be so bold to say the things that they really need to hear.

You have the right to create scroll stopping content that makes people say, “Holy crap, how’d she know? I have to talk to her.” This is what we do, we are waiting for you. Go right now, amylatta.com/FTPC, that’s Free To Paid Coach, FTPC. And you can enroll right now. You can be coaching with us this afternoon if you’re listening to this on a Tuesday.

You can join in the Facebook group within the next hour. As soon as you enroll you get access to everything. It’s open all of the time. Get in there right now so you can start getting more consults on your books. Got it?

There are people out there right now who are desperately waiting for the solution that you have to offer them. Let’s get these things fine-tuned. Let’s get you coached every week so that people will start booking consults with you.

All right, until next week. Let’s get paid, coach.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

 
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