Over the last several posts, we’ve been looking at a concept I call stretching the gap. This is so crucial to the sales process that skipping it usually results in you pushing your program too hard on a prospect who’s just not that interested.
They end up making excuses why they can’t buy, and you end up wasting your time and missing out on a sale.
Obviously, that’s not what we’re after.
Lots of sales processes are pain-focused. You dig for the pain, find the pain, and use the pain to sell your program. These processes can be great and they have merit, but it’s even more powerful to start with a vision of the end result and contrast it with their current reality.
I call this process of contrasting stretching the gap. In the last post, we talked about the first step: painting the picture. This is when we help our prospects get really clear about where they want to go.
To get our prospects eager to buy from us, we need to stretch the gap between their desired result and their current reality. What exactly does that mean?
Stretching the gap involves three main steps. We need to identify:
So, the first step is to get them really clear about where they want to go.
I want to show you the quickest way to a million dollars a year.
I’m here in Sydney doing the Million Dollar Coach Intensive with some legends, and we’re just talking about the quickest way to get your coaching business to a million dollars a year using the tool called, the 5 Ones.
The quickest way to get to a million dollars a year got this idea from a friend of mine,
Your marketing is starting to pay off, and what was once a prospect is now a solid lead. Before you know it, you’re in the sales meeting, pitching your coaching program.
There are hundreds of strategies out there that claim to “guarantee the sale,” but I’ve found there’s one strategy that stands out above the rest.
I call it stretching the gap, and I believe it’s an absolutely essential part of the sales process.
How many words is a picture worth, again? I can’t seem to remember.
I honestly don’t know what’s more annoying: hearing that overused phrase one more time, or knowing I constantly need to be reminded of the wisdom in it.
We are all visual people — some of us more so than others, but the fact remains. We know how powerful pictures can be.
Why is it, then, that we become completely blind to this truth when developing our coaching models?
There’s something you should know before you take another step forward with your marketing: Your prospects don’t give a damn about you or your business.
They don’t care who you are, what you’ve done, or how well your coaching business is going… at first, anyways.
When you first reach out to clients, they care about themselves and their problems. That’s it.
The only way we can hope to break through is to empathize with them and connect with their cravings so they feel like we see them better than anyone else in the world.
For a coaching model to be successful, it must meet the needs of four key stakeholders.
It must work for you, your prospects, your clients, and the coaching business as a whole. Without meeting the needs of all four, you’ll inevitably run into serious problems.
In the last post, we talked about meeting your needs before we take care of our prospects or clients.
Now we’ll take a look at meeting our prospects’ needs.
You’ve just stowed your bag in the overhead bin and you’re squeezing into your seat, struggling to find the right end of the seat belt buckle.
Then you hear the flight attendant start the safety speech you’ve heard a thousand times. You almost hear yourself reciting it along with her…
“In the event of a drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will appear from the unit above. Secure your own mask first before assisting children…”
As coaches,
I’ve realized that nearly every business model is based on the idea of keeping four key stakeholders happy. This is where it all begins. For a model to work, it has to meet the needs of all four. Let me explain.
The first and most important stakeholder is you. Our goal is to build a business model that you love and gives you exactly what you need. It needs to give you the money,