By: Sabrina Schleicher, PhD, PCC, BCC

I had an epiphany awhile back that has transformed my business. It’s one of those insights that I wish would have had years ago when I was a new coach. It would have saved me a lot of time and energy over the years.

So, what was my epiphany? The more effective my marketing is, the less time I have to spend doing it. Duh! Maybe this is obvious to you, but there are some subtle things we coaches do to sabotage our marketing that keep us working much harder than necessary.

Here’s an example. See if this resonates for you...

Delivering a speech is a great way to attract Ideal Potential Clients. But, even if we are fairly comfortable with public speaking, it’s easy to put off, postpone and procrastinate finding venues to deliver a talk. We tell ourselves our talk is not quite polished enough. It needs more work.

So, instead of just getting out there and sharing some helpful information with our Ideal Potential Clients, we procrastinate. Maybe we fiddle with our website and try to make it just a little better. Or, we do some networking on LinkedIn. Or, we spend time coming up with just the right thing to say on Facebook. We tell ourselves we are “working on marketing.” Let’s face it, none of these efforts is as effective for generating leads for coaching as getting out there and delivering a talk, sharing helpful information to an audience filled with your Ideal Potential Clients.

Having a website, writing a newsletter, blogging, posting videos on YouTube, and utilizing other forms of social media are good lead generation strategies, but they are secondary in their effectiveness to public speaking when it comes to attracting Ideal Potential Clients.

In fact, you should think of your website, newsletter and social media as tools for building a relationship with your Ideal Potential Clients over time. They are opportunities “to gently tap your Ideal Clients on the shoulder,” reminding them you are there to coach them when they are ready. However,the best way for your Ideal Potential Clients to learn about you and what you have to offer is for them to hear you speak.

Invest your time in creating and delivering a powerful speech that addresses an important, urgent problem for your Ideal Potential Clients and you will be well on your way to filling your practice with your Ideal Potential Clients!

If you hone this critical aspect of your lead generation system, you won’t have to work nearly as hard at marketing. You’ll have more time for coaching and other things you love.

So, what specifically should you be learning how to do with respect to delivering a speech? You must know how to do the following:

• Create a powerful, moving speech for your Ideal Potential Clients that addresses an important, urgent problem for them
• Get in front of audiences filled with your Ideal Potential Clients
• Get the most qualified Ideal Potential Clients to step forward and apply for a Discovery Session with you (i.e., Complimentary Consultation).
• Conduct effective Discovery Sessions so that the majority of your Ideal Potential Clients say, “Yes. Sign me up!” to your offer.

When you have these key components of your marketing system polished so that each piece works effectively for you, you will quickly have a practice bursting at the seams with your Ideal Clients.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how little time you have to spend “marketing” and how much time you get to spend doing what you love!

Dr. Sabrina Schleicher specializes in training coaches and therapists to double their Ideal Clients so they can build thriving, lucrative practices working part-time.