Keep Your Clients Through the Holidays for a Great New Year

Ah, the holidays: Great food, loving family, presents, and many tempting distractions for your clients. For clients, it’s tough to continue coaching through the holiday season. There are many other things that tend to take priority.

Then, often it just seems as though there’s too much in the way, or it’s not as important any longer to continue on in January.

For most of my 10 years as a life coach, I bowed to the wisdom of Thomas Leonard, the founder of coaching, who originated the idea of requiring a minimum 3 month contract for coaching clients.

He has since publicly stated that it’s the one thing he wished he hadn’t established!

Based on my own experience, I heartily agree. Year after year, I watched clients “fall away” around the holidays, because they just got too distracted, and after all, they’d done their “three months.”

It wasn’t good for them, because they hadn’t necessarily completed their goals or gotten the full extent of the value available, and it wasn’t good for me as a coach. It wrecked havoc on my financial stability.

The day I made the decision to require a 6 month contract, was one of the most significant in my career as a coach. It wasn’t just that everyone made it through the holidays and kept on coaching (which of course, they did!).

Everything changed. It was as though I got serious about being in the business of helping people, and my clients got serious about getting results. They had more invested, so they put more into it.

Whoa, you say. 6 months! What if they don’t sign up because it’s too long, and they’re afraid they’ll get stuck in something that isn’t working?

Breathe. Just hang in there with me.

First of all, remind them that they are the ones who will be doing the work. So if they do their part, they can’t lose. The coaching always works as well as they do.

Second, if they are a referral or if they’ve been following you through your newsletter, you’ll already have expert status and credibility with them, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Third, you can always offer a 30 day guarantee to comfort them (click here to see my article on guarantees).

Finally, you can always create a 90 minute coaching intensive or a 3 to 5 hour VIP day to start your clients off so they can get to know you (and vice-versa).

That gives you the opportunity to establish a strong bond with them as well as expert status and credibility, so they’ll easily enroll in a six month contract after that.

The benefits to both you and your clients are significant. In addition to having your clients “make it” through the holidays and the summer vacation months . . .

Your clients:

• Have the time they need to truly experience tremendous results.
• Are much more committed to creating those results for themselves, and therefore more  “coachable.” They see it as an investment and they want a return. The 3 month-ers are sometimes still “putting their big toe in the water.”
• Offer you raving testimonials, because through their increased commitment and the extra time factor, they received tremendous results!

You:

• Have a stable business with steady income and cash flow.
• Are not constantly worried about where your next client is going to come from.
• Can spend more time coaching and less time marketing.

Sound good? It’s great! If you’re serious about having a transformational coaching business, and you want serious clients, then I highly recommend requiring a 6 month commitment. Now, back to those tempting distractions . . .

Happy Holidays!!!