4 reasons why the best new clients are existing clients

There is an accepted principle in business, "the best new clients are old clients". As a coach, inevitably you will need to look for new clients as you grow or as existing clients move on. New clients are desirable but it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to acquire them.  In your pursuit of new clients, you must never lose focus on servicing your existing clients.

To keep your business growing, it is essential that you continue to offer new services, or innovate existing services to your existing clients.

Here are four reasons why the best clients are your existing clients:

1. You already know who they are and how to contact them

Finding new customers is difficult. You need to know who and where they are and how to reach them. This takes a lot of time and energy. Even if you can find new clients, you need to convince them to buy your products or services.

Assuming you are keeping reliable and easily accessible contact details for your existing clients (and if you aren't then you should be) all you need to do is to call or email them to offer them your products or services.

With Training Tilt you can keep accurate and up to date records of your current, prospective and past clients with our contact list feature . When someone makes a purchase from your site they are automatically added to the list. It's easy. You can even export their contact details so you can upload them to email marketing tools or accounting software.

2. The cost of acquisition is much lower

The cost of acquiring new clients is high compared to selling to your existing customers. The higher the cost of acquisition, the longer it takes for a client to become profitable.

3. They already know and trust you

No selling is required!

Before you can sell your services, your clients must first know and trust you. This can take months or even years after your initial introduction. We've had clients sign up to our coaching, e-commerce and community platform Training Tilt over a year after making their initial enquiries. It can take that long for a customer to move through the purchase process. But for current or past clients, they've already passed that point. As long as you have the right products and services, you can sell to your existing clients right away.

4. Existing clients are more likely to refer you to new clients

Keeping your current clients happy is the best way to acquire new clients. Satisfied customers are willing referrers. Customers who have been referred also have a low cost of acquisition because you don't need to find them.  They are sent to you for free. 

What to do next?

You should be selling more products and services to your existing clients. But what are the practical things you need to do to achieve this?

The key is to have a range of products and services. If you are only selling one-on-one coaching then your potential client base is limited. A client's needs and goals may change over a short period of time. They may not always need that level of service. You need to ensure your products and services cover the broad spectrum of clients. If you don't offer what they are looking for then your clients will spend their money with someone else. 

If you create the right mix of products and services at the right price you can sell to your existing client base, even if they aren't looking for the same products and services you originally sold them.

Here are key products and services you should be offering:

1. One-on-one coaching

This is the most common service offered by coaches. It is typically the most rewarding service for the coach, but it's also the most time-consuming. One-on-one coaching is a small market.  Clients will move in and out of this service, depending on their own goals and circumstances. It's a great core service but it won't scale and has a low revenue ceiling due to the time it takes to service each client.

With a Training Tilt site, you have a full set of training plans, athlete feedback and communication tools at your disposal.

2. Template Training Plans

Template Training Plans are typically created as a digital product. You only need to do the work once to create the Plan, then sell it repeatedly. The Template Training Plan is a lower value product than one-on-one but it scales well because the cost of each sale is low. There is no income ceiling on this product.  The Template Training Plan should be part of every coach’s arsenal.

I've spoken to a lot of coaches who don't sell Template Training Plans due to a misconception that they are a low-quality product. In fact, Template training Plans open up your business to a larger market, to clients who are either unwilling or unable to pay for one-on-one coaching. They are also a "lead" product and will typically be an entry point for many clients who eventually upgrade to the coach’s higher-value products. If you don't offer these products, your competitors who do offer them may take your clients.

With a Training Tilt site you can create Template Training Plans using our Plan Builder and publish Plans directly to your Training Tilt online store. Clients can purchase and download the Plans as PDF's or link them to their Training Tilt account and access the interactive training plan features, including via our mobile app. You can find out more about that in more detail here.

3. Online-only coaching memberships

Online-only memberships are similar to Template Training Plans but provide greater value.  You can offer online subscriptions to a library of your own resources and training plans. You can also create a community and let your online members socialize and communicate among themselves. Like Template Training Plans, these are a vital "lead in" products to keep your "funnel" for higher-value products flowing. If you build client trust through these products eventually many of them will upgrade to one-on-one coaching. If a one-on-one client decides they don't need or can't afford to pay for your one-on-one services, they can also downgrade to this service. This will keep the client engaged and open to a return to one-on-one coaching in future. If you don't offer this range of services, you risk losing clients.

Our software allows coaches to easily create membership plans that clients can sign up to.  You can include access to your resources including articles, videos and interactive training plans. Our platform is fully automated and we even take care of the payments integration so youget paid automatically too. Have a read of our short "membership plans" guide to see how it fits together.

4. Consultation time (in person or over Skype)

This is a premium product where you can share your expertise with your clients. These services should be offered at a premium price. Remember that your time is worth more than anything you have to offer. You need to make these products easy to book and easy to pay for. To maximize the size of your potential market you need to be able to offer these over the Internet (Skype etc) and have the ability to accept international payments via credit and debit cards. Don't ask clients to jump through hoops so you can save a few dollars in credit card transaction fees, just build it into the price. If you scrimp on the basics, premium clients will perceive you as being cheap not thrifty. Perception counts with a premium offering.

With a Training Tilt site it's easy to take payments for consultations using our Stripe payment gateway and our Adhoc payments features.  The client's email address and a few button clicks is all you need to get paid.

Conclusion

If you don't sell at least a few of these products you are leaving a lot of money on the table. The smaller your range of products the less you'll be able to resell to existing or past clients. Your current and past clients are a valuable resource so make sure you are making the most of them. At Training Tilt we are committed to making it as easy as possible for coaches to offer a bigger range of products (and get paid for them) through simple but effective technology including the help and advice required to make the most of it.

We offer a free 21 day trial so you can try out our features obligation free. Get started today.