Create Your Successful Single Session Coaching Offer

Hi, I’m Andrea Urquhart. Welcome to The Specialist Studio, my bespoke business mentoring space for professional coaches growing their coaching or mentoring consultancy. Today’s article is a mini-masterclass in creating your successful single session coaching offer. Read on to discover the steps you need to take and the attitudes that can make or break the success of these brilliant opportunities for clients to get a taste of working with you for a single session.

 

You’ve seen them around on social media, those £99 one off offers. Maybe you’ve tried to create your own too. How did it go?

The theory behind these offers makes a whole lot of sense if you want to:

1. Create a high value, low cost offer to compliment your high ticket programmes
2. Give your ideal clients a paying offer they can get to know you with before committing to your high-ticket programme
3. Get some income moving into your business

If you’re starting up your coaching business or hungry to reel in some clients, single session coaching offers are also a great way to grow your confidence and get some cashflow into your business. The art of creating and selling a successful single session coaching offer lies in understanding exactly what they are and what you need to be clear on to market yours.

What is a single session coaching offer?

A single session coaching offer is paid for coaching that gives your client a specific solution to a specific problem in a single session. As coaches, we tend to sell coaching in blocks of sessions like 6, 10 or 12. We know that coaching is a process and requires trust and rapport to be built. You might also be feeling a little hesitant about the idea of promising a specific outcome. This is where you need to understand that a single session coaching offer is more of an expert consultation that helps someone move from A to B than it is a coaching block that starts at A and moves on through the alphabet at the clients’ pace. The question you need to ask yourself is “What can I help my ideal client understand that will change something about their life in a single session?”.

A single session offer is a consultation that gives a takeaway result. If you use strengths in your coaching, it might be taking a client through a strengths questionnaire and helping them interpret that to help solve a specific issue in their life. If you’re a health coach, it might be providing a personal consultation with a personalised action plan to take away. If you work deeply with people on their emotions, ask yourself what tools or understanding you can offer in a single session that can already make a difference to your client’s life.

The idea of a single session offer is not to solve all of your client’s problems. It’s to show them that you are an expert in your field by helping them make progress over a single session that:

• Makes a difference to their life
• Builds a relationship with you where they see you as a solution provider and expert
• Gives them a high-value, lower cost experience that may encourage them to convert to one of your higher paying offers when the time is right for them.  

As simple as having a single session offer sounds, there are specific actions that make a difference between your single session offer being a roaring success and it simply being an add on to your list of offers. Read on to discover 10 important actions to understand and take to ensure that yours is a success.

 

1) Be strategic with Your single session offer

As with all of your coaching offers, you need to know where your single session offer fits in your product portfolio. Ideally, it will be a stepping-stone session that gives a completeness in itself and also acts as an introduction or foundational session to your higher ticket or next level offer.

In short, if you really want to be selling a six-session programme or package of coaching, think about what the purpose of that programme or package is. Who is exactly is that aimed at? What are their pain points that lead them to buying your larger session? Now consider that alongside your single session. What would be a great single session offer for those people that would align with the purpose and need for longer programme or package?

Being strategic with your offers creates a client pathway with your coaching programmes and products. You can’t predict whether someone will buy your single session offer or your longer package first, but having the offer there gives them an income earning equivalent of “try before your buy”. Rather than giving away free coaching and webinars, value your time and teach your clients to value your time by having a lower cost offer which enables them to buy a piece of your time and taste the results of working with you.

2) Create your single session product for a very specific ideal client.

The biggest mistake that coaches make when launching their business is marketing their coaching as being “for everyone” or “anyone who…” and especially those callouts to their friends on social media “ Would anyone be interested in….?”. It might go against your instincts to niche down, but niche down you must, otherwise nobody will think that what you’re offering is exactly what they need. People want specific, tailor made solutions to their problems. Your single session product needs to be a tailor-made single session solution to your specific ideal client. Don’t be afraid to exclude people by working towards a specific niche because, in fact, by niching you are actually creating a specialist, inclusive space for a very targeted audience who may feel like they don’t fit or feel understood in other spaces. Find out how to do this following the steps in my blog about creating your ideal client avatar.

So niche down with your products and become an expert who offers solutions. I know that choosing a niche is a really emotional process for most coaches and raises many questions. I talk about ideal clients and niching in most of my blogs and articles, but you can find out more about this in my article about procrastination which talks in more depth about choosing a niche.  

Without going into lots of detail again here, defining your ideal client is the single most effective thing you can do to help you get clarity about how to grow your business. That information informs every business decision you make, every strategy you create and every list of priorities you set up for yourself in your work days. And right here, for your tantalising, low ticket/high value offer, it needs to be super-targeted so that people will see your marketing and hear you talking about your offer and know that it is exactly for them.

 

3) Create an offer that gives a specific solution or experience in the single session

As I said earlier, for many coaches it initially feels awkward to promise something from a single session but in this case, your promise needs to be something that you deliver to your client. It might be an experience – an anti-stress meditation or guided visualisation. It might be an interpretation – a strengths profile or other analysis done in person in the session with a specific intention e.g. make you a better leader or improve your personal relationships. Again, if the offer is too broad, people won’t think it’s for them. So bring that solution or experience down to your very focused ideal client. A strengths profile analysis for women returning to work after a gap or an anti-stress meditation and personalised stress-busting tips for NHS workers or teachers. 

Remember, you’re not promising to resolve their problem completely or all of their problems, simply to bring your client to a certain point within the session with opportunity for questions to be answered and a practical plan to take away and put into place.

Already, with just these few examples, I hope you can see how much easier marketing will be if you have an offer for a specific client group. Two things to take note of here:

• Your target client group for your single session offer should ideally be for the same specific target client group as your high-ticket offer – although it may well be that their financial or spending profile is slightly different. What do I mean by spending profile? Simply that person’s typical attitude to spending money.

• If you don’t have many of your ideal clients in your connections yet, you’re going to have do work extra hard to grow that specific network. It may take longer for you to start to get clients for the offer. On the other hand, if you’re clear enough about who it is targeted at, your friends, family and network may be of great help and will know exactly who in their network they could share about your product with.

Ask yourself now: What specific experience can you offer in one session and who do you specifically and strategically want to offer it to?

4) Be clear on the benefits your offer brings your client

If you’ve already got a single session offer and it’s not selling well, you may have already realised a few tweaks that you need to make. Even if your offer is clearly targeted at your ideal client, you will need to make sure that your marketing copy (your social media posts, flyers and websites) is crystal clear so that everyone who sees it knows exactly who it is for.

One of the biggest problems coaches have with writing marketing copy is that they don’t notice some of their internal assumptions – they don’t realise that they although they know who they mean to create their product for, other people don’t and need it clarifying. An example of this is teachers. If you want to coach teachers, what kind of teacher? Newly qualified ones? Those near to retirement? Middle Management? Leadership? Early Years? Secondary? The list goes on. If you think your product would benefit all teachers then think about what pain point the specific teacher you want to reach is at. All teachers who are ready to leave the profession? All teachers who want a promotion? You cannot simply create a generic call out to teachers. You need to qualify the problem that your offer will help solve. I call this focusing on the moment when.

The moment when is the moment when your client realises that they need help. What emotion are they feeling? What emotional process have they been through? What thoughts are they struggling with? What behaviour is going on? When you understand that moment when your ideal client is most likely to reach out, then you can pull out the key pain points and solutions that you need. These points are your basis for your marketing copy. 

1. Create a list of the pain points your client is feeling: These include the emotions, the thoughts, situations and effects of the pain on their life in general.
2. Create a list of the solutions your product will provide: These are the positives that those pain points are converted into. They are the productive answers that your client will leave the session with. 

Having these two lists clear in your head will help you write different types of copy. You might write them as lists with emojis on a social media post. You might combine a pain point and a solution in one sentence e.g.: From…to…

The clearer you are on the solution your session will bring to a specific pain, the more easily you will talk clearly about your product to the specific people you want to buy it.

5) Brand your offer with a clear, memorable, SEO friendly name

As much as I love inventive branding names, they are only clever when they are memorable in the right way. Large companies with big marketing budgets can afford to be obtuse about the link between their name and their product. Smaller businesses not so much so. You don’t want to be spending your precious time and money explaining what you mean to people. You need to brand your product with a name that says exactly what it does – and if you manage to make it catchy with a bit of oomph as well, then that’s a bonus! This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a fun name for your product, simply keep in mind that if you want it to be found by your ideal clients via a search engine (and remember, Linked In, IG and FB are search engines as well as the big names like Google) then it should include a keyword or two relating to the kind of thing that anyone looking for a product like yours might search online for.

You’ll have realised by now that the big word you need to keep in mind when planning and prepping your single session offer is clarity. Clarity on what it is, who it’s for, the solutions it offers for particular problems and a name that clearly explains what it is.

Clear and attractive branding is not only great for getting your target client’s attention, helping your network know who to recommend your product to and being found on a search engine, it’s also important for managing expectations. Client expectations begin with their first impression of your product and the marketing information they read. It’s important to be crystal clear about what they can expect from the product. Obviously, don’t promise something you cannot deliver- that’s not great for anyone. Equally important though, is that you do brand with confidence.

Here’s an example of my single session offer:

My offer is simply called Nail Your Single Session Offer. I call it a “create it” session because it gives the opportunity to work with me for 60minutes planning and prepping your single session offer. The price includes: Planning the offer, Branding it with a name, Marketing copy and one Canva tile if desired. As a bonus, I include a pdf to take away with marketing tips. The session helps coaches who aren’t confident to put together their offer to be in a position to begin marketing it that same day. Prevarication over and a clear offer that’s aligned with their main product is created.

The success of my session however, relies on two things. Firstly, that the client has already decided on a niche and is ready to make a decision on a single session product. If they’re still working out their niche then I can’t guarantee that in 60minutes we’d get to a finished single session product. Secondly, that they have the courage to follow through after the session and market their product daily everywhere that they have social media presence, write articles and blogs about it and tell their connections about it. 

I solve these two issues by giving a condition for my offer and saying: “If you’re not ready to commit to a niche and don’t have the courage yet to market your offer, then this is not yet for you”. Am I leaving money on the table by excluding people from the offer? Absolutely not! I’m being honest and niching my offer to people who are ripe for it; the people who will get the most out of it because they are ready to make decisions and put a product out there but simply need help to put it together and ensure that it is aligned with their business strategy.

6) Don’t be afraid to make your product exclusive

This is going to sound contradictory initially, but follow the thought process through with me: 

Exclusivity is not simply about price. A single session offer is usually a lower priced offer in your product portfolio. But you can up its value in your potential clients’ minds by ensuring that they know that it’s incredible value. Not a cheap value offer, but a high value offer at a reasonable price. Never market your single session offer as a “bargain”. It is always an offer and you should always talk about its value and worth. In this way, you can mark it as an exclusive offer… for a specific audience.

My product is exclusively designed for coaches who want to create a single session offer and need support to do that. An hour of my time is costly but I have created an exclusive single session offer for coaches who want to put a single session offer in place and I am generously giving my time with this high value offer and bonus pdf. 

I know that there are online courses available for people to learn how to create single session offers, but I also know that my ideal clients have a need and desire for bespoke, personal support from a mentor or coach. In short, they need to work with someone to get their offer up and running because there are a couple or more aspects of prepping it that they’re not confident about to do on their own.

What can you exclusively design for your specific, ideal client group? How can you make this a high value offer? Your branding needs to convey that for that hour, or however long your session is, the client will get the best of you, the best service you can offer in an hour.

 

7) Include a bonus in your single session offer

I’m a big believer in giving a bonus add-on. Not only does a bonus pdf or a discount coupon show generosity from you to your new client, it makes them feel valued. Most importantly, if you give a pdf that has tips and information that help embed the session in the client’s life, then you are adding to the success of your coaching.

In fact, I would always suggest that your bonus is either something to embed the session such as a pdf, recording of the session or a personalised plan that you type up and send later.

It’s tempting to sell into that bonus moment and try to attract a client to a higher paying product rather than giving your client time to relish the success of the session. I’m all for giving your client time to focus on that success and give positive feedback before you start to sell up to them. Sales professionals might tell you different but I firmly believe that allowing your client to savour their win will actually give you more gains in the long run in terms of your relationship with that client. So giving a bonus moment rather than creating an upsell moment at the end of the session is much more productive.

Don’t misunderstand me, it’s definitely important that they have access to information about your other products, but you have their email address – and an upsell is, in my opinion, part of your follow up, not your session end. If they don’t ask at the end of the session about how else they can work with you, then make sure that you get in touch after the session to see how they are getting on.

So why am I so against trying to offer an upsell immediately to your client? Because apart from giving them time to savour the success of the session, the very first thing you need to request from them is a testimonial. A testimonial is a gift from your client to you. It takes their time and goodwill, so it’s wise to have a simple way for them to give feedback.

I always include a feedback question on the testimonial form asking how I could improve the experience of working with me. I also ask for the testimonial and for permission to use it in marketing along with a choice of whether their name goes alongside the testimonial or simply their initials. If they prefer, testimonials can also be anonymous.

Using testimonials in your marketing copy is a great way to show that your product is high-value and worth investing in. Testimonials usually get more traction on social media and you can also tag your client, giving a shout out about their product. Again, all great networking, positive energy and goodwill building.

8) Set a reasonable value on your product

Your final step before getting set up to market your product is to set a price on it. 

You could go with the standard £99 or you could think this through a little more. If you are ethically against psychological pricing, you might prefer the straight-forward £100. If your main package is a high-ticket one, you may feel it more appropriate to charge a little more. I charge £125 because I know how much value I’m giving and I will be sending a Canva tile and a write up of the marketing copy over to the client afterwards. That’s still massive value for them when you consider that they will have 100% return on investment by simply selling one or two of their own products.

Your single session product may be longer than an hour, so price accordingly. For example, if your single session product takes an afternoon, charging £250 is entirely acceptable. The most important thing is that overall, when you and a client look at your price progression, they see a range of prices that progress within a price bracket. Let’s say your premium package is £1000 then £125 for an hour matches that. If your high-ticket programme is £5000 then £500 for an hour makes sense.

Charging our worth is a lesson that all of us as coaches have to learn. The important thing is to value yourself with respect and test out your pricing idea on others to find out how much they think people would pay for your single session product. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that the aim is to have a lower cost, high-value offer for your target clients. If £1000 is a lot for them, then £100 is a good single session offer. If £5000 is a snip for them, then £500 is within their means and expectations as long as the session brings all that exclusive, single session value we’ve talked about. If you’re just starting out as a coach, my guess is that you’ll be able to comfortably charge between £100 and £150 for a 60minute single session product.

Don’t go below £99. You’re a professional coach with high level training. Even if you aren’t very experienced as a coach at the moment, you are qualified and trained. That qualifies you to charge a reasonable amount now, so do yourself a favour and set that value. Anything less speaks of lack of confidence.

9) Create a scroll stopping branding tile for your product 

Now that you’ve got your advertising copy, a kick-ass SEO friendly product name and you’re feeling more confident that you have an exclusive, high-value single session product, you need some visuals to back up your marketing and get those potential clients to stop scrolling and read.

Visuals are all about emotional energy. Great visual branding immediately leaves an impression, tells a story and stands out. You may already have brand colours and a logo. It’s important to use your logo on the tile if you have one, but in my opinion, switching up branding colours can work on a single session product to make sure that it actually stands out on your business page or group feed. The point is, you don’t want it to look too much like your other daily visuals and then be overlooked.

Canva is the obvious do-it-yourself choice, or you can employ a Canva pro such as Stephanie at simplyondemand.net . You might remember that I offer a single Canva tile as part of my single session offer because I know that many new coaches are what I call “Canvaphobic”. I don’t want lack of a visual to stop them making the most of their session with me, so I’ve included a visual to get marketing with in my high-value product.

Tips for scroll stopping visuals include:

– Make sure that any images relate to the successful outcome of the product (keep it positive and upbeat).

– Use at least two fonts. If you have brand fonts then use them.

– Consider the impact of brighter colours, both positive and negative.

– Consider the target audience you’re trying to attract. 

– Include your logo, the name of the product and the price – and little else. Make sure these are large enough to see when viewed on a phone and in a colour that stands out on the tile.

– The biggest mistake people make is trying to say everything on the tile. Keep it simple. The tile attracts the reader to your marketing copy where they’ll find all the other details. The more you put on a tile, the smaller the text, the less likely people are to bother to read it.

10) Market your offer with confidence

Believe me, once you’ve worked on creating your exclusive, high-value single-session offer and you’re confident and clear about who it’s for and why they need it, your marketing will become so much easier.

It’s not uncommon for coaches to create a great offer but fail to market it consistently. Remember that only around 5-20% of your connections see your posts on social media – even if you have a big following. Don’t let this put you off. Instead, let it encourage you to be bolder and post more regularly so that people get a chance to see your offer more than once. Consistency is your biggest friend in marketing and you need to have the courage to put your offer out there every day in some way. Just keep posting and talking about it, and if you have a website, make sure you feature it there.

PR is also a great ally here. Can you get your product featured in the press? Could you also write an article or blog about your product? Can you collaborate with others to promote each others’ products. Think imaginatively and be courageous and consistent.

Above all, enjoy offering your new product to your connections and new people!

  Remember, your offers are someone’s opportunity, so don’t be shy

Get in touch with me today if you’d like to take me up on my single session coaching offer! If you’d like to know more about how you can grow a flourishing coaching consultancy, get in touch with me today. I work with professionals transitioning from corporate and academia to grow their own specialist coaching consultancy. You can work with me on my signature programme 1:1 or in groups of up to 4 coaches. I also offer monthly mentoring options. Typically, my clients gain clients whilst still completing the programme along with gaining clarity, confidence and a big satisfied smile on their face!

Book a Discover Call with me here: https://live.vcita.com/site/strengthen

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