The Follow Up Gap That Is Costing You Coaching Clients

You can do all the hard work to get someone interested in your coaching. You get visible, start conversations, send emails, run a webinar and perhaps they even book a call with you.

Then they do not buy straight away.

This is where a lot of coaches quietly disappear. Not because they do not care, but because they do not want to be pushy. They do not want to chase someone or feel as though they are trying to convince them to buy coaching.

The problem is, this can be exactly where the real client journey begins.

“Follow up is not about convincing someone. It is about staying connected long enough for timing to catch up with trust.” Cathy Smith

We tend to imagine that someone will discover us, like what we do, book a call and become a client. Nice, neat and linear. Real life is rarely that tidy.

Someone can genuinely be interested in working with you and still not be ready to make a decision today. They might need to think about it, work out the money, finish something else first or simply have a bit more time to decide whether coaching is the right next step for them.

We can be very quick to interpret that pause as a no.

Sometimes it is a no. Sometimes it is simply not yet.

And there is a big difference.

Silence Does Not Always Mean No

You have probably had this happen.

You have a great conversation with someone. They seem interested. You send them some information or answer the questions they had and then… nothing.

A few days go past.

You think about following up, then that little voice kicks in: “I do not want to hassle them.”

So you leave it.

Meanwhile, they have gone back to work, family, clients, deadlines and everything else happening in their world. The conversation that is still sitting in the front of your mind may have slipped much further down their list.

That does not automatically mean they have lost interest.

Sometimes life just got in the way.

This is why I think we need to look at follow up differently. Follow up does not have to mean repeatedly asking someone whether they have made a decision.

Good follow up is really just continuing a conversation that has already started.

Maybe they told you they wanted to have something sorted by September. You can check in and ask how they are going with it. Perhaps you come across something that relates to a problem they mentioned and send it to them. Maybe they said the timing was not right and you agreed to reconnect in a couple of months.

None of that is chasing.

You are simply staying connected.

And sometimes you need to stay connected long enough for the timing to catch up with the trust.

The Client Journey Is Rarely as Neat as We Think

I had someone come to two of my webinars over about six months.

They also engaged with a couple of emails in between.

After the first webinar, they did not suddenly book a call. There was no big sales conversation and nothing that made me think a client was about to appear.

They just stayed around.

They came to another webinar. They engaged with some emails.

Then they booked a call.

If I had judged that first webinar purely on whether they bought immediately afterwards, I would have completely missed what was actually happening.

They were getting to know me.

Trust was building before the buying decision was.

We often want the client journey to look something like this: someone finds us, comes to a webinar, books a call and becomes a client.

In reality, it might be a webinar followed by nothing. Then a few emails. Another webinar a few months later. Perhaps a reply somewhere in between. Then some more quiet. Then one day they book the call.

That does not mean the marketing was not working during all those quiet bits.

The relationship was still developing.

People buy when the problem matters enough, the timing is right and they trust that you are the person who can help them.

Those three things do not always line up on the day they first find you.

You Might Not Need More Leads

When coaches are not getting enough clients, the first reaction is often, “I need more leads.”

Sometimes that is true.

Sometimes the bigger problem is that there are already people around you who have raised their hand in some small way and the conversation has simply stopped.

They may have attended one of your webinars, replied to an email, asked about your coaching or had a discovery call with you. Perhaps they said “maybe later” or asked you to come back to them in a few months. Then life moved on and neither of you picked the conversation up again.

There may be more opportunity sitting in those unfinished conversations than in finding another hundred strangers.

Before you spend another week trying to reach more people, look back over the last 30 to 60 days. Think about who came to something you ran, who replied to an email, who asked about coaching, who said the timing was not right or who you meant to come back to.

Those conversations are not necessarily dead.

Some of them are simply unfinished.

Make Follow Up Part of Your Business

The other part of this is making follow up part of your business rather than something you do when you happen to remember.

If your system relies on remembering who said what three weeks ago, it will always be hit and miss.

You do not need a complicated CRM or another piece of technology. You simply need somewhere to keep track of who the person is, what they were interested in, what they told you, what the next step was and when it makes sense to reconnect.

That small habit can stop good conversations quietly disappearing.

More importantly, it changes the way you think about follow up. It stops being something you only do when you need another client and becomes part of the way you look after people who have already shown an interest in working with you.

There is a difference between chasing someone and making sure a good conversation does not simply disappear.

One creates pressure.

The other creates continuity.

Look Behind You Before You Look for More Leads

There is so much pressure in marketing to keep finding more people. More followers, more leads, more email subscribers and more reach.

Yet sometimes the better question is not, “Where can I find more people?”

It is, “Who have I already started a conversation with?”

Someone already knows your name. They already understand a little about the way you work and they have already shown some level of interest.

That person is much further along than a stranger seeing your content for the first time today.

Your next coaching client might not be someone you need to find.

They might be someone you simply need to reconnect with.

If you are having conversations but they are not consistently turning into clients, a Client Roadmap Session can help you identify where the gaps are in your client journey and what needs to happen next.

If you are wondering where potential clients may be slipping through the gaps, take a closer look at your follow up process.

Listen to the full episode,  SBT Episode 363: The Follow-Up Gap: Are Clients Slipping Away? and discover how to turn unfinished conversations into real opportunities.