online coach right for you

Rise Above The Sales Pitch: How To Tell If An Online Coach Can Actually Help You

13 May 2019 | by Gina Lucia

Creating your business or personal brand and putting it out into the world takes guts. You’ve spent hours moulding your creativity, passions and skills into an online business. The aim, I presume, is for this business to give you something in return. Perhaps money, fulfilment, security, or all of the above?

So when it comes to promoting and sharing it with the people of the world, you want to make sure you’re doing it in the most efficient and least stressful way possible, right?

Perfect. In steps the online coach to answer all your questions with clever sales pitches, enticing freebies and ‘value’ drenched webinars. They provide secret techniques, five-step formulas and copy and paste templates that you can use to ‘skyrocket your growth’, ‘amplify your profits’ and ‘rapidly grow your whatevermetric’.

What could be better?

What could be better than having somebody else provide you with the key to online business success with profits just around the corner? All for the one-time payment of £397 or 5 monthly instalments of £87.

Okay, so I’m being a little harsh. But tell me you don’t recognise any of the sales jargon I’ve used above. Of course you have, because you’ve been targeted by Facebook ads every day. You’ve clicked on an article hoping to get answers and parted with your email to get more. You’ve experienced all of this because it’s extremely hard to avoid. Even when you know psychology is being used to manipulate your brain into parting with your money, you still do it anyway because the pull is strong and you know you need help.

There we go, I’ve said my piece. Let me be clear though, online coaches perform a good function. They can help get you to where you need to be. They can, in fact, guide you to making the best decisions for your business and be the support network you may not currently have.

However, we have developed a new style of delivering that coaching. One that creates one product, course, series of videos etc and distributes it to the masses. This cookie-cutter technique is appealing on many levels. It offers the coach the ability to package their knowledge and skills to reach more people. It allows the customer to pay less than they would for one-on-one coaching and get seemingly similar results.

Sounds great on the surface. But when you apply this to your very complicated and intricate business, with a very deep and unique person at the helm, it makes it very difficult to see the results that were promised to you in the sales pitch. What’s more, if you don’t get the same results promised, it’s common knowledge that it’s likely your fault for not putting in the work. Oh hello again, burnout.

Is this online coach right for me?

So with all the coaches out there, with all their information products and courses, how do we make the right decision? How do we make sure that the money we are parting with, will serve us in the long run?

Because let’s be honest about this, getting help is a good thing. As long as it’s from the right people.

Having personally paid for group memberships, online courses, workbooks and more over the past few years, I’ve developed the following series of questions you can ask yourself (‘they’ refers to the coach, course, membership, download, etc):

Note: This can and should be adapted to you and your business

  1. Are they promising increased money/profits? Scrutinise this. Are they using it just to get you to buy? Do they include ‘you must put the work in’, or some variation, in the small print?
  2. Have they spent more time on the sales page than the actual product?
  3. How many ‘sales techniques’ have they used? Did they use a countdown timer, a free webinar, Facebook ads, limited time offers?
  4. Will their techniques actually fit your business? What kind of business model do you have? Do you want to follow their 5-step formula to get the results they’re promising? If you do, you will likely have to commit to it.
  5. Do their values align with yours? They may have made X amount of money the last time they launched something, but does how they did it, align with you? Do they overwork themselves? Do they promote things you don’t support?

I know the feeling of desperation. At the time you’re looking for answers, you’re stressed, you want to make your business work so you can create the life you’ve always wanted. It’s at this point you think you find the answer in the coach who’s five steps ahead of you and willing to give you those answers.

It’s now that you must take time to make the right decision for you and your business. That coach may be able to help you, but only if you rise above the sales pitches, align your values, the values of your business and make a decision for you, and only you.

I’d love to hear your opinion. Did this resonate with you? What’s your experience been like? Do you disagree with anything in this post? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss.

Featured Photo by Raechel Romero

4 Comments

  1. Morgan Jo

    13th May 2019 at 7:09 PM

    Great post!

    I think there are so many people out there feeling confused in their business and personal lives that they look anywhere for help…. and unfortunately fall prey to some pretty gross tactics of dishonest people.

    I think as introverts, we’re more likely to fall prey because we’re less likely to reach out to our near friends and family for help, so an online coach always seems like a better alternative.

    I recently had a friend get ‘taken’ by one of these online coaches and it was tragic to watch it unfold.

    I think you’re spot on to have people analyze the online coach AND how they fit with your business & morals.

    Keep it up, this was amazing!

    • Gina Lucia

      14th May 2019 at 9:43 AM

      Thank you so much! Yes you’re right, using a coach online is probably a viable option for introverts, but it can backfire. I guess it would be useful to use our skills at picking the right friends to have in our lives, to also pick the right coaches/advice we have in our lives too.

  2. Vee

    14th May 2019 at 5:17 PM

    This definitely resonates with me because I have been the person looking for answers and I have also been the person trying to give them. Not by coaching by any means but just explaining to my customers how important it is to have good graphics to bring new viewers to their websites.

    Love this post so of course I had to share it! Thanks for sharing this with us.

    • Gina Lucia

      15th May 2019 at 8:52 AM

      Thank you so much Vee, that means a lot!

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