Referrals are like the holy grail of ways to get new coaching clients. You don’t have to put any time, money, or effort into getting that lead. Plus, the lead is already sold on working with you because they have heard such great things about you. So obviously, you want to get more referrals from your coaching clients. Let’s look at some ways to get more referrals for your coaching business.
Why You Aren’t Getting Many Referrals Now
There are a number of reasons why you aren’t getting many referrals for your coaching business, but it all boils down to this:
You are leaving things to chance.
Your current approach to getting referrals is do a great job coaching and hope your coaching clients love their results enough to talk to their friends about you. Don’t be embarrassed if you recognise yourself in that; many coaches do this. The thing is, it seems obvious to you that, of course, you want more coaching clients, so referrals help your business. That is not as obvious to your coaching clients – even if you work with other business owners.
When your client finishes your coaching program, they are not thinking about how they can help you to find more coaching clients. They are thinking about their own life and problems. You may get a few clients who take it upon themselves to leave a review or who recommend you when a friend is talking about their problems. However, the vast majority of your coaching clients will go on about their lives.
The best way to get more referrals for your coaching business is to ask for referrals.
How to Increase Your Referrals: Creating a Referral Strategy for Your Coaching Business
Telling you that the key to getting more referrals for your coaching business is to ask for referrals is not really helpful. We recognise that.
Referrals are like any other lead generation strategy. They work best if you have a strategy to maximise your referrals and a process in place to make it easy to carry out the strategy. Let’s start by looking at referral strategies.
Referral Strategy
A referral strategy is a plan that addresses the question, “How do I get more coaching clients to refer people they know to me?” Your referral strategy needs to account for your personal needs and preferences just as much as your coaching business needs. Referral strategies can be loosely categorised into four main categories:
- Referral program – This is a little bit like an affiliate program where your coaching clients can sign up and refer friends to your coaching program. There will often be an incentive to refer friends, such as financial compensation, gifts, or even credit towards your products and services.
- Referral form – A form where your coaching clients can fill out their details and the details of someone they want to refer. You can then contact the referred party to talk to them about their goals and how your products or services can help.
- Email updates for graduated coaching clients – Periodically email your graduated coaching clients with updates and ask if they have friends who could benefit from your coaching programs. In this email, you can update them with new wins, program updates, and new programs.
- Referral package – You can create a referral package that gives your ideal coaching clients all the information they need to recommend your products and services. This can be emailed in a link or even be downloaded from a refer-a-friend webpage.
There is no general best referral strategy, as each one has different pros and cons depending on your coaching business. For example, the referral program takes a lot of work and potentially money to set up, but it is really easy to maintain (almost set and forget). The referral form is the easiest to create, but you need to continuously drive traffic there.
The referral strategy for your coaching business also needs to address things like how often you want to ask for referrals (or promote your referral program) and what the compensation will be for a successful referral.
Referral Process
A referral process implements your referral strategy. Your referral process may be completely automated to send emails on a regular basis to your graduated clients. Alternatively, it may be implemented by you or a member of your team. Either way, you need a process to lay out the steps of how you ask for referrals.
We recommend making your referral process incredibly detailed, even if it is just you implementing your referral process. This will make it really easy to hand over to your team without training if you ever need to. It will also make it easy for you to pick up again if it has been a while since you asked for referrals.
Your referral process should include step-by-step instructions on where to find everything you need, what to do when you receive certain responses, and where to find templates or wording guides.
How to Get Better Quality Referrals
The one downside to receiving a referral is you don’t really know what that person has been told. Your coaching client who recommended you may have incorrectly assumed you can help with a problem that you can’t. They may have even told them your old pricing, which has been updated multiple times since. The referral may not even be a good fit.
All of those situations would be poor-quality referrals. They happen because your coaching client doesn’t know what your ideal coaching client is. Obviously, they know that they fit the mould, but they may not understand what about them makes them your ideal coaching client.
The best way to get better quality referrals is to explain exactly what type of referral you value in a way that makes it easy for your coaching clients to recognise referral opportunities. Use the words that your ideal coaching clients would use when they talk to their friends. For example:
- I am looking for women in their 20s who feel like they are drowning in credit card debt and want to become debt free so they can take the next step in their lives.
- I am looking for e-commerce business owners who started their business 1-3 years ago and are frustrated because their profit does not reflect how hard they are working.
This wording will be very different to your website because you want your coaching client to recognise the problem or emotion that their friends are experiencing. You want them to think of Sandra, who said last weekend that she desperately wants to buy a house/have kids but feels like her mountain of debt is holding her back. You want them to think of Sam, who started their business last year and is always pulling all-nighters but is living off ramen.
Then, you need to make sure that the people you are referring hear the message you want to communicate to ideal coaching clients. This may mean providing assets that your coaching clients can send directly to the person they want to refer, like a digital brochure or an email template they can customise. It may mean providing a referral form so you can reach out to the referral and introduce yourself the way you want to.