by Phil Beene, Co-founder / Nudge Coach
In this post we explore how to package 3 types of coaching offerings to structure a scalable online coaching business. You’ll learn our 3 part “ATM Formula”, an online coaching business model that aligns increased impact with increased revenue potential.
For most of us, whether we offer 1 on 1 coaching, group programs or courses, our primary offering promises some kind of transformation to our clients.
This post centers around how to structure programming and revenue models to build the most stable, sustainable, and scalable business around your Transformational Program experience so that you can grow your business with confidence.
If your business is brand new and you haven’t established a solid client base and consistent influx of new clients, then this isn’t the place to start. Stay focused on your initial program and program-client fit. But if your business is solid, we are going to use revenue models to help us understand how to unlock sustainability and scale to unlock the next phase of growth in your business.
The secret is in our ATM Coaching Formula, which stands for Alignment, Transformation, and Maintenance. We also explore the formula in this 30-minute Office Hours video.
3 Categories of Programs in Your Business
Alignment
Transformational
Maintenance
Let’s start with the second on that list, Transformational Programs, since that’s most likely where you’ve started.
2. Transformational Programs
Duration: Defined - 12-weeks is common. Can be longer.
Pricing: High - $300-thousands
Purpose: Transforming an aspect of a clients life, creating an identity-altering change to help them become a desired version of themselves
Most businesses will start with a Transformational Program, that promises the client an identity-altering change or outcome - some form of “new you”. This comes first because it’s a transformation that’s personal and important to you. It’s often one that you yourself have experienced, and it’s probably why you started your business in the first place.
Getting your core offering, or Transformational Program established to the point where you consistently have clients is a HUGE accomplishment. So many never make it this far! But once you get there, there is a new set of challenges waiting for you. How can I grow this business from here? Do I have a hard cap on how much I can earn? Will I always just be trading my time for money until I work myself into the ground? At this point you need systems and strategies to create efficiencies.
A great first step towards making your business more scalable is to systematically address the most common objections that prevent your clients from moving forward with your Transformational Program. And that brings us to the purpose of our next program category and the first on our list above, Alignment Programs.
By the way, it’s at this point that building your unique programming into a flexible platform like Nudge, or into your own white label app, can transform your ability to efficiently serve clients by:
Organizing your content and programming into one place so it’s delivered more automatically (and easier to create and launch new programs)
Organizing your client communications into one place so its more efficient for you and messages won’t get lost or missed
Having your own app makes you feel confident because it shows your clients that you are established, professional and worthy of trust
1. Alignment Programs
Duration: Brief - 1-30 days
Pricing: Low - $0-$100 - commonly $20-$60
Purpose: Lowering the barrier to entry to capture and build engagement with more good fit prospects who want the benefit of your Transformational Program so they can see they are ready to trust you and purchase
Transformational Programs often come with a high price-point and a significant upfront commitment on the part of your clients. Going from no relationship to committing hundreds or thousands of dollars is a big gap to bridge with nothing but marketing activities.
It’s hard to build that much trust without a positive past relationship or successful previous transaction to look back on for evidence. An Alignment Program is your tool to systematically bridge that gap and build that body of evidence that you are worth trusting.
An Alignment Program is a short, low-touch, low-cost program that’s valuable to your ideal client and directly aligned with your Transformational Program.
If you’ve learned about online marketing, think of a lead capture or ‘freebie’ you might offer on your website to capture leads and extend that idea into a brief program that helps your client accomplish a small win. Mini-Courses and Challenges are common examples of Alignment Programs.
The goals of introducing this type of program are to:
Address common objections (without a lot of sales calls)
Better qualify clients before they sign up (work with more ideal clients)
Lower the barrier to becoming a paid customer
This type of program gives clients an introductory experience that’s easy to sign up for and addresses common objections of signing up for your full Transformational Program. Common objections will be more specific for your programming, but to help you wrap your head around the idea of common objections start with famous business and sales expert, Zig Ziglar’s quote and consider how you can address them:
“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”
All of these objections can be addressed with this type of programming.
No need
No money
No hurry
No desire
No trust
Immersing prospects in a mini-program experience also better qualifies clients before they sign up by giving them a taste of the type of programming you offer and a clearer sense of what it’s like to work with you. This means you get to work with higher quality, more ideal clients in your Transformational Program.
And critically, paid Alignment Programs lower the barrier to entry for stablishing a paid relationship with the client, so there’s less friction involved in signing up for the Transformational Program when they’re ready.
Readiness is a key behavioral concept, and with your Alignment Program you can create the ideal motivational environment for your clients so they come out the other side feeling ready to tackle their larger personal transformation goals.
Before you launch your Alignment Program there are a few important checks to ensure you’re on the right track:
Make sure your Alignment Program’s subject matter is directly aligned with your Transformational Program. A 10k Steps Challenge won’t identify ideal clients for a leadership transformation. Make sure the alignment is directly aligned with the desired outcome of your primary program.
Make sure you share multiple clear calls-to-action highlighting the impact of your Transformational Program and how to sign up during and after the Alignment Program.
Make sure you’re ready to start measuring conversion rates so you can continue to learn and improve. Increasing conversions to your Transformational Program is, after all, the primary reason you’re creating this program in the first place.
3. Maintenance Programs
Duration: Evergreen (recurring)
Pricing: Low - $10-$200/month - commonly $40-$100/mo
Purpose: Giving your happy, successful clients a way to stay connected with you and keep the results/progress they’ve earned. An affordable option to provide continued accountability and confidence that they won’t fall back on old habits after their transformation.
Another opportunity that’s right in front of you if you have an effective Transformational Program in place, but want a more sustainable, scalable and growth-ready business, is to launch a Maintenance Program.
If you haven’t set up a Maintenance or Membership Program for ‘graduates’ of your primary program already, ask yourself this simple question:
How are you helping clients sustain success after working with you?
The truth is, every transformation is fleeting. It must be carefully tended to and maintained. Fortunately for you, your clients who have had success with you already trust you, and would rather continue working with you than find anyone else if it means they can feel confident they will maintain their results.
From a pure business perspective, ‘selling’ to clients you already have is many times cheaper and more efficient than finding new clients to buy from you. Thus investing in creating a Maintenance or Membership Program is a much more efficient way to grow your business than increasing investment in new client acquisition or marketing.
In other words, maximizing lifetime value of your clients is the most sure-fire way to build a more sustainable business.
Maintenance Programs can also be incredibly simple to create and manage for you and your team.
For example, using a platform like Nudge, you can create a ‘repeating assignment’ that allows clients in your program to track key habits weekly (or at other intervals) to help them sustain their progress. Add to that regular sharing of new or relevant educational content that helps them reinforce, refresh or grow their knowledge in the underlying subject-matter, and that’s all it takes to run a Maintenance Program that continues to be valuable and rewarding.
The key to maintenance programming is to keep it simple and not over-produce or over-think it. The purpose is to maintain, not to instruct or transform.
“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
In my view, this type of offering strikes at the essential foundation of the process of learning and growth that is either missed or ignored by so many professionals, and almost all purported ‘Learning Management Systems’.
Joyful repetition is the foundation of all transformational learning. If you can help your clients find joy in repetition, they will achieve the growth they are looking for. This is your charge as a coach, mentor or educator above all else. Even above ‘instruction’.
Their learnings will become knowledge they learn to apply in real world situations, thus growing into a skill; then an intentional ongoing practice raising the value it offers to their daily lives as a habit; then, over time and lots of reflection, reformation and repetition, it will become a part of their identity, the way they understand themselves, begin to see themselves as the ‘type of person’ who does what you taught them.
Who knows, maybe they’ll even perpetuate the learning cycle and become someone who teaches others how to live this way too. Share a comment below if you enjoyed this post. Thanks for reading.
