The Coaching Sales Process: How to Automate Workflows & Close More Deals

As a coach, you are in control of only a small portion of your client's success. You can give the best advice in the world, but the onus is on them to put it into practice.

“The most difficult part about selling coaching services is that there is not always a clear tangible value, as my clients are ultimately in charge of their own destiny,” says Emma Siemasko, freelance writing coach.

So, how do you set yourself (and your clients) up for success?

Start with what you can control—building a strong sales process.

This isn’t a stuffy slide deck that’s used once and forgotten. An effective sales workflow uses your everyday tools to move new coaching leads toward a closed deal (without losing any in the shuffle).

This guide shares what the sales process could look like for a coaching business, helping you free up time you spend on repetitive tasks, improve the client experience—and ultimately close more deals.

‎Step 1: Capture and Track New Leads

There’s no beating around the bush: To generate sales, you need leads.

At this point in the workflow, prioritize top sources for new leads for coaching businesses such as:

• Cold emails
• Webinars
• Free courses
• Website forms
• Social media
• Video sales letters (VSLs)
• Calendar booking links

If you’re a large coaching business with defined sales/marketing departments, make sure both teams agree on what constitutes a “good” lead. Misalignment between sales and marketing could mean you end up with 500 leads, but only a handful turn into paying clients. This is where buyer personas and ICPs come into play. 

How to Capture New Leads Automatically

Getting new leads is one issue. Figuring out how to document them is another, particularly if you have inbound leads with a very human-heavy sales process. You need to find ways to qualify new leads faster and make it easier to close those deals through automation.

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Close does exactly this. It stores data about your leads, giving you a central repository that’s easily accessible to your sales team. 

To make this data collection process as effective and time-efficient as possible:

• Set required fields like source, status, and information related to whether or not they are an ideal coaching client for your company (more on this later).
• Add a lead score, which describes how likely someone is to buy. You can maximize resources by prioritizing potential coaching clients who have a sense of urgency or willingness to buy. 
• Use automation tools like Zapier to complete basic tasks, like creating a new entry in your CRM when someone books a call or submits a website inquiry form.
• Create checklists of what to do next so that every lead gets a consistent experience, regardless of which sales rep they’re interacting with. 

Tracking and Monitoring New Leads

Now that you have a central dashboard for the entire sales team to view coaching leads, it’s time to assign a rep to handle them. 

For most coaching businesses, your sales team is separated into two groups: Setters and Closers. The “Setters” are assigned new inbound leads to make the initial contact and schedule calls.

This first step is designed to help your team determine whether a new lead is a good fit for your coaching services. Then, the Setter can pass this lead to a sales rep who will close the deal and onboard them.

To track the progress of your new leads through this process to purchase, you can use a sales pipeline—a visual representation of where leads are lingering in the buying journey. That typically looks something like this:

1. Lead generation and inbound lead capture: Mainly handled by your marketing team and automation, this is where new leads enter the sales process (whether through outbound or inbound tactics).
2. Prospecting: Your Setters start their work here, doing research and reaching out to new leads.
3. Discovery and qualification: Normally this is an initial meeting with your new leads. The goal is to understand whether they’re really a good fit.
4. Sales pitch and proposal: This is where your Closers take over. They talk to prospects about your coaching offerings, and help them decide which programs or plans work best for them.
5. Negotiation and close: Handling objections, overcoming any doubts, and finally getting a contract signed.
6. Onboarding: Post-sale, it’s a rep’s job to make sure these new customers are fully onboarded into your coaching program, including passing them off to an individual coach or getting them started in a program.

‎A balanced sales pipeline has an even distribution of leads at each stage. The ideal scenario is a steady stream of new leads coming in for Setters to qualify and make the initial contact. 

Step 2: Schedule Your First Consultation Call

A consultation call, sometimes referred to as a discovery call or free strategy session, is your chance to chat with leads in real time. 

Your Setters make this first contact, and it’s their job to learn more about the lead, including what they’re currently struggling with and how you might be able to help. 

Quick Lead Nurture Tips for Faster Outreach (And More Bookings)

Discovery calls are most effective when they’re fast. 

The less time between someone submitting an inquiry form and jumping on a call with them, the less chance they have to second-guess their decision. They’re already semi-convinced to join (otherwise, they wouldn’t have made the first move).

Lead nurturing is the process of “warming up” these coaching leads. If they handed over their email address for a webinar, for example, stay in touch in the days immediately following. 

Encourage leads to book meetings immediately after reaching out by:

• Making it easy to book a discovery session by including a link on every touchpoint, like your email signature, the bottom of marketing emails, and your social media bio.
• Sending an automated email that confirms receipt of their initial outreach (e.g. submitting the form on your website) with a direct link to your call booking page.
• Limiting your calendar availability to seven days in advance—so that people can’t book far in advance and talk themselves out of it.
• Avoiding calls on busy days or time slots. If you’re coaching parents of young children, for example, don’t offer calls around school pickup times.

“Our Setters reach out within minutes when a lead requests information from our website,” says Jonathan Hinshaw, Sales Director at UGURUS. “Our goal is speed to lead. They check in, make sure they got what they requested, and see if they’d be interested in talking to someone about our coaching offers. If they say yes, that lead is booked into the Closers calendar.”

Automate Your Pre-Meeting Workflow

Got someone to book a discovery meeting with you? Unfortunately, not all of them will turn up. 

Coaches deal with a ton of no-shows, likely because leads are unsure about the investment and don’t want to spend time talking about problems they’re not 100% sure are worth solving. 

Here’s how to automate your pre-meeting workflow and increase your call attendance rates:

• Send regular reminders. Not all no-shows are disingenuous. Life gets in the way; people forget about calls if they didn’t write it down when they initially booked the session. Send regular reminders by email or SMS—ideally one week, day, and hour before.
• Share the agenda beforehand. Leads might feel uneasy about joining the call if they don’t know what to expect. In your email reminders, share a brief summary of what you’ll talk about. 
• Give leads some homework. Potential clients might be more willing to show up if they have some skin in the game. Give them some homework, like completing a pre-call questionnaire or a self-assessment worksheet, beforehand. They probably won’t want to lose the ~30 minutes they’ve spent on this homework by failing to show up.
• Provide more free value. Leads might be evaluating other coaching businesses and sign up for free calls to determine which is the best option for them. Use this limbo period to prove your value, like linking to a free masterclass or showing a taster of the community that paying clients get access to. 

Online fitness coach Ashley Barnsley puts this into practice: “After someone books in for a call enquiring about that program, they are automatically taken to a confirmation page which contains a pre-call video for them to watch and some testimonials from past and current clients.

“The video talks through all of the logistics of the program, meaning by the time the call comes around, the person is already aware of how the program works and how we get results. That way we can spend more time talking specifically about what they need help with rather than the details of the program.”

As Ashley puts it: “The less time spent on logistics on a sales call means more time going into detail about what a person needs help with and more time to connect to that person.”

How to Deal with No-Shows

You can try your best to avoid no-shows, but some people simply won’t turn up.

That’s not to say there’s nothing you can do about it. Perhaps the lead just forgot. In that case, send a short social media DM 10 minutes after your appointment time. Something like, “Hey [name], I’m here in our call room! Here’s the link to join: [link]” can do the trick.

If that doesn’t work, don’t assume that the coaching lead is lost forever. Set an automated process inside Close CRM that:

• Changes their opportunity status to “No Show” 
• Sends an SMS (from the sales rep they were communicating with) that includes a link to rebook the discovery call
• Emails them to ask why they’re no longer interested if they haven’t had any contact from the lead within X days

Step 3: Host Your First Call and Quickly Qualify (or Disqualify) New Prospects

It’s not just leads who need to prepare for your coaching session. As the old saying goes, “Failing to prepare means preparing to fail”.

Build an Agenda for Your First Consultation Call

Consultation calls are usually handled by “Closers”—reps who are motivated to talk to your customers and close the deal. 

Meeting agendas act as a rough outline and give reps some structure. They ensures that prospective coaching clients get the same level of service and support on the initial discovery call.

That said, they don’t need to be set in stone. There should be some scope for flexibility, and the freedom to pivot the conversation depending on what the lead says they need help with. 

Here’s what that structure might look like: 

• Tell them what to expect. Before jumping into the conversation, restate the goals for the discovery call and what “success” looks like. For example, “By the end of this discovery session call, we should both have a clearer idea of whether our coaching packages are a right fit for you.” 
• Listen (really listen) to what they need. Before pitching how amazing your coaching packages are, use active listening skills to hear what a customer needs help with, and the motivators driving their decision to invest in a coach. Relay this back to them using their own vocab.
• own vocab.
• Talk about value before price. Coaching tends to be a big investment. Before dropping a big number on the discovery call, explain the value you can offer. It’s easier to sell high-ticket services once the prospect sees how their life can change post-investment.
• Explain your services and demonstrate outcomes. Slideshows and screenshots can help here—they’ll act as visual points of reference so that leads know exactly what they’re getting by joining your coaching program. 
• Help them choose the right package. Community access, the regularity of coaching calls, and access to premium content within your coaching platform might differ depending on the package a client has chosen. Help leads choose the best package for them by taking their goals, pain points, time availability, and budget into account. 
• Handle any sales objections or questions. Refer back to your ICP to reference the obstacles a typical client has to overcome before paying. Common objections are tied to a lack of budget, need, trust, urgency, or authority.

Coaching services aren’t tangible, which can make selling them more difficult.

That’s the issue Emma Siemasko, mentioned earlier, has had to overcome. “I also don't believe in selling a specific formula as everyone's business and perspective is different,” she says. “For example, I can't promise my clients they'll reach a certain income amount or book a specific number of clients because they work with me.”

Emma adds: “I overcome this by addressing it openly and being honest about the value I do provide–my coaching clients receive accountability, someone to help choose actions that they can immediately take, as well as another perspective and lens to examine their business.”

How to Quickly Qualify Prospects on a Consultation Call

You’ve done some basic lead qualification before getting your prospects on the call, but you still might find yourself chatting with people who either aren’t interested in coaching services or ready to buy.

There’s a plethora of reasons why this might happen. We can break the most common down into four buckets:

• Budget: They don’t have the money to invest in coaching.
• Authority: They don’t have the final say in the investment. In the case of business coaching: they might need another stakeholder’s approval before paying for your services. 
• Need: They don’t see the value in your coaching service, and therefore are struggling to justify the investment.
• Timing: There’s no sense of urgency to register for your coaching service. 

Here’s a cheat sheet of questions to use when qualifying coaching leads on a discovery call: 

• What’s your top priority right now?
• Have you invested in a coach before? If so: why did you leave? 
• What things are a deal-breaker vs. ones that are nice to have?
• Are there any obstacles that could stop you from investing in a coach?
• How did you hear about our coaching services? (Those who’ve found you through a Google search are probably much further along in the buying decision process than someone who randomly came across your Instagram profile, for example.)

Step 4: Close the Deal and Hand Off New Clients to Your Coaching Team

A lead is ready to sign on the dotted line. Here’s how to get them over the final hurdle and pass them onto your coaching delivery team.

Sealing the Deal: The Last Steps to a New Client Agreement

You’ll have a good sense of whether a client is interested in signing up for your coaching service during the discovery call. 

Help them choose the right package for their needs by reiterating the things they said they were struggling with. For example: if you’re selling business coaching services and the lead has said they’re struggling to prioritize tasks as a solo founder, say: 

Connecting them with real, relevant social proof is a superb way of showing your value without being overly salesly. You’ll appear much more genuine if other people are vouching for you—especially if the example you’re profiling is similar to the person/company you’re selling to. 

“I had a personal experience with a physical therapy coach recently who added a step to this process that I haven't seen very often: connect them with a success story,” says Sam Brenner, Product Marketing Lead here at Close. 

“This could be in the form of sending them a video success story of someone very relevant to themselves right away on the call, or even connecting them to someone who has been through their coaching program and is willing to serve as a reference. I had the latter and it was next-level convincing!”

Transitioning from Potential to New Client—How to Create a Smooth Onboarding Flow

The prospect has said “yes” and is raring to go. Keep the momentum going with a clear process for closing deals and handing new clients off to your coaching team.

A seamless transition between teams here helps the client continue their excitement to sign up. 

On the contrary: if you were to randomly introduce a new team member and go radio silent after the discovery call while you wait for the delivery team to reach out, you could confuse them. That’s not the first impression you want to make. 

The exact process of onboarding new clients off the back of a sales call will be different for each business and type of coach. But here are the general principles you’ll need when handing off new clients: 

• Tell the new client exactly what to expect at the end of the call
• Send a contract and invoice/payment link as soon as possible (even better: do this while they’re still on the call)
• Store the call recording and any notes in the customer’s profile inside your CRM for the delivery team to reference 
• Once the contract has been signed and payment has been received, introduce the client to their new point of contact on the delivery team
• Mark the lead as “Closed” in your CRM 

Nurturing Potential Clients: How to Make Sure Potential Clients Never Fall Through the Cracks

Lead nurture can be a long-term game—you don’t want to lose out on potential customers who aren’t ready yet, but might be in the future. 

Prevent coaching leads from falling through the cracks by documenting who you’re talking to and their sales objections. If someone doesn’t convert after a discovery call because they don’t have the money to invest, for example, check back in a few days after the initial session with a payment plan that makes the initial investment cheaper. 

Sometimes lost leads aren’t always as clear cut as that scenario. Perhaps someone gave you all the signs that they’d signed up, but ultimately ghosted you in your post-discovery session follow up. 

Use Close Smart Views to keep track of coaching leads who are interested, qualified, but never closed. Then set reminders to check in with these cold leads every few weeks. 

(If you’ve recorded the discovery call, now’s the ideal time to signpost lost leads back to it.)

Circumstances change, and even sitting on the idea of investing in a coach (particularly as they reference the replay or complete tasks they know you could help with) may be all they need to come back.

A gentle nudge from your team can make all the difference. 

Final Thoughts: Having a Coaching Sales Process is Great—Building it Out in Your CRM is Better

There’s a lot of moving parts in a sales process, especially for coaches. You’re launching marketing campaigns to drive leads and offering free discovery calls to those who raise their hand to show interest.

What’s difficult, however, is determining what makes a “good” lead—and what happens after you identify that.

This coaching workflow is a great example of how you can systemize your approach and deliver consistent experiences to coaching leads. Combined with a powerful CRM that can automate tedious, repetitive tasks for you? Even better.

Test out Close for free for 14 days, no credit card required. Or talk to our sales team to get a 1:1 demo and see how Close can maximize your sales efforts.