I feel like I’m constantly getting cold messages from people on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram offering me their services to help me create clients or market myself. It feels spammy, because it is. They have no idea who I am, whether I need help or what issue or challenges I may be facing in my business. I ignore these messages, and I don’t advise coaches to follow the same cold approach.
Steve Chandler helped me see that coaching is a relationship business and therefore, it makes sense to build relationships online and do so in a way that isn’t spammy, that isn’t a numbers game and isn’t what some people call cold outreach.
Instead, I encourage people to send messages to people who they already have some kind of connection or relationship with. Now, this doesn’t just mean your family and friends, but if you share a piece of content online and someone engages with it and afterwords you message them, it’s not completely cold. It’s as if you’re at a party where you don’t know anyone, and someone tells you they like your top or someone says they like your shoes – then the conversation is a lot easier.
Often coaches don’t realise how many people are following their content online and would be open to a conversation with them.
Once you message people, I encourage coaches to write as they speak. It doesn’t need to be complicated. I once received a message from a fellow coach who I knew pretty well, and it was written in “coach speak”. It wasn’t how he spoke, and it was pretty off-putting. He was offering to share something with me that he believed would help me, and if he’d said it like that, I would have been open to a conversation.
In conclusion, my top two tips for messaging potential clients online is don’t message people cold and talk and write how you speak.
If you want to dive deeper into this subject, I had an inspiring conversation about using social media to get clients for your coaching business with Sachin Shama. He is an incredible client, dear friend and alumni of the AJC Coaching Career School who’s successfully grown his 6+ figures online coaching business with the power of social media. Check out the interview we’ve done below.
With love and appreciation,
Ankush Jain
Coach and Author of Sweet Sharing – Rediscovering the REAL You
