Originally Posted on The Coaching Tools Company as Get More Clients with a Signature Program: Grow your Brand, Income and Impact! | by Cindy Schulson
As a coach, you do great work with your clients, and have solutions that change people’s lives. But:
- Are you exhausted?
- Are you over-delivering and reinventing the wheel with each client (a huge drain on your time)?
- Do you find yourself undercharging?
- Are you tired of chasing after clients?
- Have you tried launching different coaching programs but found they were hard to fill and didn’t bring you a lot of revenue?
The reality is, there’s an ocean of coaches out there.
And one of the best ways to stand out, get more clients, and create the greatest impact possible is by packaging your brilliance in a Signature Program.
What is a Signature Program?
A Signature Program is your unique way of helping your clients get their desired results.
It’s not just a coaching program. It’s THE program you’ll become known for, using your unique methodology.
Why Create a Signature Program?
Coaching is super intangible, which can make it challenging to clearly communicate the value of your offer.
Your Signature Program uses your unique method and tools for helping your clients achieve results.
When you go from selling your time to selling your Signature Program, you’ll find that clients are more confident in investing because they can clearly see the journey they’ll take with you.
The Benefits of a Signature Program
There are many other advantages to creating a Signature Program like:
- You’re going to become known for this unique Signature Program, and can use it to build your own brand and stand out from the sea of coaches.
- Your Signature Program allows you to stop reinventing the wheel with each client, so you can boost your productivity and client results.
- You’ll still tailor things to each client through your coaching. But the training content in your Signature Program will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, so your coaching can focus on implementation support.
- Scaling your business. You can take your Signature Program and offer it as private coaching, or package it into a group coaching program so you can serve more people and earn leveraged income.
When done well, your Signature Program will become your #1 source of consistent income and clients.
I’ve been creating and delivering coaching programs since 2010. Yet in my earlier years I made some big mistakes with my programs.
Once I learned how to overcome those mistakes my business blew up, growing by 70 percent in one year!
I’d love to help you achieve similar results so let’s go through each of these mistakes and learn how to avoid them.
Here are 3 Signature Program Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1) Not Specific Enough
Your Signature Program should be designed for your ideal client.
That means you should be crystal clear on who your program is for, what challenges they have when they join your program, and what results they want to achieve.
If you try to serve too many different groups of people with your Signature Program, it will not only be harder to sell, but your clients won’t get the results they want.
For example, say you’re a leadership coach and your Signature Program helps your clients lead their teams more effectively.
- Imagine your ideal client is a new leader in the science or technology field. And they are transitioning from a technical role to a management role. This person needs to learn foundational leadership skills that will give them the confidence to successfully engage and lead their team.
- Now imagine taking that same Signature Program to senior leaders who are experiencing conflict within their team of leaders. The skills they need to learn and practice will be quite different than those required for the new leader.
If you try and use the same program for different kinds of clients, you’ll dilute your client results.
You’ll also dilute your brand. You want to become known for one core niche and offer. When you try and help everyone with everything, your business will suffer.
Bottom line: specificity sells! The clearer you are about who your Signature Program is designed for, what they’re struggling with, and where they’re at on their journey, the better for you and your clients.
Mistake 2) Too Much Content
The completion rate for online coaching/training programs is really low. And that’s a disservice to both clients and our coaching industry.
As coaches, we want to deliver massive value to our clients. However, most coaches make the mistake of over delivering, thinking it adds more value, when what it really does is overwhelm people. Then, as a result, clients either don’t start or won’t finish the program, and they feel frustrated and demoralized.
So how do you solve this problem?
Well, as you plan your Signature Program, it’s important that you only include the content your clients need to get results. For example:
- If you’re going to use training videos, keep them bite-sized (no more than 15 minutes each).
- Decide what tools you’ll include to help your clients take action on what they’re learning. The Coaching Tools Company has a ton of great tools to help you with this!
- It’s also important that you organize your content in a clear success path. That means knowing what steps your clients need to take in what order, to get their desired results.
In addition to creating great content, it’s important to know what kind of support to include:
- How often will you meet?
- Will you include private coaching?
- What kind of accountability systems will you put in place?
- How will you foster community?
Personally, I like a hybrid model that includes a combination of training, group coaching, private coaching and community.
Bottom line: less is more when it comes to content. If you want to over deliver on anything, do it with your support! What people really want more than anything is access to you to help them implement the learnings from your Signature Program.
Mistake 3) Nothing Left to Offer
Putting too much content in your program doesn’t just do a disservice to your clients, it affects your sales big time.
You won’t get the rave reviews and referrals. AND you won’t inspire your clients to continue working with you.
After all, you work hard to get clients. And most clients will happily reinvest with you when they get great results. But if you overwhelm people, they won’t step into your Next Step Program.
So how do you solve this problem?
The solution is to design your Client Journey first. Your Client Journey is your unique system to help your clients go from where they are to where they want to be.
Then you can choose some parts of your Client Journey to put into your Signature Program. That way, your clients get amazing results without getting overwhelmed. And, you’ll be able to take the remaining steps of your Client Journey and put them into a Next Step Program.
Now you can seamlessly invite people who complete your Signature Program into your Next Step Program.
Without that Next Step Program, you’re leaving your clients hanging, wondering what’s next. And you’re leaving a ton of money on the table.
The KEY is knowing which steps to include in your Signature Program, and what steps to save for your Next Step Program so that it’s a seamless flow from one to the next.
Here’s an example:
I have a program called Signature Program Success that helps coaches design, package, price, validate, position and present their Signature Programs.
The first time I ran this program, I included training on How to Fill a Signature Program and Create a Curriculum Designed for Adult Learners.
It was a great program. But I found that people were nowhere near as clear as they needed to be about:
- Who the ideal client is for their Signature Program
- What topic they should choose
- Their unique positioning
- How to clearly communicate the value of their offer
And without clarity on who you serve, it’s really hard to fill your program. It doesn’t really matter what strategies you use, because you won’t know who to attract or be able to create the impact you want. And not only that, but there are so many ways to fill your Signature Program that if I tried to teach all of them, people would get overwhelmed.
So I took everything out that wasn’t essential to their success, and moved those elements into my Next Step Program.
The results were incredible! My clients now have the clarity they need to confidently create and share their programs.
Bottom line: strategically choose what steps you’ll include in your Signature Program so your clients get amazing results and are naturally inspired to keep working with you.
Wrap-up
Imagine having a program that:
- Is something you become known for, so you can build your brand and stand out from the sea of coaching offerings.
- Brings your clients the results they want—and allows you to create the greatest possible impact.
- Becomes your #1 source of consistent revenue.
That’s the power of a Signature Program.
Imagine what a huge difference you could make (and how much more income you could earn) if you turn your coaching into a Signature Program your ideal clients really want and will happily invest in!
So there we have it. I hope you found these tips about creating a great signature program—and what not to do—helpful.
Learn more from Cindy:
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If you liked this article on creating a Signature Program, you may also like:
- How I got 12 New Clients by Creating a Coaching Program—and why it was a turning point! by Emma-Louise
- How to Decide What to Charge for Your Coaching Program—5 Steps PLUS Examples by Emma-Louise
- Create Your Own Signature Program! What, Why & How to Get Started by Jennifer Britton
