If you are a coach or consultant, you need leads. There’s no getting around it.
Even if you already have a few clients right now, you will always want more leads in the pipeline who might need your coaching in the future.
Maybe you’re generating most of your clients through referrals at the minute, this is a good thing because people are recommending you. But it’s also unpredictable and you don’t have much control over how often or how many referrals you can get.
You should have a lead generation system that YOU control in order to get consistent leads.
In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to get more leads as a coach or consultant – without wasting all your limited time and energy.
How coaches can generate the right leads
Not all leads are the same. Some people will be your ideal clients and some are totally not right for you.
It’s important that you have a system that allows you to prequalify leads so you don’t spend all your time speaking to the wrong kind of person.
Spending hours on discovery calls and sales calls with lots of “wrong-fit” prospects? The kind who won’t convert or turn out to be nightmare clients? That’d be a HUGE waste of your time and money.
So, mastering lead generation for coaches isn’t about getting “more” leads – but rather more of the right leads for your business.
Why you need coaching leads
The amazing thing about lead generation is that every lead is different.
Each person who becomes a lead has a slightly different reason. This is good because it opens up more conversations, and we can learn more about our audience.
However, it means that most people won’t be ready to buy from you immediately. People need to feel like they trust you first before investing their money.
Here are some of the common reasons people might become a lead:
“I need to fix a problem right now, but I want to do it myself.”
Some people will sign up for your lead magnet and want to fix their problem themselves. They have no intention of working with you and might even ignore all your follow-up messages.
“I want to learn more about this topic”
Some leads like to learn more about new topics and invest time in educating themselves. These people value knowledge and information and might even buy from you, providing you give enough value.
“I am a complete beginner, and I know nothing.”
Beginner-type leads are good because they are keen to learn but they might occasionally get overwhelmed if you get too technical too fast. These people might also not be your ideal clients.
“I don’t know if this is going to help me, but I’ll check it out.”
Some people are curious to see if your content is good. They want to scope you out with your free content to see how valuable it is. These people might invest in your offer if they get value early on.
“I am ready to take action.”
A small number of people might be ready to get started right now and want to invest in your offer straight away. If your free content is good enough, they might be happy to get out their credit card to solve the problem quickly.
It’s important you are aware of these different types of people so you can fine-tune your messaging and appeal to your ideal clients.
Getting coaching clients
Turning leads into clients is easier if you are clear on exactly what type of clients you want to attract.
So, focus on creating content that speaks to your specific dream client. Talk about their pain points, give them small actionable tips and show them what results they can experience once they invest in external help.
For example, if you’re a fitness coach, perhaps you target female business owners who are too busy growing a business to fit in thinking about fitness – the more specific you can get, the better.
What are your lead generation goals?
Use numbers and timeframes to make them specific and measurable. If you have different audience segments, you should also figure out what service or product is right for each of them.
For example, let’s say you want to hit your first £10k month 8 weeks from now. You offer a 1:1 coaching programme at £2k per month and a 1:many option at £1k. Also, at this stage, 3 out of 4 of your calls turn into paying clients. So, your goal could be to get 4 leads for your 1:1 offer and 5 or 6 for your 1:many programme.
What happens if you hit this early or exceed expectations?
Lead generation for coaches and consultants must be realistic, too: after all, you’re just one person.
This does NOT mean discouraging new enquiries! But you do need to know what happens if you get more than you can handle.
For example, have a waiting list. Are too many people applying for your 1:1 services? Tell them you can hold a spot for them in 7 weeks or make sure you take deposits for your 1:many programme for example.
Using lead magnets for coaches and consultants
Creating strategic online content and having a process to pre-qualify your enquiries? It’s vital for brand awareness and lead generation for coaches. However, 95% of your audience are not ready to buy.
They first need to:
- Fully understand what’s causing their current problem and how it can be solved
- Have their questions answered
- See you as the best solution
- Trust you as an expert
So, if the only way to take action on your website and platforms is to book a sales call, you’re cutting out 95% of your audience.
You must retain them by offering them useful resources, nurturing them and moving them down the sales funnel. That way, they’ll see you as a trusted expert and get in touch with you when they’re actually ready.
The best tactic to do this? A high-quality lead magnet!
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a free resource that you offer to your target audience in exchange for their email address.
There are all kinds of lead magnets for coaches. The most common ones are downloadable PDFs (such as checklists, eBooks or top tips).
But are these really going to help you attract your ideal clients?
If you want to attract high-quality leads, then you need a high-quality lead magnet.
That’s where a quiz or assessment comes in…
Using a quiz to get more leads as a coach or consultant
Coaches and quiz lead generation work really well together, and that’s because part of what you do as a coach is ask questions and make an assessment of where your clients are right now and what they need to work on first.
A quiz carries out this process on your behalf without you having to speak directly to this potential client.
A quiz is super helpful to your potential clients because they get an understanding of what it would be like to work with you, what problems they’re having now and where they need to improve.
Quiz examples for coaches and consultants
A business coach might set up a “business growth assessment” to help their audience gauge where they are now and where they want to be. They could ask some key questions about revenue, staff and business goals.
An online fitness coach might set up an “Elite fitness quiz” and ask questions about nutrition, exercise and mindset.
A personal finance coach might ask questions about spending habits, budgets and investing.
All of these coaches would ask questions throughout their quiz and score their audience based on the answers they provide.
Pros of using a quiz for lead generation for coaches:
- You capture more email addresses
- You gain unique data about the quiz participants – which can help you understand their problems and sell your coaching programme based on solving those problems
- It’s automated, so you don’t have to waste time on calls figuring out if your prospect is right for you – the quiz will tell you that
- You can follow up with a personalised email sequence depending on how someone scored in the quiz – depending on what software you choose
Cons of using a quiz for lead generation for coaches:
- Some prospects might be reluctant to share their contact details
- Ongoing cost (although you can build a quiz with ScoreApp for free to begin with)
- Some quiz tools can be time-consuming to design and build (that’s exactly why we offer an AI quiz builder, though – so that you can create yours in only 3 minutes!)
Quiz topic ideas for consultants and coaches
The right quiz questions will lead to results that provide value to your audience – and give you juicy data.
Ideally, you should focus on questions that help your audience understand what they need to fix (for example, “How is your current work/life balance?” or “How much time do you spend working ON your business?”). Then, around 10% can be pre-qualifying quiz questions like “Are you ready to invest in a coach to create a business that works for you?”
Once you have a rough idea, use ScoreApp’s AI quiz builder to come up with topics and create the actual questions, results and overall design.
We also allow you to create scorecards rather than black-and-white results. These will tell your audience what they’re already doing well (making them feel better) and what needs improving (positioning you as the obvious solution). They get a score for different categories, which is much more helpful than just an ‘overall score’.
Quiz templates for coaches and consultants
If you need some inspiration for what kind of quiz you might want to build, check out these quiz templates:
A quiz idea for a relationship coach
A quiz for a Life Coach
A fitness personality quiz for a Fitness Coach
A quiz for a book writing coach
As you can see, there are lots of different types of quizzes you can build. It’s simply a case of making it relevant for your audience and asking great questions.
Check out some online quiz templates here for more inspiration.
Distributing your quiz lead magnet
Once you’ve created a quiz for your coaching or consultancy business, keep sharing it:
- On your website, starting from your home page
- In your email marketing
- In your blog posts
- On your social media (from the link in your bio to individual posts)
- Anywhere you market yourself!
Borrowing other people’s audiences to get more leads as a coach
To really set yourself up for success with lead generation for coaches? You must look BEYOND your current audience.
Scout for businesses and publications that your target clients are also engaging with – and already trust. Then, start conversations and pitch yourself to establish a collaboration that’ll place you in front of their audience.
For example:
- Write a guest post
- Be a guest on their podcast
- Do free live training for their membership
And when you do? Use your quiz lead magnet as a call to action, whether that’s by mentioning it, including it in your bio, or proactively getting people to fill it in there and then!
This is one of the quickest ways to build your leads using a quiz, because if you can get in front of the right people, they’ll love to take it!
In fact, one of our ScoreApp clients added an extra 500 leads to their database simply by getting in front of their ideal target audience during a webinar and getting people to fill in the quiz!
Following up with potential leads
Learning how to get more leads as a coach is just the beginning. You then need to nurture them and turn them into actual clients. To do so without burning out:
- Use a CRM system to keep track of all your leads and stay organised – ScoreApp integrates with popular CRMs like Hubspot, Mailchimp and Infusionsoft
- Set up reminders and automation – You don’t have to remember and do everything manually! Instead, you can set up automation to send emails to your new leads, nurturing them with helpful, valuable content. With software like ScoreApp, you can even personalise your emails based on your quiz participant’s score!
- Personalise your messages – Time to offer a sales call? Use your data to craft a custom and more relevant email for your leads. With the right quiz software, you can reference their actual results, too (for example, “You scored 80% on [positive result], which is excellent. However, I noticed your [negative result] was really low. I’d love to share some custom advice with you. Would you be up for a quick call so I can recommend some strategies that’ll help you improve this?”)
Nurturing leads who aren’t ready to buy (yet)
As we’ve seen before, not everyone who takes your quiz is a warm lead. That doesn’t mean you should forget about them, though!
- Send them a targeted email sequence
- Keep on delivering excellent newsletters
This will nurture them until they’re ready to invest in you.
When relying on a quiz for lead generation for coaches, you can send different nurturing sequences depending on your audience’s results – which will also boost your conversion rates.
Tracking your lead generation results
Lead generation for coaches isn’t something you set up once and then forget about forever. You must keep sight of your initial goals, track your results and tweak your system accordingly.
How often you do this depends on your business model – but you could consider monthly reviews to begin with and then move on to quarterly ones.
To simplify this, ScoreApp has built-in tracking and data reporting features. That way, you can find everything in one place, making it a breeze to measure your lead generation results (for example, do many people abandon your quiz after a specific question? Remove it or edit it).
Boost your lead generation by setting up a personalised quiz with ScoreApp
Overall, lead generation for coaches and consultants is about getting a consistent stream of pre-qualified leads, saving yourself time and money while closing more sales calls.
The right quiz will always be working in the background, doing all this for you 24/7. How about giving it a go for FREE?
