Book Coaching 101: How to Sell Your Book Coaching Services

Notes written while waiting on Zoom

I am writing this post while in a Zoom room waiting for a potential Author Accelerator client to join. They are late and it looks like they are not coming.

My schedule is packed right now with calls, and people who want calls — and, in fact, I added some language to the reminder emails asking people to please cancel the call rather than just not show up. So this person being late (probably not showing up) is doing a disservice to all those other people who were interested in talking to me and couldn’t get a spot, and they are doing a disservice to me because now I am sitting here with time I could have used in very different ways. All I can think is — how rude.

I did not have a great relationship with my mom, who died of Alzheimer’s during COVID times, but she taught me some valuable things for sure, one of which is: don’t be rude.

I wrote recently about being kind, which goes hand-in-hand with not being rude. It feels like basic human decency. Much has been written recently about the breakdown of these common courtesies in our society. As I sit here stewing about it, I am thinking with gratitude of my mom — which is a strange kind of gift to receive while being stood up on a Zoom call. But there you have it.

So what does this all have to do with selling your book coaching services?

A few things have struck me:

1.) Nothing is predictable when it comes to selling.

There is an art to selling a program or a service or a package, which is to say that it’s not science. It’s not Do this and this other thing will happen. It’s not 2 + 2 = 4. It’s Try this and see if it works. Show up and see if anyone else does.

I recently wrote about pricing being an art, too. And the name of this newsletter is the Art & Business of Book Coaching, because the work of book coaching itself is an art, too.

But what’s interesting is that science is built on experimentation. You get to the predictable equations by testing a hypothesis and by trial and error. So maybe it’s actually all science, too.

Or maybe all my metaphors are just falling apart here. Why do art and science have to be in opposition to each other?

Anyway, the point I am making is that we are all in the business of figuring things out, and one thing I have figured out today is that people will not show up. People are going to say they will show up and they will not show up.

It’s rude and it’s part of the messy mix of selling.

2.) Selling is not convincing.

I am not sitting here expecting this person to show up so I can convince them to join my book coaching certification program — and I hope you are not doing your sales activities thinking you need to convince people to work with you.

I am sitting here waiting for this person because I want to help them decide if what I offer is what they need. I am waiting to be clear about what we do and what we don’t do, to be precise about what we promise and what we don’t promise, and to help them determine if I can help them achieve their goals.

If I can’t give them what they need, I hope they will not sign up. I might even ask them not to sign up.

I am confident that what I offer is right for the right person, and I know full well that it’s not right for everyone.

Here is one of the reasons I have this confidence: I have been searching online for a medical first aid course for grandparents because now that our granddaughter is climbing on the couch and putting everything in her mouth, I feel like I need a refresher. (I may have been traumatized by the memory of my own child breaking one arm, and then the other, around the age of three when she fell off various pieces of furniture.) I found a course from an ER pediatric nurse that is quite popular and seems great and I was doing a bit of digging into reviews of it. I found a Reddit thread of people just ripping this woman apart for daring to charge money when her mission is to help parents. They called her predatory and pointed to someone else on Instagram offering information free of charge. Here was a living example of how someone’s offer is perfect for some people (Me! Teach me the things in a tone and a format that suits my style of learning! And please — earn money doing it!) and clearly not right at all for other people.

This simple truth — that selling is not convincing — is such a helpful reframing of the sales process.

3.) The sales process has to be seamless, repeatable, and clear

A book coach recently told me she was heartbroken because a client she thought would be a great fit for her decided to go with another book coach who offered something she didn’t (a free edit of pages.) She felt that she didn’t do what she needed to do to convince the client. She wondered if she should add free edits to her sales process.

Should she? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing for sure is you can’t just react to what other people are doing and knit together a bunch of tactics and call it a sales process. You have to really think through what your clients experience when they come into your universe. What do they see on your website? What do your packages and your pricing say about you? What story are you telling? What outcome are you promising? And what actions are you inviting people to take?

The new process I have designed involves a webinar that invites people to have a 1:1 call with me. It works beautifully. People know what the call is for and they get some materials beforehand to prepare them for it. They are invited to bring their questions and I show up to answer them. If I think they are a good fit for the program, I invite them to join and if they want to think about it, I give them a way to ask additional questions and ask for permission to follow up.

A seamless, repeatable, and clear process will help give you confidence (see #3 above) and it gives your clients confidence, too. Instead of entering a haphazard process where they may worry someone is going to twist their arm, they are entering a process that has been designed with intention and purpose. That leads to trust — which may be more important than a free edit of pages.*

Write out the steps to your sales process. Break it down into bullet points so you can see the flow. List out the assets you need (lead magnets, emails, a calendar scheduling app.) Work to follow the same process each time, making it cleaner, clearer, and more helpful to your potential clients.

*Why am I so down on free edits? Because what a book coach does it far more than edit. Editing is where it starts, but we work with writers over time. We work with their goals and their needs. We offer strategy and support. Editing — which is about the writing and not the writer — is a small piece of the puzzle. That being said, if free page edits work to bring clients into your book coaching business, you should use them! Especially if you are at the start of your business. Do whatever you can to make it work. Please earn the money!

4.) You have to invite people to work with you.

You can’t just wish they say yes. You have to ask them to put down money and book their first deadline. You have to ask multiple times in different ways. You have to say to them things like this:

• Would you like to sign up?

• Can I send you the payment link?

• May I get in touch next month after the holidays to check in to see if you’re ready?

• Can I ping you next week to see if you have any additional questions?

• I would love to help you achieve your goal — are you ready to start?

• You are my ideal client and it would be so fun to work with you! Do you have any remaining objections to working with me?

• What’s stopping you from moving forward?

• Have I answered all your questions? Are you ready to move forward?

• Are you aware that now that we’re done with X package, I have Y package to help you achieve Z goal?

Asking also needs to happen in forms of communication that are not 1:1 conversations— meaning Instagram posts, YouTube videos, podcast bios, PDF lead magnets, and webinars.

Get comfortable inviting people because as long as you are in business, you’re going to be doing it.

5.) The people who don’t get it don’t get it.

This person who has stood me up (it’s official now — they’re not coming) doesn’t understand the value of my time or my teaching. They are not my ideal client. I dodged a bullet in not having to speak to them and in not having them sign up to be part of my community.

Is this the same point as #2?

Yes. Yes it is.

I am going to remind myself again and again that the people who don’t get it don’t get it, and I shouldn’t waste my time worrying about them. I wish I could say this is a lesson I only had to learn once, but it’s not. It’s so easy to fret about the one person who doesn’t get what you’re doing rather than celebrate the 25 who do.

6.) Some people will get it.

Some of the people who show up will see my offering as the solution to their problems. They will see it as the path to their dreams. They will not believe their good fortune that they found me and my program. I am their path to the new career they are dreaming about. And so I will keep showing up, waiting to have these conversations.

I hope you will, too. You are the path to someone’s dreams.

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