If an application process is part of your coaching, consulting, or course creation business, there are three key steps that you can take to set the stage and confidence for an amazing call with your future customer.
Sadly, most people overlook these steps, and instead end up on calls that fall flat, and experience a lack of connection, coupled with zero confidence of their own ability to coach towards a decision.
There’s nothing more deflating, and the result of experiencing sales calls in this way can create a negative ripple of impact on your future energy and confidence levels.
Your application process is meant to pre-empt a lot of potential confidence killers, while allowing your future customer to feel a strong sense of resonance towards you as someone who can help them achieve their goals.
Your Application Process: The customer experience begins here … and not just “energetically” or “spiritually” … but quite practically.
One powerful way of aligning to this is to presume a sale has already happened, and treat your application process, and resulting sales call as the onboarding into your program.
Treat your process as a coaching experience, not as a sales experience.
What questions would you want to ask?
What insights can you glean to ensure customer success?
What actions would you take on your pre-client’s behalf, if you knew they would end up being a customer?
How would it change the way you relate to them?
How would it change the way you sought to give them value and make them feel safe?
With these questions in mind, let’s break down the 3 critical milestones to coach before your enrollment call.
Magnetism:
Magnetism is the first “sale”. It’s where your prospect decides that if there’s anyone out there who can help them, it’s going to be you. If they are going to hire a copywriter, it’s going to be you. If they are going to hire a business coach, it’s going to be you.
They’ve made the decision that if they are going to obtain a solution, it’s going to be through you.
At this stage, you are mostly talking with high-intent, solution-aware buyers who are likely to be considering several solutions/providers simultaneously.
If you are able to coach magnetism, you put yourself into a category of one, where the decision to work with anyone else will feel like settling, or perhaps even a step backwards.
Mastery:
Successful coaching of mastery is where your future customer can relax and surrender into a state of trust that your process and expertise is uniquely suited to deliver them the outcome they hope to achieve.
You can deliver this experience by allowing your prospects to experience your best content, while providing prescriptive guidance far before the call. Allow your future customer to experience a taste of results with tangible outcomes.
As creators and in business, we often fear giving our best content away, but in neglecting to find opportunities to share “the how”, we lose the possibility of creating the earned trust that will follow when your future customer experiences a mental or emotional breakthrough.
Creating this experience ahead of an enrollment call signals safety and trust that your prospect will be in good hands.
Momentum:
The goal here is to create momentum towards a point of no return. This means that there’s more friction for your pre-customer in going backwards to an old way of being, than in taking a natural step forward towards experiencing a new reality in partnership with you.
This is absolutely critical to getting to a yes.
People value their time and energy above most things.
The more time and energy your future customer spends involved in your process, implementing your freely shared processes and getting quick wins, the more likely they are to move towards this point of no return.
If your prospect is experiencing active progress coupled with excitement and inspiration leading up to your sales call, this will fuel the motivation to continue making investments of valuable time, energy, and financial resources.
Everything you create in your application process should be about coaching these milestones.
In future essays, I’ll break down each of these in more detail, and offer some tactical guidance on how to achieve these milestones. As a starting point, I’d suggest looking at three key assets in your application funnel:
- Your Application Questions
- Your Appointment Confirmation Page
- Your Pre-Call Onboarding (email, text, etc.)
So often, I see these static resources being thrown together as an afterthought.
I encourage you to take a fresh look through the lens of Magnetism, Mastery, and Momentum.
What shifts could you make to your own application flow in service of creating more ease, joy, and resonance for your future customer?
Would love to hear what comes up for you.
If you’d like to explore this topic in much greater depth, check our our signature program Engineering the Enrollment.