Coaching Vs Training Plans

I was talking to a coach the other day who was worried that if they offered training plans and online memberships alongside with their one-on-one coaching, they might lose some of their one-on-one coaching clients to those products. 

So, I explained to them why that wouldn’t be the case. 

But I actually hear that quite a lot. 

So, I wanted to go into a little bit of detail about that.

When you sell products to people, you need to, first, find out what people want.  Then you sell the product to them. 

Just because you make a product, it doesn’t mean the same people who buy one-on-one coaching will then go and buy that product.

I've created a video version where I white board the concept so you can either watch the video, read the full text version with diagrams or both.

Video Version

Text Version

1-on-1 Coaching Group

If we draw a circle here to represent the entire market of potential customers who want one-on-one coaching – in terms of the whole market of people who are doing endurance sport, the group of people who want one-on-one coaching is relatively small.

Plans and Online Memberships Group

But, there’s this other big group of people here -- who are the self-coached or don't do any real structured training. These people aren't looking for one on one coaching right now but would be open to a little help from a training plan or some sort of online membership. 

Overlapping Group

So, you might see this little overlap between the two groups here.  Potentially, this very small bit, here, are people who might move to one-on-one coaching to plans or some sort of online membership to get a little bit of help. 

This is not big enough to worry about.  People who are in that group will jump from one to the other, anyway. 

If you’re offering one-on-one coaching but not plans or memberships, the people in that group are most likely to jump to someone else who are selling those products.  So, you’re probably going to lose them anyway because they’re right on that border. 

Conclusion

Here are some bullets to summarize

• One on One coaching customers aren't looking for cheaper products. They want one on one coaching because it's a high value product and are willing to pay for it.
• A small percentage of one on one coached athletes might switch to a lower priced product but only if they were moving that way anyway.
• If someone is going to switch it's better that they switch to your other products not another coaches.
• Not offering anything other than one on one coaching will mean you can only generate revenue from a very small percentage of the overall market.
• The goal of a broader price range of products is to help more people and generate more total revenue.

Suggested Reading

If you liked this article you might also like our post on whether you are charging enough for your one on one coaching. We cover pricing strategies and how to work through increasing your prices so it's fair for your clients but also your business.