How to Get More Coaching Clients With Cold Email

Who’s your dream client?

You know, that person or business you’d absolutely love to work with. The one that would make you feel like you finally made it. The one you know you could really, truly help.

Got them in mind? Now, imagine sending an unsolicited email to them to win their business.

Slam! Yes, that was the sound of the door closing shut on that wonderful fantasy in your mind. I heard it all the way from here.

Here’s the deal—it’s scary to reach out to new clients. They’ve never heard of you. They may not be interested in what you’re offering. 

But they might be. How will you know if you never ask?

You know that there are people who could truly benefit from your help. After all, that’s why you got into coaching in the first place. And if you have the confidence to coach clients and businesses, then you have the confidence to send cold emails.

The trick is getting in front of the right people with the right message, and we’re here to help you do that.

We’ll help you learn how to write cold emails that convert and set up a cold email strategy that works for coaches and consultants. 

Why Cold Email? (No, it’s Not Spam!)

First, let’s get this straight—you don’t need to be a sleazy snake-oil salesperson to send a cold email. 

Everybody hates the dozens of spam emails in their inbox every day. These emails go out to lists of thousands of people simultaneously, with no previous research or thought into how they might help you personally.

Your cold emails don’t have to be like that. A good cold email strategy involves:

• Defining a profile of people you can help
• Doing research to find those people
• Learning more about the individual
• Reaching out with a friendly offer that could provide value

Cold email isn’t about making sales—it’s about making connections.

And when you master the skill of making connections, you’ll be able to fill your books with people excited about being coached by you.

Setting Up a Cold Email Strategy for Your Coaching Business in 7 Steps

So, how do you set up a cold email strategy? Just find as many email addresses as you can and blast them all?

Heck no. Let’s discuss how to set up the foundation of a good cold email strategy and then how to execute it.

Step 1. Find People You Genuinely Believe You Can Help

If you know specifically who you’re selling to and why, you'll surely get more clients. 

You can start by creating an ideal client profile, which is the same as the ideal customer profile for a product-based business. Since you’re serving businesses and clients, you’ll want to think of job titles, industries, pain points, and even personality traits of the people and companies you best serve. 

How do you do this?

First off, start by learning from past client successes. What went well? How did your coaching help them? What common traits do you see between your most successful clients?

Next, learn from past client failures. Where did things go wrong? What led to the failure? What common traits or aspects do you see with client failures?

Finally, think about your strengths and weaknesses. Which types of scenarios do you feel most confident coaching? Where do you draw the most expertise from? 

For example, a career coach may realize that their most successful clients are all people who are thinking about making a career change, whereas their least successful clients are the ones who are trying to become managers. In that case, the coach realizes their strength is coaching for career changes and may narrow their ideal client to this type of person.

You'll find your ideal clients when you understand the people you serve best.

Step 2. Build a List of People to Reach Out To

Now that you know what kind of person you can help, it’s time to find the right individuals to start your outreach.

For business coaches, LinkedIn is your best friend. You can search this network based on job titles, industries, relevant connections, and more to find the people that fit your ideal client profile. 

For example, a coach who focuses on helping people advance in their tech career may look on LinkedIn for a junior title (e.g. Operations Assistant, Junior Data Analyst, or Programming Intern), within the Technology industry, in a certain location. When they find profiles that match the type of person they can help, they then add them to a lead list.

Once you’ve built out that list from LinkedIn, you need to find their email addresses.

There are a couple of ways to do this. First, some people actually have their email address listed in the Contact Info in their LinkedIn profile. But if they don’t, then the next best way is to use a tool like VoilaNorbert to search for their email online. Once you’ve found those addresses, add them to your spreadsheet and/or lead page in your CRM. 

You’ll soon have a fully built-out list with hundreds of potential clients. 

Step 3. Be Specific About Your Offer and the Desired Outcome

No, it’s not time to rush out and send emails (yet).

First, you need to build the foundation of your messaging.

It’s one thing to perform a service, it’s another to create an outcome. When you reach out to someone via cold email, you don’t want just to say what you’ll do—talk about what you’ll help them achieve. 

For example, if you’re a business optimization consultant, your offer could be to reduce costs by 20% within one year.

When creating an offer, be specific about what you help people achieve through your services and when you’ll help them achieve it. 

Check out this video from Patrick Dang about how to create an offer that’s tied to powerful results you can create for your clients:

‎Step 4. Set a Goal of How Many Emails to Send Per Week

While the previous preparation and research steps will make a huge difference in your success, sales is still a numbers game. So, to land awesome clients, you need to figure out the numbers.

Start by figuring out how many clients you want to take on. Let’s say one new client per week. Then you can make an educated guess about your cold email success rate, let’s say 2% (this can be updated as you get real-life feedback). That means you’ll need to send 50 cold emails per week to get to your one new client goal. 

However, don’t give up once you get that one new client (unless you don’t have the bandwidth). Instead, try to stick with your number and see what happens. You might get two new clients one week and none the next. 

Step 5. Create Email Templates You Can Reuse

Did the thought of sending 50 emails give you a cold sweat? 

If you want to build your coaching business, you need to optimize your time writing and sending cold emails, which is where templates come in.

Above, you created a clear message: the offer and outcome you provide to your clients. While the personal details of each new potential client may change, your offering does not. So, create a template for the message you want to send, and simply change out the personal details as needed.

Step 6. Build a Follow-Up Strategy

Okay, you sent your email, now all you have to do is wait for the person to respond, right?

Weeeell, not exactly.

Every potential client is getting bombarded with emails in their inbox every day. They may not see your email, or they might see it and forget about it.

The point: just because someone didn’t respond to your first email, doesn’t mean they’re not interested in your offer. Which is why you need to follow up.

Your follow-up strategy and cadence will depend on who you’re reaching out to and what works best for you as a business owner, but you might try something like this:

• Day 1: Email #1, a short email that states your offer and a clear call to action.
• Day 3: Email #2, a one-sentence reply to see if they have any thoughts.
• Day 6: Email #3, a brief email offering something of value (like an interesting article or statistic related to your coaching services).
• Day 14: Email #4, a brief case study, and another clear call to action.
• Day 20: Email #5, the break-up email. Make it clear this is the last time you’ll contact them, but you’re available if they decide they need your help.

With each email, you can provide something of value to the reader and restate your offer. At the end, a break-up email may be the last push they need to respond.

Step 7. Use a CRM to Track and Manage Conversations and Email Performance

Not only can a CRM help you automate your cold outreach, but it can also help you keep track of your results.

No more digging around in your email threads to remember who said what and when. Your CRM keeps all those interactions in one place, letting you focus on the work you need to do next.

Keep track of conversations and the results of your cold email workflows. Track responses to see which emails perform best and which are duds.

Then, you can make all the tweaks and improvements you need to make those emails truly shine.

How to Write a Cold Email That Resonates

We’ve talked about strategy—but what about writing that cold email?

Let’s discuss how to write a strong, cold email and get the positive responses you’re looking for.

Be Relevant

While technically you’re a stranger knocking on someone’s virtual door, try to make yourself more familiar and relevant. 

You could do this by:

• Referencing a common connection in your network or at a previous company
• Talking about an important event in your industry
• Mentioning a pain point that you’ve seen others in their situation struggling with
• Referencing a social media post they published or commented on

The point: try not to come out of left field. Break that virtual ice with something relevant, and your potential client will be more likely to pay attention to what you have to say.

Keep it Extra Short and Sweet

While you want to show you’re human, don’t waste too much real estate with pleasantries. This ain’t Victorian England, nobody has time to read your letters.

People want you to get to the point. 

Don’t write a 5-paragraph essay with all the good stuff buried in paragraphs 3-5. Instead, focus on the immediate value you might have for this person. Mention a common pain point you can solve and wonder if they might have. Don’t bury your value too far down in the email or it might not get noticed. 

A good aim is to cut the word count down to a maximum of 150 words. While it doesn’t sound much, you’ll be surprised how much you can say in a short space.

Benefits Before Features

A common mistake is to talk about your services, but not the benefits they provide. In sales and copywriting, this is known as the ‘benefits before features’ rule. You sell people the benefits you provide, then you can talk about the ‘features,’ which is how you provide them. 

For example, instead of saying, “I help businesses with optimization coaching”, you could say, “I save business owners 10 hours a week and reduce business costs by 25% through my optimization coaching program”. 

In this example, you’re selling the benefits (saving time and money) before detailing the features (your coaching program). 

Stick to a Single Point

Because you’re keeping to a strict word count restriction and dealing with short attention spans, don’t try to make more than one point per email. The subject of your email should be one pain point, one benefit, or one interesting tidbit that you want to ask them a question about. 

If you make more than one point, you start losing people. Keep it simple; stick to one point. You’ll have more follow-up emails to make your next point. 

Ask, Don’t Sell

The point of your cold email is not to directly sell. Instead, you’re just opening up a dialogue that could lead to a sale or a new client later on. So, instead of talking about how to book your services, ask open-ended questions that could naturally lead to that outcome. 

Examples include, “What similar issues do you have?”, “How much is this (pain point) affecting you?”, or “Where are you looking to save (money or time)?”. 

Include a Simple, Single Call to Action

Generally, cold emails will close in one of two ways:

• Asking to schedule a discovery call
• Asking an open-ended question

Each has a different goal, with the call starting a live conversation and the open-ended question starting an email dialogue that would lead to a longer conversation. 

Here’s the point: Don’t do both.

Instead, close your email with a single, strong ask. If you want to get fancy, experiment with different options and see what works better for you over time. 

Write Subject Lines that Encourage Opens

Your subject line is the first impression people will have of you. So, make it a hook that’s worthy of their attention.

Here are some quick tips for subject lines:

• Keep your tone casual, like you’re writing to someone you know
• Avoid clickbait—make sure the body of your email lives up to the subject line
• Use sentence case
• Ask a question
• Use the words “how to” at the beginning
• Include an emoji (when appropriate)

Also, avoid “spammy” words that could get your emails flagged, such as “free,” “gift,” “win,” “prize,” and others.

For more info on cold email subject lines, check out our article on 17 subject lines that are likely to get opened. 

BONUS: 3 Simple Cold Email Examples You Can Swipe

Okay, maybe writing a cold email from scratch is overwhelming. So here are three examples you can swipe and adapt to your own business, or use as inspiration for your first cold emails.

‎Example 1: Inflate the Ego and Ask a Question

This template is all about showing that you greatly respect the person you’re emailing and want to talk to them about a topic where you could be of service. Keep in mind that the stat below is made up, but you should use value-showing stats of your own. 

Example 2: Directly Show Your Value and Ask for a Call

This template is more upfront about asking for the call, which may be preferable for you if you’d rather get to the point than have a conversation first. You might have a bit lower response rate by asking for a call than just a question, but your responses may be of higher quality and lead to more new clients. 

This example was written in 2020 when people were shifting to remote work in droves, so you would want to find a similar talking point for your email. 

Example 3: Solve a Scary Problem

This last email was written for an HR consultant and recruiting firm that helps companies solve labor problems. At the time it was written, there was a severe labor shortage due to pandemic-related issues, which was scary for people who needed to hire immediately. The email was highly relevant to that problem and performed well because of it. 

Final Thoughts: Measure, Adjust, Improve, Repeat!

Good things take time. That’s why measuring success is essential to building a solid cold email strategy that builds revenue for your business.

Here are two of my favorite metrics to measure success in cold emails:

• Reply rates
• Conversion rates

Other email metrics can be unreliable, but these two will tell you exactly which emails resonate with your audience, and how successful they are at driving conversions.

Using Close CRM is the best way to set this up. You’ll be able to track responses, measure your campaigns' success, and instantly update templates that need adjusting. You’ll also be able to automate the whole thing so your email campaigns are a set-it-and-forget-it experience. 

Try it out for free, or watch our on-demand demo to learn more.