Have you ever heard the quote, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”? That’s the idea behind a signature coaching program.
Your signature coaching program is not just about your skills and education. You can have all the certifications in the world, but if you can’t communicate your unique approach to helping your clients, then you’re going to be missing out on a whole lot of business.
In this post, we’ll help you lay the groundwork for creating a signature coaching program that shows off who you are and what makes you different from every other coach out there.
A signature coaching program is your own personal brand of coaching. It’s the process that you’ve developed for helping your clients change their lives for the better.
It’s what makes you unique as a coach.
When you put together a signature coaching program, you put together your entire journey from start to finish. You come up with the steps that you take your clients through, and what they will accomplish at each step along the way. Most importantly, you should be able to explain how exactly your clients’ lives will be different when they have completed your program and met their goals.
Once you have created your signature coaching program, don’t forget to make it VISUAL! You want to be able to show it off on social media, and make sure everyone, especially your ideal client, knows about it!
Step 1: Choose your Signature Solution
Your Signature Solution or signature program is the main solution that you provide to your clients. In other words, it’s what you and your practice are known for in the marketplace. This is essentially what you help people do or improve!
To determine your Signature Solution, first, define the problem.
What problem is it that you solve?
Then, reverse-engineer the solution from there.
It’s important to note that there are two different goals when creating your Signature Solution: Be ambitious but also be realistic!
Although it’s important to get clear on what you really want to achieve with your business, it’s equally as important not to set yourself up for failure by overreaching (or under-delivering).
Step 2: Create your offer
Your signature solution
Creating your signature solution is essential to your business plan. It’s what you’ll be selling and providing to your clients. Your signature solution can be called many different things: a signature system, a signature offer, or simply an offer.
You may already have something you can turn into an offer by expanding on it through the creation of content or modules (but we’ll talk about these in Step 5).
If not, that’s okay too!
You may need to create something from scratch. Creating this from scratch will actually help you better define WHO you are as a coach and WHAT your coaching is all about! This is key to improving the coaching experience your clients get when sitting down for coaching sessions!
A compelling offer
It must be compelling to your audience and solve one of their biggest problems. This means that creating just any old coaching program won’t cut it—it has to solve a BIG problem for them or directly address the biggest pain point they currently have (or had in the past).
Make sure it’s simple, too!
Don’t create something so complicated that no one wants to buy it. If people can achieve the same results without purchasing your program, they won’t buy it!
Keep it simple and solve one big problem really well with a clear-cut process that works every time for everyone who follows it. This will make your potential clients feel confident and turn them into coaching clients!
Step 3. Find a name for your offer.
Sometimes the hardest part of naming your new coaching offer is just getting started. Naming is so important because it’s the first impression people have of your business or product. It’s also the thing that’ll stick in their head and help them remember you every time they see it.
Here’s my advice:
Focus on the benefits, not the features. The best way to make something magnetic is to talk about what it does for others and how popular it is with people who use it (think “I love New York”). Describe what problem your coaching program solves better than anything else out there today.
Make sure it’s unique and memorable. Name something so original that no one else can copy you easily—and make sure your name actually describes what you do! I’ve seen too many businesses try to “be cool” by giving themselves a random name like Apple or Yahoo but then having to buy keywords in search engines so potential customers could find them.
You don’t have to go that route if you’re smart about naming and having a service people will want to Google anyway (think “E-harmony” or “Priceline”).
Step 4 - Create the training materials required to deliver your offer.
You’ll need to create the training materials required to deliver your offer. What are training materials? It’s anything that helps you or someone else (another coach) deliver on the promise of your offer. Make sure to create a library of resources that your current clients as well as future dream clients will find super valuable! And use action item so your clients know what actions to take!
Training material examples include:
Workbooks
Worksheets
Call recordings
Videos
Checklists
Guides
Templates (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
PDFs and eBooks
Slide decks
Exercises
Handouts
Make sure that whatever you hand out actually helps your coaching clients at a deeper level, and not just giving them stuff for the sake of it.
Depending on your approach to coaching or coaching model, different coaching tools will work better. At the end of the day, just make sure that you are truly helping your clients forward!
All of these are easily created, but if you need even more help and get it done for FREE – check this link out!
Step 5 - Set a price point that makes sense and feels good.
Let’s talk about setting a price point that makes sense and feels good. You can do this!
When setting a price, you want to make sure you’re evaluating the value of your offer—what is it worth?
Establish your price based on what you believe the service (or product) is worth. If you’ve done something before, base it on your past experience.
If this is something new for you, think about how much time and energy it will take to complete.
NEVER, EVER sell coaching by the hour! NEVER.
People don’t want that! And it’s a nightmare to scale! Offer AN OUTCOME, and price the result! What is it worth for someone to reach that goal?
Once you establish the value of what you offer, set a price that feels good to you. Don’t overprice or under-price yourself! If the actual number doesn’t feel great at first, try adding some zeros in front of it… sometimes $2000 doesn’t sound like much but $10,000 does!
Once it’s established, test different price points for each type of program. Don’t forget to evaluate and adjust as needed!
Step 6 - Set your time frame (how long will people have access to your program?)
Set your time frame: How long will people have access to you and your program?
This is one of the most critical details for your coaching program as it’s deeply connected with pricing.
The duration of your program should be long enough to deliver the value you promised, but not so long that it overwhelms people and becomes too expensive for them. As a rule of thumb, I recommend limiting your first program to 30 days or less. The reason for that is to allow you to test things out, without being locked into a three, or even six-month program that you realize you don’t want to deliver in this way.
Then, once you’ve sold out and want to create a new one, if needed, gradually increase the length while keeping an eye on how many spots sell at each price point. You may also want to set a time limit for when you’re offering this new version so people are more likely to purchase it sooner than later (and don’t forget to let them know!).
You need to work all that out before you can launch it or you'll be stuck with something that doesn't work!
Focusing on the idea of a coaching program, when you hear that word, you probably think about what it is immediately. Maybe you want to work with one client once a month or maybe you want to create an online course with five modules or maybe you want to run group coaching calls for six weeks.
When I say “what” I mean the offer itself. What do you want your coaching program to be? Here are some things that actually make up that question:
How much money do I want this to bring in per month?
How much time will this take up each week?
Who do I need it to serve in order for my business goals to stay on track? (Clients who pay $5K/month, clients who pay $250/month)
Wrapping up
All of the suggestions and tips above are best practices from our business and from the thousands of clients we served. If you are just starting out, decide on what problem, to solve, and keep it simple!
Launch your signature program, and give your coaching business a chance tp grow!
Whether you offer one-on-one coaching, group coaching, online group coaching programs, or online courses, the biggest takeaway needs to be that by helping your ideal client with their biggest issues or problems, you are helping yourself.
A signature program or solution is nothing without YOU. So make it perfectly suited to you, and how you want to run your coaching practice!
And if you need help, you can sign up for our free Client attraction Challenge! To learn more about it – CLICK HERE!
3 thoughts on “How to Create Your Own Coaching Program”
This is huge… Thank you for a great article! 🙂
Thank you, Camilla! It means a lot! 🙂
Useful and timely article. Thanks Joel! I’ve already shared it with a few colleagues who are very talented professionals who are considering coaching programs. 🙂