Coaches and consultants need new clients.

There are a few ways they get these clients.

• From among those who already know them.
• Past clients and customers referring to new clients.
• By running ads.
• By doing cold outreach.
• Through inbound interest.

Personal contacts can be a good starting point but you can’t sustain a business based on that.

Referrals work great but they can’t give enough business if the existing client pool is not big enough.

Ads are scalable but they take time to get right and eat into profits if you run them on cold traffic.

Cold outreach is tough and not everyone knows how to do it right.

Inbound is the best way to get clients because such clients come to you after already knowing, looking, and trusting you. So it takes less effort to show your value or to price your offering based on the value you give to them.

Everyone can create inbound and that is what every coach and consultant should work towards.

What a coach and consultant should do to get new clients

You just have to share knowledge consistently and gain the attention and win the trust of those who see what you share.

Start with only one platform. LinkedIn is the best in terms of how fast you can get traction and how simple it is to do it there. 

Aim to post 100 words text posts every single weekday, as these work best on LinkedIn. Mix it up by doing a few longer posts about your journey and struggles. Also, do a few carousels, look up what they are on LinkedIn. 

After doing it for about 100 days you will have the attention of early members of part of your audience. Now divert some of that attention to what you sell.

From time to time, tell people what you have to offer.

You can also make an offer for a discovery/consultation call. At the end of the call ask if they found value. Ask those who say yes, if they’d like to work with you.

For someone who is in the early stages of their career as a coach or consultant, it is tough to find time to post useful content. Even when time is there, it is best spent on client engagement.

To make it easy to stick to this plan, hire an intern to polish the content and post it for you. Set aside a few hours once a month to put together the content for 20 or so posts and from there let the intern take over.

If you continue doing it for a year, you’ll have so much inbound lead flow that you’ll not have to look elsewhere for clients. The key is to do it consistently.

If you plan to hire a team later and grow your business then you can run ads and with the visibility and brand you would have built with your audience, the ads will convert better and cost less than if no one knew you.