If you are a coach or a service provider, you know what I am talking about with the free strategy session phone call. This is also known as free breakthrough sessions, discovery sessions, clarity sessions, or other names.
What you need to know about this sales call is that it is super specific and just about all of the really successful coaches are doing this free sales call in exactly this way.
The one call sales close is done in this way because of how effective it is.
I have witnessed other coaches giving away an hour of their services with little success for more ongoing services. I have seen others (and I have tried this myself) putting a price on the website for a coaching session and it is less effective.
Now what we are talking about here is a one-hour call for your prospect to become a client of yours. You could have found them from wherever, but they are a somewhat warm lead. Generally, they have found you on the internet or through a referral and they make an appointment on your scheduling software to get more help from you.
The most common name is the free strategy session and this is your opportunity to explore this person’s challenges, see if they would be a good fit for what you have to offer, and close the deal.
Okay, so let’s go over how these work so you will:
- Know how to do these yourself, and
- Be able to navigate through another coach’s strategy call if you ever find yourself on one.
There is much more details to this call including sign up, scheduling, and post call. I have done these myself with prospects and I have gone undercover onto other coaches free strategy calls. Here I will give you the structure of how these calls go:
- Get rapport
Commonly the salesperson will try to connect with you on something like the weather, where you live, or potentially where you have lived. This is simple and easy to do. It sets up a baseline and a comfortability for the call.
Sometimes this is difficult to do with your prospective client, but you just want to make yourself relatable to them. If they are not talking much, just give them a few things about where you live or what is going on in your world. General easy information is best.
You will also want to match their tone of voice, language predicates, and their rhythm of speech. More covered on rapport here.
- Set a pre-frame for the call
This sets the tone and the intent of the call. I have usually experienced it being said generally something like this:
“This call is all for you. I am here to serve you and the way it will work is we will go through where you are at now, I will ask you some deep questions to really understand what is going on, we will then see what you would like to have and I will try to see if there is a way that I can help. If there is a fit, I may present a solution that would be beneficial for you, is that okay?”
This is a rather agreeable statement and sets up the right tone for the call. Either sub-communicated or not, this is now known as a sales call.
- Walk with the prospect through their hell of now
Commonly I hear marketers talking about this phase being the prospects hell, in some terms or another. In this phase, your objective is to dig up all the shit the person is going through, in as many ways as possible. When you do this you strongly associate and anchor tons of negative feelings to the now that they are going through.
For example, if you were a coach who was going to sell a man a program on how to get better with women, the conversation might flow like follows:
“So you are finding yourself alone on the weekends?”
“Over the last two years, how many dates would you say you have had?”
“What would your life look like 5 years from now if you don’t deal with this problem today?”
“What would happen if you never got this problem solved?”
You see, all these questions are designed to really get the prospect into his problem. In addition to this, the salesman can understand the problem deeper and get into the implications it has for the prospect’s life as well as knowing how pertinent it is for this person to get this problem solved by getting the coach’s help.
- Lead the prospect through their heaven of the future
The next step is to have your prospect paint a bright future. This is commonly referred to as their “Heaven”. Simply, this phase is to get your prospect to think about all the great things that will happen when they don’t have this problem any longer. Questions for this could be:
“What would it be like if this problem was completely solved?”
“How would other areas of your life also improve after having this problem solved?”
“What would you then do after this problem was no longer an issue?”
“What will your life look like in 5 years from now after you get this problem solved?”
These questions are all designed in the future tense, showing your client how awesome things will be once they make the decision to get over this problem. They should enjoy this phase.
- Connect yourself as the solution to the client’s problem
The next part is that you connect yourself or your company with being the person’s solution to their problem. First, you repeat back to them a whole bunch of stuff they said. Using our previous example, it goes somewhat like the following:
“You said earlier that you are always lonely.”
“You said that you have only had one date in the past two years.”
“You also said that if you had this problem solved you could imagine never feeling lonely again.”
“You said that life would be easier and you would be happier.”
This is stuff you should have been writing down all along the call, now you just repeat it back to them and set up for step 6.
- Offer the prospect your solution
“Thanks for sharing all that with me and I have a solution that I think would be just right for you.”
This is when you pitch your services and you tailor them to everything that you had just talked about with your prospect. Here you include general details, but not the fine how-tos.
On the calls I have discovered, they tell you the program, how many weeks it is, and why it will solve your problem, but little else. Getting too much into logic disrupts it being an emotional sell. Sales happen more frequently because of emotion rather than logic.
- Tell the price as an investment
The last thing you want to do is tell your prospect what the price will be and then shut up completely. You should say, “And all of this is for an investment of x dollars.”
Then don’t say anything.
It’s super important not to say anything here. I have been on a sales calls where I was the prospect and I didn’t say anything for 30 seconds, it gets so awkward! My old business coach told me, “Whoever talks first loses.”
As you can see, this process may seem kind of contrived or manipulative, but this is how coaches are winning clients. This is the standard that is being done all over. If you know these steps and can do them well then the odds are good of you getting more clients.
If you do a call with me, this is probably how it will go. Here is the link.
Typically a 25% close rate on warm lead such as these is a good close rate. This means that only 1 out of 4 calls will actually become clients of yours and that is if you are good at this sales call. You better get more calls lined up!