Developing products should be at the forefront of every coach's mind. Coaches that develop products are significantly more successful than coaches that don't. A product is a packaged and branded educational resource. Your product should be targeted to a niche group, and be focussed on solving their specific problems. Your product can be packaged and delivered in a variety of ways.

Popular coaching-related products include: eBooks, eCourses, Mini-Courses, Podcasts, Workshops, Seminars, Tele-Clinics, Audio Programs, Webinars, etc.

Benefits

Coaches who develop educational products are well aware of the schedule of added benefits behind the package. Following are some examples:

Increased Credibility. Delivering high quality, branded products to your niche is one of the most powerful means to build your credibility. There is virtually no other way to accelerate your perception as an expert in your niche.

Improve your networks. Authorities in your niche are usually very willing to assist and participate in the development of products that assist their industry. Networking with these authorities will give you an immediate, highly leveraged entry into your niche. It will open many doors to Joint Ventures; list sharing! ; public forums; group meetings; etc.

You'll become less reliant on your time. As a coach, what is your commodity? When everything is distilled down, what are you selling? Coaching? No. Happiness? No. Success? No. Health? No. You are selling your time! Time is your commodity. And when time is your commodity and you are reliant on selling your time, you! r income potential is extremely limited. You can only realistically work 8-hours a day. So the only way to earn more money is to charge more. There is a limit to how much you can charge. And when you stop selling your time (go on holidays with your family; get sick), your income stops.

Products are your escape from being time reliant.By commercialising products you rely less on time as your commodity.

Move from one-to-one to one-to-many. Most coaches sell one-to-one coaching as their core service. This restricts your time, and also limits your commercial reach. Commercialising products allows you to leverage your intellectual property by 10, 100, 1000 times. You can be selling hundreds of eBooks; eCourse; tele-clinic seats; pe! r week. Now that's how to leverage your knowledge and time!

Applications

Once you have products, how can you put them to use for maximum affect? We'll now investigate some ways you can use your products to increase enquiries; conversions and sales.

Building your list. In a previous edition of Coaching Inspirations, we discussed the sales funnel, and how important it is to get as many qualified prospects in the top of your funnel as possible. Using your products is a highly leveraged means to do this. Here are a few examples:

- Offer a free eBook as an incentive to join an online club; eZine; newsletter.

- Let people download a "Special Report" after subscribing to your list.

- Mention your list (education-based) on your tele-clinic call.

- Gather business cards or contacts at your seminar.

Loss Leader. You know by now the net marginal worth of your clients, and hence how much you can afford to invest at the front-end on acquiring a client. A strategy to attain client contracts is to use a 'loss leader'. This means you make a financial loss at the front-end, knowing you'll make gains over the term of the! life of your client. For instance, you may give away free vouchers to a group coaching workshop to members of your niche. This may cost you $100 per attendee. However, you get 90% of attendees into the top of your funnel; 30% of the them to level 2 within 3-months; 20% to level 3 within 6-months. The net result may be a $1,750 gain over 6-12 months per attendee.

Value-add. Products are an excellent way to value-add your services. For instance, you may use a 6-week ticket to your specialist tele-clinic as an incentive to upsell prospects from a 3-month contract to a 6-month contract.

Referral. Your products can be an excellent tool to incentivise referrals. You may go to the prospects in your funnel and say to them "We know you enjoy the information we provide you, and we're sure you know other that would benefit from it. If you put us in touch with these people, as a thank-you we'll give you this! XYZ product."

JV Incentives. Products are an excellent way to provide incentives for joint ventures. For instance, just say you approach a gym or a health spa, and undertake some cooperative marketing. They write to their members and inform them that for a limited time they can go to your website and download a free special report ! "How To Overcome The 7 Biggest Barriers To You Achieving Your Fitness Goals, by specialist life coach ABC." To download the report they have to give you their name and email address.

Conversion. You can use your products to improve conversion and shorten conversion time lines. For instance, offer your product as a value-add to a core service for a limited time.

Have you developed your coaching products yet?