Coaching Sales Funnel Guide: 10x Your Sales in 5 Steps

Do you want to make more sales and get more consistent clients in your coaching business? Then you need to consider creating a coaching sales funnel.

Coaching sales funnels are a very important element of any business looking to work smarter in earning a sustainable income online.

In a nutshell, it is an illustration of the entire process or journey that a new lead has to take to become a client for a business.

Especially for coaching businesses sales funnels are extremely necessary.

Why Do You Need a Coaching Sales funnel?

As an online coach, you’re most likely trading time for money.

Since time is such a valuable asset, most coaches are able to charge premium prices easily.

This is why it’s so easy to see new coaching programs selling for $1000 or more.

With that much pricing leverage comes huge responsibility.

You’re going to need to convince your potential clients that you are worth the pay.

It is easy for buyers to splurge on a low-ticket program or material since it doesn’t cost that much.

The case is quite different for high-ticket products like a 1:1 coaching program.

Trust me, no one will randomly buy your program just because you pitched it.

So this is where the real work comes in.

One of the most important factors for making consistent high ticket sales is your credibility and trust score.

So basically the more people trust you, the more they will be willing to spend on your programs.

Building trust and credibility online can be very hard but that is the whole point of funnels.

Coaching sales funnels are a series of sales stages that you build out for potential clients.

The goal of the coaching sales funnel is to take your potential clients step-by-step through these stages with the goal of getting them to trust you more and feel safe investing in your program.

You’ve probably heard of the saying “people buy from people they know, like, and trust”

So the main aim of your funnel is to build that know, like, and trust factor.

There are so many ways to create a functional coaching sales funnel for your business and thankfully it doesn’t have to be complex.

Just as long as it has intentional stages that your potential clients have to go through to build know, like and trust, you will be just fine.

On that note, your coaching Funnel can be as simple as a Facebook group you’ve created to nurture your potential clients.

Or as complex as an email sequence you set up to promote an evergreen webinar that sells your program.

The 3 Crucial Stages of Every Coaching Sales Funnel

No matter the route you choose to go with your coaching sales funnel, these are the 3 stages you will need to keep in mind. .

1. The Awareness Stage:

In the stage of your coaching sales funnel, your potential clients are just about finding out that your brand even exists.

This stage can come in different forms e.g

• a new follower you get on social media
• or a unique website visitor reading your blog.

Basically, this is the stage where you will be generating traffic and leads.

As you already know, traffic is the lifeblood of any business even today.

It is therefore important to build a consistent lead generation system in order to keep your funnels consistently at work.

Thanks to the internet, there are so many ways to generate leads.

For starters, you can even read this post on lead Generation for coaches to get started.

Remember no traffic, no sales.

2. The Interest Stage

In this stage of a funnel, you will be building interest around your program.

You want to be able to get potential clients interested and pumped about your programs.

There are so many ways to go about this depending on the type of Funnel you’ve decided on building, but the goal here is to build trust.

The stage is also known as the nurturing stage where you will be grooming your leads to see the need for your programs.

This will in turn increase the chances that they say YES when you make the pitch to sell your programs.

3. The Decision Stage

Once you’ve built enough Trust, you need to make the pitch.

Where most coaches get it all wrong, is in offering so much value in the nurturing stage, only to leave their sales in the hands of chance.

The truth is that, if you want sales, you’re going to need to ask for it.

Sure, it is quite possible to get little sales here and there, by hinting at your programs while you offer free value, but that is not quite sustainable.

So if you want more sales, you need to set in place a system to ask for it.

How To Create Your Coaching Sales Funnel

Step 1: Define your target audience

The goal of every funnel is to attract leads and convert them to sales.

Studies have shown that for every 100 leads that join your funnel, you get at least 4 clients at a 4% conversion rate.

This number decreases significantly when you target the wrong audience.

To make more sales in your funnels, you need to be attracting leads who are most likely going to convert to sales.

It’s more about the quality of your leads and less about the quantity.

On this note, it only makes sense that the first step you take in building your coaching sales funnel is defining your target audience.

So who is your ideal client?

Make sure you make a detailed description of them before you move on to the next step.

Step 2: Create a Lead Magnet

The whole point of your funnel is to get your potential clients to be part of your inner circle.

This way you can build credibility, offer special value and in the long run, convert them to sales.

While it’s okay to leverage tools like Lives, stories, and featured sections, provided by most marketing platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, you are better off taking your leads to a circle you can predict.

This could be a Facebook group, your email list, or even your close friends’ list on IG.

While creating a specific place to nurture your leads as opposed to sticking with your general audience will slash the number of potential clients you get into two, it is still a well-advised strategy.

When you have your leads where you want them to be, you will be able to create intentional content pieces to nurture them to become sales for your business.

Now the real question:

How do you get people to take the extra step in joining your nurturing circle? E.g

• From Instagram to a Facebook group
• From your blog to an email list.

It’s simple, you need a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is a free resource you give potential clients to get them hooked on joining your inner circle.

This could be as easy as a free checklist, ebook, or mini-course that provides them with some form of value.

How this works is that for your leads to get their hands on your lead magnet, they would need to join your nurturing circle.

If you have done a good job in creating a no-brainer lead magnet, you shouldn’t have any problem in getting your followers to opt in for your inner circle.

Step 3: Consider Email Marketing

While there are so many ways to build a coaching sales funnel, there is one strategy that no business should neglect.

The strategy is called Email Marketing.

No matter how you choose to nurture your leads to sales, you need to be implementing email Marketing in your business.

So let’s say you choose to host a free workshop on your Facebook group with the hopes of pitching your one-on-one services at the end, you will still need email marketing.

The reason why email marketing is so powerful is because of its predictability.

So you invited 1,000 people to your Facebook workshop but left it up to the Facebook algorithm to alert members of your workshop, here is what’s gonna happen

The Facebook algorithm will most definitely do a bad job of notifying your leads, leading to you getting fewer attendees than your actual sign-ups.

On the other hand, let’s say you collected the email addresses of your potential workshop attendees and made sure to send them a reminder before your workshop went live…

Then, you will most likely get a huge chunk of your sign-ups to show up for the workshop.

With how easy it is to set up email marketing for your business, you don’t have any excuse for you shouldn’t be using email Marketing for your coaching business.

Asides from the fact that you own your list and can market to them anytime, your email list will be an asset for your business in the long run.

Feel free to read this guide on email marketing for coaches to learn the basics of email marketing today.

Step 4: Plan out a sales journey

Your sales journey is basically your sales funnel and so in this stage of building out your coaching sales funnel, you will be planning out specific stages involved for the type of funnel you’ve chosen.

As I mentioned earlier, your funnels can be simple or complex just as long as it has the three crucial stages as mentioned above, you should be on the right track.

So there are so many ways you can plan out the sales journey for your specific coaching problem.

Notwithstanding what route you choose, the end goal should be people getting people to sign up for your coaching program.

Below are some of the different sales journeys to consider for your coaching program

A. Facebook group Funnel

For this sales journey, you will be sending your traffic over to a Facebook group.

Once you have them in your group, you can double down on your nurturing strategy and go live every other day in your group.

This will help you relate with your leads on a 1:1 level and build a strong connection with them.

B. Webinar funnel

With this funnel, the goal is to get your leads to attend a webinar you’ve created to offer value and help them solve a real problem but also get them hyped about joining your paid program.

The key here is to master the art of creating high-converting webinars, this way you can maximize the number of sales you get.

You can also collect the email address of your leads to further entice them to join your program.

C. Instagram Funnel

Instagram on its own is a powerful standalone platform to nurture your leads effortlessly to sales.

With its intuitive sales tools, you can be generating leads and convert them to sales right on the platform.

Here’s a brief illustration of how an Instagram sales funnel will look.

1. Get followers from the explore page or viral reels
2. Have intentional highlights and pinned posts to build intrigue about your programs
3. Post intentional stories to nurture your leads. (Use the link stickers to soft sell your programs)
4. Go live regularly and think of it like a mini-webinar.
5. Hard sell your programs at least once a month.

D. Email funnel

Email funnels are the most common types of funnels and probably one of the easiest to pull off.

Here, you will be building a laser-focused list of your potential clients and building out an automated sequence to nurture them to sales.

There are so many perks to email marketing in comparison to most of the other funnel types.

1. You own your list and no algorithm can limit your reach as long as you follow the spam regulations.
2. You can integrate your email funnel into almost any type of funnel to 10x your conversions.
3. You can fully automate your email funnel and have sequences that drive sales for your business on autopilot.

If you are pumped about the power of email marketing, feel free to read our beginner’s guide to email marketing for coaches.

One thing you will notice about all of these different kinds of funnels is that they all have the three crucial stages every funnel should have.

So get creative and plan out a sales journey that fits your specific goal and program.

Step 5: Start Driving Traffic

Once you have your sales funnel up and running, you need to start sending in traffic.

If you want to see more sales in your business there are two ways to go about it.

• Drive traffic
• Maximize existing traffic

Either way, you’re going to need traffic if you want to make more sales.

So your daily focus should be less on tweaking your funnels for maximum conversions and more on driving traffic to the funnel.

This could be as simple as showing up consistently on Instagram or maybe creating one valuable blog post every other week.

You can also try using paid ads to drive traffic to your funnel.

If you are new and just starting out, you’re better off sticking with organic marketing strategies.

This will allow you to test the different elements of your funnels, see what works best and double down on that.

Once you have a proven funnel that makes you a consistent income, you can then choose to run paid ads since you are guaranteed to make a profit.

Tips for creating high-converting funnels

1. Sell smarter, not harder

Gone are the days when you could just run crappy ads to your funnels, gather a list of leads, promote your offers like crazy, and make a lot of sales.

Nowadays that buyers have become much more sophisticated and so you’re going to need to sell smarter and not harder.

In this day and age, the new strategy is intentional content marketing.

If you’ve ever heard of the concept of soft selling, then you know what I’m talking about.

Soft selling is a strategy that involves selling without selling.

That might sound so insane but it’s possible.

You can create content with the aim of selling and make it seem as though you’re not selling.

This strategy is the reason why some coaches are able to make six figures per month while others struggle to even get a consistent number of clients per month.

To make consistent sales years back, you would have host massive launches over and over again.

This can be very stressful and time-consuming.

Thanks to soft selling, just need the right type of content to make consistent sales in your business.

Some examples of Soft sell content to add in your content strategy include:

• Sharing testimonials and real results to get potential clients hyped about the potential your program has in their lives.

• Sharing snippets of your paid coaching with clients, so people can see the value in store for them

These content pieces will help you build interest in your coaching program without even having to pitch it hard.

Even so by creating more of these content pieces, you will be able to promote your programs without burning out your audience.

For more of these sales-driven content ideas, feel free to check out this post with 16 creative soft-sell content ideas for coaches.

2. Add a human factor

People buy from people and so by adding a human element to your brand and funnels, you can potentially 10x your conversions.

With the increasing rate of spam and fraud on the internet, people are a lot more conscious of how they spend money online.

On this note, you should try as much as possible to build trust with potential clients.

One of the best ways to do this is by putting a face to the name.

So instead of showing up on social media with your branded logo and graphics, you’re better off using a relatable photo of yourself.

This way people can see the face behind the brand they love, build relationships with you and feel much safer investing in your programs.

3. Show up consistently

The last tip I have for you is to stay consistent.

The easiest way to explain this is by using the compounding effect.

The more often you show up on your social media page or blog, you build momentum.

Months from now you’d have made a name for yourself in your industry and will have established yourself as an industry expert.

Now guess what?
It’s going to be a lot easier to get consistent sales when you’ve built authority in your specific industry.

This is because, at this point, your community and social proof will be doing the selling for you.

When a new lead lands on your page and sees the huge number of followers you’ve built and an engaged community on your page, they are more likely to trust your brand.

It then becomes so easy to convert them to sales, because they most likely already see you as an expert.

So whenever you think of giving up and not showing up to give value to your audience, think of the compounding effect it could have on your business.

Conclusion

Coaching funnels are an extremely important element of any successful coaching business.

While I know it can be really hard to build a coaching sales funnel that works magic for your sales and revenue, it’s well worth it.

Hopefully, this guide is enough to get you pumped about building a converting funnel for your business, but just in case you encounter any issues, I’m always here to help.

Book your free audit call here to get a brief strategy session to answer specific questions you might have about building out an effective sales funnel.

This session is also perfect if you already have an existing funnel and need to hear an expert’s take on what you could be doing better.

FAQs on Creating a Coaching Sales Funnel