 For our clients, working with a coach involves a commitment of time, money and energy – and for some it also takes a great deal of courage. A good enrolment process should leave your client feeling they’ve made a wise choice hiring a coach and that YOU were the right choice.
So when your clients sign-up with you, how do you make your clients feel good about their decision? What do they have to show for it when they sign up? What’s your enrolment process?
Well, here are 7 suggestions for an enrolment process that rocks!:
- Make your Client feel Super-Welcome! Specifically tell your client that you’re excited to work with them. A welcome email is a great way to do this AND I would also recommend that you send a physical “Welcome Pack” or similar in the “‘snail mail”. Include a hand-signed welcome letter and make the packet attractive. Include a small gift to surprise and delight them – something relevant to the coaching process is good – some post-its, a pen (I sent a pack of 10 multi-coloured pens), a book, an inspiring fridge magnet. You get the idea.
- Get Personal! Personalize your initial client communications – include a quote, tool or exercise that’s relevant to their situation. Show that you’ve seen and heard them and of course, be warm and friendly. Have a newsletter? Why not include an article from your archives that’s relevant to them and their situation?
- Tell them what’s going to happen next. In your email and physical welcome letter let them know the next steps: when their first session with you is, how to pay (if they haven’t already), what number to call, that they should call you, to complete and return the coaching agreement if you have one, any actions or homework they may have from a consultation with you and anything else you consider relevant. Spell it out. Make it clear and simple. This will make you look professional – and allay any fears or uncertainty the client may have.
- Get them started! Make sure they begin the coaching process right away – keep them in a coaching frame of mind. One way to do this is to give them some homework (I like to call it homefun!). In the “Welcome Pack” include at least one coaching exercise – this could be as little as a simple set of “Powerful Questions” or you could like me also include a “Life Map” and/or “Wheel of Life”. You could also include something specific to their situation for that extra personal touch.
- (This one’s for YOU) Standardize as much as possible. Create a checklist for yourself and list the steps you will follow. Create templates for your Welcome Email and Welcome Letter. Then, just like a cover letter when you apply for a job, simply customize for each client with little touches here and there. By creating a template for your communications you save yourself tons of time – and it’s less stress too because you won’t have to think each time what you need to include. TIP: Another thing I did was to print 10 copies of the Coaching Agreement and welcome packet coaching exercises at a time, so when it was time to put a welcome packet together it was much quicker!
- Help them to feel good about their financial investment in coaching! Hiring a coach is no small investment – so help your clients feel they’ve spent wisely. Everything we’ve talked about so far will help with this. AND I also suggest you find some way to RATE how your clients are doing ‘out of 10′. You could use a Coaching Goals Sheet (ask how close they are to each goal out of 10) or a Wheel of Life (the scoring system is built into this exercise). Then when you’ve been coaching for a little while, review the scores and you can show them how far they’ve come! (We’ll talk about this a bit more in another article).
- Make it easy for them to remember – and refer you. Put your branding on all the materials you include – whether it’s an electronic or paper-based welcome. The great thing about a physical welcome packet is that you can include extra business cards for them to hand to friends and even a voucher for a free session for their friends. TIP: And although I haven’t personally done this – you could also include a referral program where your client gets a reward when a new client they refer signs up with you.
- (OK, so it’s 8 suggestions really) Make sure you get their contact details AT ENROLMENT. So, here’s my cautionary tale: After coaching for 8 years it was the first time I didn’t fill out the client info/contact form at enrolment. I thought, “Oh well, I’ll do it at our first session”. Two weeks later, I had an internet and power-cut for 3 days – right before and during our first session. I had no contact details for my client and I couldn’t even look her up online because I didn’t have her home address. It got worse – because I have an ‘internet phone’ – they would have called me and got no answer! Then I remembered that I had set the internet phone to forward to my cellphone in emergencies. Very luckily, this worked. I spoke to her at the appointed time and we rescheduled. But it was nearly disaster – because my cellphone battery was almost flat too! I felt very unprofessional – and learned my lesson…
Have a tip you’d like to share? What’s your enrolment process?
We’d love to hear and I’m sure everyone else would too – just comment below!
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 First of all, THANK-YOU! Your comments and suggestions have been EXTREMELY helpful – and we look forward to implementing many of them soon, some right away!
So, without further ado, here’s what you had to say!
1. So what kind of coaching do you do? (bearing in mind you could tick more than one box):
- 72% of you identified as Life Coaches
- 28% as Executive Coaches
- 28% as Business Coaches
- 24% as Career Coaches
- 21% as Spiritual Coaches
- 19% as Parent or Teen Coaches
- 7% as Health and/or Wellness Coaches
- 3% as ADHD Coaches
- The remainder were a scattering of great specialties like performance coaching, passion & purpose coaching, eating disorders recovery, relationship, caregiver, student, creativity coaching and more!
2. How long have you been coaching for?
- 30% of you have been coaching from 6 months to 2 years
- 26% of you have been coaching from 2 to 5 years
- 24% of you have been coaching less than 6 months
- 11% of you have been coaching for 5 to 10 years
- and an impressive 9% have been coaching for more than 10 years
- And that doesn’t include the many of you say you have been coaching one way or another for a lot longer than that!
So, now for the juicy bits!
Well, when it comes to how we can do better, (depending on the question we asked) between 23% and 64% of you said “nothing” or “you loved it!” So, thank-you for all your kind and wonderful comments.
However, that also means 36-77% of you had some ideas and improvement suggestions, so read on…
3. The Top 3 themes where you said we could do better:
- Make the newsletter clearer and easier to read – many of you felt the design was cluttered, unfocused, too busy and/or had too much information and too many distractions in it.
- Make the newsletter more frequent – and briefer. While a couple of people said they liked the frequency of the emails, you repeatedly told me you’d like more regular, but briefer! emails. And some of you liked the article summaries while some of you wanted the whole article in the newsletter – so we need to do some thinking around this.
- You told us to be bolder! And we are definitely liking this idea! Many of you also said to jazz up the newsletter title to pique your interest more…
4. What did you like least?
- Most of you – 64% - said “not sure”, “n/a” or “nothing”
- 15% of you said the look & feel of the newsletter was cluttered
- 10% of you said something related to frequency or volume of information – the vast majority of you wanting more frequent newsletters with less, or clearer, information in them.
- The remaining 11% of you each had your own unique responses, which we have noted!
5. So, what did you like best?
- 46% of you said either the Coaching Tools or Free Coaching Tools!
- 28% of you said the variety and/or universal applicability of the articles
- 25% of you said the concrete practical information, tips and resources – especially “How Tos”
- 19% of you said you liked the new materials, fresh ideas – and ways to use tools
- 9.5% of you liked our energy, customer service and willingness to share
- 9% of you liked the shortness of the articles
- 5% of you said everything!
- And then there were many other individual likes including specific tools (many of you appreciated the wheel!) saving you time and effort, powerful questions, quotes, getting your questions answered and more.
5. What do you want more of?
- 28% of you said Tools (to help you get ideas, to use in session, start conversations or for workshops)
- 15% of you said Free Tools!
- 8% of you said Ideas, inspiration and new perspectives
- 6% of you said Concrete Tools and Information and how to use them
- 6% of you said Powerful Questions and prompts
- And a few of you suggested guest writers for different perspectives. Watch this space!
6. How can we help you more?
Wow – you have some really great ideas! For specific topic and subject requests see the next question. See below for the key themes where you said you would like more help:
- Tools, more tools, ways to use them, how to use them most effectively, how to use them in groups (we’ve already started covering some of these so hope you like it!)
- Tools to help build your business
- Marketing ideas and help (although some of you said you DIDN’T want this!)
- More sharing and camaraderie AND to be able to ask questions! Tip: Visit and like our Facebook Page and ask your questions there. Please help out/reply to other people’s questions too! I’d love to see more dialogue, support, sharing and camaraderie!)
- Create some “apps” or interactive tools. This is on our ideas list too!
- A framework for working with clients from start to finish!
- Powerful questions to help clients open up and look within
- Mentoring
7. Topics you wanted to know more about?
Well, there was a HUGE variety of suggestions – nearly 150 of them and about 80 different ones! And as many of you specifically like the variety and breadth of what we cover this is great! Roughly in order, the key themes were:
- Coaching Tools, Activities & Exercises – especially for ideas, inspiration and practical “How Tos”
- Marketing, Sales & Business Building (including getting started, niching, enrolling clients, effective marketing, conveying your message and more!)
Tip: We have 2 articles from our back catalogue on niching here >>.
- Questions, Questioning Skills, Techniques and Powerful conversations.
Tip: Click on a “Category” in the sidebar to get all our back articles with a category of “Coaching Questions” or ”Questioning Skills”. Here’s just one of our articles tagged “Coaching Questions”: 5 Catch-all Questions To Ask When You Freeze and Can’t Think What To Say Next!
- Career and Business Coaching Tools
- Motivation and Focus
- Building Rapport and Trust
- Goal-Setting, Visioning, Dreaming
- Values and Beliefs - by the way, we recently did a short series of articles on Values starting here >>
- NLP, neuroscience, emotional intelligence
- A number of specific coaching areas including coaching Groups, Teens, Parents, Confidence, Leadership, Executives and more!
- Putting together a Client Packet – how, what to go in, steps to take when you get hired!
- Learning from other people’s mistakes and Case Studies (although an equal number of you said you didn’t want case studies!)
In Summary
I hope you found that as interesting and helpful as I did! Some of you said that our newsletter/blog helped you to feel that “you’re not alone”. And hopefully reading the survey results, you felt that too.
I’m excited – we have already begun to plan and implement some of these changes. Thank-you for your valuable time and input.
So, if you think we’ve missed something important, or you feel you have something to add to the information above, please email us OR comment below – we’d LOVE to hear from you!
AND lastly – we’ll be announcing the lucky survey winner of OUR ENTIRE CATALOGUE of COACHING TOOLS! on our Facebook Page very soon. Watch this space!
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 In part 2 of this article I’m going to share with you 5 specific exercises I have regularly used in workshop situations – and why. I’ve tried to pick the most universal coaching exercises, and as mentioned in part 1 of this article on using coaching tools in workshops, remember to get people into groups to work through exercise sections or brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other.
5 Specific Coaching Tools & Exercises for Awesome Workshops:
- “Energy Zappers” or “Tolerations (Free Tool)”. People are stressed, tired and overwhelmed. So, help your workshop attendees identify where their energy is being zapped or where they are being drained by things they are tolerating. After they identify their “Energy Zappers” or “Tolerations” it’s good to help people see which ones they can make a difference on right away. And MAKE SURE they leave the workshop with an action to boost their energy!
Workshop Applications: Life-Balance, Health and Wellness, Self-Care, Moms and Parent Coaching (more energy helps us have more patience and time for our children), De-Stressing especially in the Business, Executive or Career Coaching worlds.
- “Urgent/Important Matrix”. People are busy – and there is just more and more to fit into each day. Facebook, Twitter, the latest gripping TV shows and the internet has provided us with countless ways to spend time – jumping from one thing to the next. People often don’t have an awareness around how they are spending – and wasting – their time. The Urgent-Important Matrix is a classic tool that quickly brings people to an awareness of the difference between important, urgent and how we get caught up doing urgent things (or time wasters) and don’t make time for the important things – and then the important things become urgent – an endless, tiring cycle.
Workshop Applications: Time Management (of course) and Life Balance (they may need to get more organized). Great for Business, Career and Executive Coaches although executives may already be aware of this tool – in which case the “Action-Priority Matrix” is a good progression! ALSO, can be a great concept for Mom and Parent Coaching – helping people organize their time better and turn time “wasting” into constructive self-care time…
- Meditation/Creative Visualisations. Well, we know people are busy and stressed. And we also know that people are not making the time to ponder, sit still and reflect. Most people, once they’re doing it, find meditation relaxing and calming. And then there are some people who love the idea, but can’t bring themselves to sit still – or find it hard to prioritise amongst their many other tasks and activities. Bringing meditation or creative visualisation into a seminar can be a great way to help people (re)experience the benefits for themselves.
Workshop Applications: Life-Balance, Self-Care and Health and Wellness Seminars. Use to brainstorm ideas, help people connect to themselves or meet their ‘wise’ selves for inspiration, support and encouragement, help people get into their bodies and get distance from their inner critics, understand the benefits of pondering and reflection time. Also use simple, short guided meditation in the business world to help workshop attendees calm down and get creative.
- The Wheel of Life (Free Tool) Boring? I don’t think so – The Wheel of Life has SO many different applications and even if people have done it before, the scores are always different depending on their life-situations and how they’re feeling.
Workshop Applications: No matter what realm of coaching you’re in, or what subject you’re covering, if you’re EVER stuck for an exercise, get a blank wheel of life and adapt it to your attendees’ situations. You may find this article 12 Awesome New Ways To Use The Wheel of Life in Your Coaching Practice helpful to get you started with just a few ideas of how the wheel can be adapted!
- “Mentor Magic” or “Role Model Review”. People are often busy admiring others without realizing that we can’t recognize a quality in someone else unless we have that capability ourselves… “Mentor Magic” identifies mentors to give people career-building advice and “Role Model Review” inspires people to model and take action to integrate the qualities they admire in others.
Workshop Applications: Careers Workshops, Youth Coaching, Confidence Workshops or any workshop where people feel stuck and you’d like another angle to find solutions (what would someone they admire do in a situation). I have used this with great success in both Confidence Building Workshops, and Stress Management workshops with Teens.
You may also like some of our *FREE* Seminar-Related Coaching Forms like the Action Brainstorming Worksheet, Seminar Feedback Form and more!
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For me the essence of coaching is change, whether it’s something we do – or the way we think. Therefore I think it’s essential that people leave our coaching workshops with at least one action – and new perspectives. From the very beginning I used coaching tools and worksheets in workshops – handouts where people wrote down learnings about themselves and identified actions.
Because we all know that something happens when we take thoughts out of our heads and speak them aloud – or put them on paper. The form or worksheet provides a way to help people ‘see’ clearly what is going on inside of them. And then, when they take the form home, it becomes something they can refer back to. And remember to have your contact details on there so that if they have any questions or would like to follow-up, people know how to get in touch!
Now, one of the biggest things I learned early on about running workshops was that people didn’t want to hear me speak (much!). What I found from using this seminar feedback form available *free* here – was that people wanted to interact with each other more.
What I realized was that in a workshop, just like coaching, people learn best when they figure it out for themselves.
So I continued to use coaching exercises and forms as worksheets, but instead of me talking and then people filling out the appropriate part of the worksheet, I said less and put people into groups to develop their own answers and deeper learnings. I then got the groups to share their learnings/observations/thoughts with the entire group. And only THEN would I ask them to complete the corresponding part of the worksheets. I found so much richness – learning, re-inforcement, realising we are not alone – comes out of these discussions, that now I won’t do workshops any other way.
<< Less of this And more of this >>  
Workshops at work and in business: When the workshop is in a work context I have to be especially aware of politics, and issues around personal sharing. And depending on the client I may share more information (talk more!) as well as provide a ‘pure information’ handout in addition to the coaching exercises to summarise the key learnings. But it’s still the group discussion where people take a concept or learning and through listening, reflection and feedback with others, make it their own. And I always follow that with a coaching worksheet for them to summarise and clarify their thoughts and learnings.
In the beginning I did a lot of free workshops. Doing free workshops was a fantastic way for me to build an email list, fans and clients. The seminar feedback form I mentioned asks for their email address AND asks if they would like a consultation. It also asks for testimonials – which I collected for my website. I learned so much about running seminars – that by the time I was paid to run seminars I was confident and able to deliver.
So, whatever worksheet exercise or tool you use, it should EMPOWER your attendees – leave them feeling better about themselves or their situation. This can be done by ensuring they always have at least one action to take away or by sharing a helpful new perspective on themselves, their life situation or the world.
In part 2 of this article I’m going to share with you the specific exercises I like best to use in a workshop situation and why.
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 Hi there,
This survey is now closed. You responded amazingly! Thank-you all for your time – we really appreciate it and once we’ve reviewed the results – we’ll be making changes to help you more!
Interested in the results? Check them out: Our First Ever Survey Results – We Asked How Can We Help You More?
We will also summarise your responses on the blog for you soon so you can see what everyone has been saying.
If you read our blog or get our newsletter – we’d love to know what you think – and how we can help you more! Please take our short survey here >> and tell us!
And enter your email address for a chance to win our ENTIRE Catalogue of Coaching Tools!
Thank-you – your time and thoughts are greatly appreciated.
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For our clients, working with a coach involves a commitment of time, money and energy – and for some it also takes a great deal of courage. A good enrolment process should leave your client feeling they’ve made a wise choice hiring a coach and that YOU were the right choice.
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