Are challenges a good way to get clients?
How do you know what the best way is? It depends on what works for your personality too, but I’ll share my insights as to why I share other strategies with my clients first as well as an idea for you on what to do instead.
This is how you decide if free challenges are worth it. I used to hold workshops at the University of Sydney, pay $100 for the room, and convert five clients on the spot.
My clients have run challenges before they were my clients, so I know conversion rates based on their results.
Here’s why I don’t use challenges myself:
Challenges serve one purpose.
It shows a client what you are like to work with, so it breaks the trust barrier between the client and yourself.
If I’m honest, this is exactly why coaches do it: to let their clients try working with them in bulk, which is perfectly okay and a great idea.
- It also shows clients what you do and how you do it.
- It shares more about you and tells a few success stories you have had with clients.
- As well as more about your wins.
- It’s very you focused.
Here’s the thing with getting clients who completely don’t know and converting them to want to work with you, based on my 16 years in sales and 15 years of learning the human mindset:
It takes two things.
- 1) for you to show them you understand them better than anyone else.
- 2) for you to get them the results.
These are more important reasons why clients buy, although the two above are critical.
A 5-day challenge isn’t enough for a large number of clients to want to work with you, as at any given time, only 3% of the market is in the ready-to-buy phase and 97% is in the research phase. This is 70–80% of your attendees. One of the primary issues with free challenges is their low conversion rates. Offering a free challenge may attract a large number of participants, but it does not necessarily translate into paying clients.
Why does this matter?
The not-ready-to-buy ones are still looking around; they may have fears or concerns. limiting beliefs and obstacles getting in the way of them wanting to be helped. A challenge doesn’t address this, as it really needs to be high-value to get participants to stay for the full duration, where you can do your sales pitch at the end.
There are several reasons clients may not be ready to buy.
1) Timing
2) Bad experiences in the past
3) Recent challenges in their personal lives
4) Limiting assumptions
5) They see success, or what your results get them, as dangerous. (as part experiences shows them its bad will bring pain to them. For example, if you’re a love coach (see what I mean), they saw money as the cause of their parents frustration, so when they go to make the final decision, they will pause.
Can you see this as a problem with conversion rates?
Then once the challenge is over, because you have used this time to address tips and tricks, this content isn’t enough to get clients to covert after the challenge is done, so you’ll have to keep running them over and over. Yes, I get that you share value and client results. This isn’t why people buy things or make decisions to invest money.
Also, here is why your conversions won’t be super high and why most people who offer challenges need to offer a payment plan to get a lot of signups:
You run a challenge for 5 days of your course; yes, it can be prerecorded and you can use it again, but did you know that to close them, every single person on the call still needs a call to do the majority of the closing?
Your challenge goes for 1–2 hours x 5 days. Your rate of about $100 per hour x 5 = $1000. The $1000 you have paid to run this challenge to possibly get three clients
Plus Your staff costs will increase as you’ll need to make calls to close the sale. If 50 of them jump on a call, that’s 50 hours of calls for them to not even be prequalified as to which phase in the buyer’s journey they are.
50 calls are $100 per hour for $5000, so your cost so far is $6000 to get 50 people on a call and have 5 people sign up.
Unless you sell at a super high price—$5000 and above—it will be worth it. Although getting a client to pay this via challenge requires some skills not listed here,
Here’s an example: if you sell a $2000 package, $2000 x 4 people is $8000, and you spend 30 days stressing over it to make $2000, you make $66 per day, and your hourly rate is $100. You are at a loss.
Does that sound reasonable?
I’m not saying everyone will get these results; some can get more, although if you’re new and the foundations of your business are not top-tier, this will be your starting point.
Although here’s the thing:
So if you need cash injections into your business and 10 people are paying you $50–100 per week, that’s $500 per week in additional income.
And to make it worse, you spend the whole month—12 months a year—worrying how the challenges will go.
Your mind won’t rest.
You’ll be panicking, planning, and running around making sure things are perfect.
How does that sound for your freedom? Plus, you’ll need to feel confident enough to speak persuasively, be the host, use NLP to convert clients, and have sales experience on the call.
Most challenges implant suggestions in an attempt to close clients mid-way, and it feels so forced and inauthentic.
I remember one course challenge I was on, and the guy was secretly saying to the audience about 80 times in the 3 hour space, You won’t be able to do it unless you have my help.” He was implanting with NLP, and no one else could see what he was doing.
You don’t need to dumb people down to get them to buy by using suggestions throughout the challenge. So make sure whoever is teaching you isn’t teaching this.
If you are open to some ways to save time, make things easier, and give you more peace of mind during your month,
Here’s what to do instead:
1) Learn how to increase demand for your offer. You can grab a copy of Authentic Conversations, which you can use in your offers to create desire in a potential client.
2) Learn how to find out what’s important to them and the reason they want to buy.
Make your workshop and challenges are about them, not you.
Have content that shares information about you before they attend. They don’t need to spend two hours of their day hearing about you.
Have automation done for the stuff related to you.
Let marketing do the heavy lifting, and don’t spend 4 hours a month plus the whole month worrying about it doing it well.
If you run challenging one-on-one workshops, no matter what you do, if you use the formula above, people will buy. It’s just a question of how you want to spend your days and months trying to get clients.
Here is an idea for you:
Use Instagram or Facebook. 2) Create content that attracts (the best are the ones you have with the highest engagement);
Use the viral strategy to create reels that get lots of views. My last reel got 102K views, and it’s still increasing. My design-level skill is equivalent to that of a 5-year-old.
Then have a way for them to reach out to you.
Then segment these customers by their interest in purchasing now.
The ones that will be ready will message you, and the ones that are almost ready will consume your content that converts and trickles in without you having to go get more people over and over.
Then you don’t have to worry about being a confident speaker or being charismatic.
being the high-vibe challenge host
I’m the person who shows coaches, experts, and businesses how to have fun growing a six-figure business without the manual hard work that most people need to repat over and over to get clients by using my 16 years of experience in sales psychology and client conversion magic in the formula I designed in my former 7-year life coaching business.
Learn how to use this in your content and your sales calls so your content does most will do most of the selling for you.
While free challenges may have their limitations, there are alternative strategies that can be more effective in acquiring clients:
Value-Driven Content: Create high-quality and valuable content that showcases your expertise, educates your audience, and establishes your business as a trusted authority. This approach attracts individuals who are genuinely interested in your niche and are more likely to convert into paying clients.
Personalised Offerings: Tailor your offerings to meet the specific needs and pain points of your target audience. This personalised approach demonstrates that you understand their challenges and can provide customised solutions, making them more inclined to engage further with your business.
Networking and Referrals: Build relationships with industry peers, influencers, and satisfied clients who can refer potential clients to you. Word-of-mouth recommendations carry significant weight and are more likely to result in high-quality leads.
Paid Advertising: Utilise targeted paid advertising campaigns on platforms like social media, search engines, or relevant websites. This allows you to reach a specific audience segment and generate leads from individuals actively searching for solutions in your industry.
To the people scared to invest in paid marketing,
Let me do some math for you.
Three hours of organic marketing alone per day (3 hours x 7 days a week) is 21 hours per week.
If your hourly rate is at least $100 per hour x 21 = 2100 per week of your time,
As opposed to even a $40 ad spend multiplied by 280 per week?
What seems more reasonable?
If you would like to see a high converting Masterclass that converts at a 70 percent conversion rate and can be used for years
Join my Masterclass and request a invite