Here’s the real reason why HR managers don’t respond to your corporate coaching offer.
It’s not that their companies don’t need what you offer.
It’s also not that you’re too expensive.
It’s not even “because it’s hard to sell to corporates”.
It’s because you don’t present your offer as something that THEY need.
First reason – You are not a priority for them
Ok, let’s assume that you’ve done the basics, such as picking a niche, researching what the pain points are in that industry related to your topic and you KNOW that you could help corporations in that industry.
Maybe you’re a mindset coach who helps managers become better leaders. Or you’re a parenting coach who helps employees reduce stress at home and be more effective at work. Or maybe you’re a wellness coach who helps stressed-out software developers manage work demands with more ease.
Whatever your topic, you probably have researched what organizations are struggling with and how you can help them resolve their challenges and as a result, are more productive, have fewer meetings, get more done, hit their project deadlines and monthly targets, have happier employees…
So many great outcomes – the only problem is that those results are NOT top of priority for the HR department.
A good HR manager will care about these things but with the same emphasis as say the head of the software developers’ department.
Difference in priorities – At the tactical level
Different people in organizations have different priorities and even if they agree that a certain issue – say stress – is a challenge, they are likely to have a different perspective on it.
And that means your message needs to be customized to the needs/views of that person!
Let’s take the example of the wellness coach who helps reduce stress.
Most senior managers in an organization will agree that excessive stress levels are a bad thing.
But how exactly stress levels affect them differs depending on the role they hold in the company.
The head of a department whose employees are suffering from stress will be concerned about the productivity of their team. They will wonder if the work quality is going to suffer and they will worry that deadlines are going to be missed. They may even feel the challenge on a personal level if their bonuses, promotion opportunities and other benefits are tied to their team’s performance.
You’d say they have this stress-related challenge at a tactical level and they are often very keen to buy a solution, needing limited convincing (though they might have to get buy-in and budget from those higher up).
At the strategic level
Then you have people for whom stressed-out employees present a problem at the strategic level. They still worry about the impact on productivity and quality but more from the perspective if they’ll disappoint customers or if the business does not meet its strategic goals or if the brand is affected by poor performance.
This means they are still stressed about the challenges faced, they are still worried on both professional and personal levels but they probably don’t feel it as acutely as the people with the tactical challenges.
They do want the issue resolved and to be fair, the good ones will genuinely care about their employees too. And they likely have the budget to buy quickly too!
How does this apply to HR managers?
So where does this leave our HR managers? Well, the good ones here (and you should only work with the good ones) will still care about people’s well-being but for them, priorities are things like building critical skills and competencies, hiring and retaining talented people, managing employee wellness and (for most now) workplace flexibility.
You can see that while they have an interest in managing employee stress levels, they are coming at the challenge from a different angle.
That means messages that focus on productivity gains and quality of work are somewhat less important to them than messaging about reducing stress to avoid employee turnover and reducing the need to keep hiring new employees.
3 is the magic number
So who and how many people should you try to approach with your corporate offer?
Actually – three types of people if you want to give yourself the best chance of winning a 5-figure contract!
And that means making sure you adjust your message to their take on the challenge that you can help them with.
Understanding who those three TYPES of people are in any given company is crucial to reaching the “right” person to speak to about your coaching or consulting offer.
Because once you know these types, you can research your ideal corporate clients to find the likely candidates among their staff and ensure you reach out to them on a topic that is of actual interest to them.
And because you tailor your messages to their specific needs (see the example above), you should be able to book 2-3 sales conversations a week with corporate clients (assuming you are reaching out to sufficient target prospects).
And if your message and conversion approaches are dialled in, you should be able to add 1-2 new corporate clients per month at $5k-$15k contracts for just a few days of work.
What I can offer you
What I shared above is one of the crucial elements I address with my clients in my 12 week, 1:1 program that takes experienced coaches in the self-improvement and wellness niche from earning less than $100k/year in their business, to adding a reliable 6-figure + income from working with just 8-10 corporate clients a year (this is in addition to any 1:1 work they might want to do).
In the program, I also address how to identify a niche that you are excited about working with, how to package your expertise so that you can sell it fast AND for repeat work, how to attract prospects without cold-calling and how to create conversations and proposals that convert at around 80% of the time.
If interested, just send me a DM and we will chat on messenger to see if you’re a good candidate to get results. If you are, we can decide the best time for you to get started.
