Regardless of your coaching niche, your live pipeline is the best
indicator of your future earnings. A pipeline is composed of three
parts: leads, sales opportunities and lost opportunities.
Leads are potential clients who have made a generic expression of
interest in your coaching services. An example of a lead would be an
inquiry submitted via your website’s contact form that reads, “I’m looking
for a Leadership Coach because I’d like to learn more about emotional
intelligence.” The interest may be there, but the urgency is not. There’s no
hurry for the client. “I’d like to …” is all you’ve got.
A sales opportunity differs from a lead in that your potential client has
a compelling reason to act (CRA). The more the client is compelled, the
stronger the sales opportunity. An example of this inquiry might read, “I’m
looking for a Leadership Coach because I want to learn more about my own
emotional intelligence. I was just promoted to a new role, but I don’t know
how to manage my team. I don’t want to fail.” In the example, the client is
compelled not once, but twice: He wants to manage his people effectively,
and he doesn’t want to fail. Although the client’s timeline is not explicit,
strong CRAs are usually associated with shorter timelines: The sooner he can
begin working toward his goals, the better.
Max di Gregorio,
Ph.D., PCC
Max worked for two decades in sales
before founding European Coach
Academy, a digital firm that provides
Executive, Sales and Business, and
Mentor Coaching, as well as leadershipdevelopment programming. Max holds
a doctoral degree in economics and has
studied at London Business School. He
also holds professional certifications in
sales, training, emotional intelligence
and applied behavioral psychology.
Business Sense
Understanding Your Pipeline
A lost opportunity is simply something that is not going to happen. There are
many symptoms that might help you identify a lost opportunity; e.g., budget
concerns, an unidentified timeframe or an unclear coaching topic. However,
all lost opportunities share the same cause: the lack of a CRA.
The sooner you flush a lost opportunity from your pipeline, the better.
Keeping lost opportunities in your pipeline negatively impacts your numbers,
your forecast projections and your success rate.
As you’re building your pipeline, make sure you understand what is what:
Learn how to identify and nurture your prospective client’s CRA in order
to turn a lead into a sales opportunity instead of a missed opportunity.
By managing your pipeline, you’ll be able to identify leads and sales
opportunities by quarter for a more accurate annual forecast and the
confidence that comes with knowing how much money you’re going to
earn this year.
S TAY I N G I N C O N T R O L
Coaching World
7
In order to manage your pipeline, consider investing in customer
relationship management (CRM) software. A well-designed and
implemented CRM system will enable you to track leads and sales
opportunities and eliminate dead-in-the-water lost opportunities.
Regardless of your business’ size or budget, there’s likely a CRM
application that’s the right fit for you.