6 Time-Consuming Coaching Business Processes to Automate for Efficiency

Let’s admit it, starting a business – any business – and running it smoothly is no easy feat. Ask any entrepreneur. And this stands true for a coaching business as well; there are too many hats a coach-entrepreneur has to wear. Marketing, financing, sales, book-keeping…an entrepreneur has to do everything and more to keep their business up and running. If one wheel falls off, the entire vehicle could come to a screeching halt. 

So, how is it that people with their own coaching businesses can manage their time and gain better efficiency in their day-to-day activity and free up time to focus on what matters most? Using automated processes for your coaching business might be the answer. 

Here are 6 different processes on how to automate your coaching business (stick around for a bonus tip as well!) 

1. Lead capturing & nurturing via email marketing 

Bringing in a steady stream of prospective clients is vital for the growth and sustenance of any coaching business. And while sales know-how is good to have, much of this process can be automated.   

Lead magnets, for example, are a superb way to capture new leads. By offering a free, valuable resource (like a free PDF template or guide), you can get your prospects’ email IDs in return. This will help you build an active email list to nurture prospects, which is where business process automation comes in. 

You can then set up multiple levels of automated emails to nudge these leads or prospects to convert into becoming paying customers for your coaching services. A sales process that may have otherwise taken you weeks, can all come down to a series of automated emails! 

Plenty of online tools or software (such as coaching management software) can help you set this up in an easy-to-understand way. 

2. Social media execution 

As a business, it is vital to be on top of your marketing game – and in this day and age, social media plays a huge role in marketing. With the growing number of social media platforms and the amount of engagement required to remain relevant and top of mind, the process can get overwhelming. And for busy coaches, it can be incredibly time-consuming – and something that gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. 

By automating posting, coaches can prepare content in advance, and schedule it to be posted at the time and day they’d like, and even get automatically generated performance reports so they can then spend their time focusing on other tasks. 

3. Sending contracts & collecting payments 

Most coaches have a contracting process they follow when a prospect turns into a paying client. The whole processes of prepare contracts, mailing them to the client and storing them safely, takes some time and effort. In addition, creating, sending and then following up with invoices, is a massive amount of recurring effort. 

Now imagine these paperwork processes, multiplied across several coaches under the roof of one coaching business – talk about an administrative nightmare.  

This tiresome process, however, can be simplified and sped up with automation.  

Simply.Coach has a robust contract sending and payment collection process. 

Sign up for a free trial, and experience it for yourself! 

4. Client onboarding 

Once you officially have a paying client, the onboarding process is one of the most vital steps in the client journey. If it provides the client exactly what they need to know at the right time and if the process is smooth and friction-free, it also sets the tone for the rest of the engagement.  

Most coaches have some sort of an onboarding process for their clients, but automation can take it one step forward by creating a process that gets the client excited about the coaching, sets expectations appropriately, and prepares both the coach and the client for the journey. All while making the coach look super professional and organised! 

Simply.Coach allows for this kind of automation with its Journeys feature.  

5. Client management 

An effective client management software digitises the various client-facing steps for its coaches, right from getting insights into their clients’ strengths and limitations, charting mutually agreed upon developmental plans & goals, putting those goals into actionable plans, and setting up accountability to ensure the client gets their desired reality. Thus, in turn, improving the client experience and saving tonnes of precious time and effort that could be better utilised elsewhere. 

The software can automatically track goals, send reminder nudges and session invites along with meeting links, send digital coaching tools and collect & collate responses, and so much more!  

Simply.Coach gets into the minute details of client management, so that your coaching business can flourish in sustainable ways.  

Click here to learn more. 

6. Scaling 

As the business grows, handling a larger number of prospective clients, maintaining communication with past and present clients, creating multiple revenue streams and such are steps that pay off in leaps and bounds. However, these are time consuming and thus tend to get left aside.  

Automation can help any coaching business integrate their processes in a variety of ways to achieve real-time savings. As the coaching business scales up, automation with the help of a coaching management platform like Simply.Coach can help it manage a larger volume of incoming prospects and clients, set up packages and subscriptions, and so on, without having to trade time for money. 

Struggling with time? Here’s a bonus tip! 

While automation is key to long-term efficiency, don’t forget to evaluate how you spend your every day. Multitasking is the default for most online business owners. However, feeling overwhelmed due to multiple responsibilities and being apprehensive about the possibility of missing something crucial means many coaching business owners constantly switch tasks and do a little bit of everything all the time. This kills productivity: research shows that switching between tasks hurts productivity by as much as 40%. 

What can you do about it? You can use blocks of your time to stay focused on a single task at a given time. For example, you might set aside a block of time one day of each week to write out everything you’ll post on social media or a couple of hours each day research and outline newsletters you’ll send out to your prospects and clients. The practice of block scheduling enables you to focus on a single task without worrying about the rest of your schedule. 

When combined with automation, you’ll find yourself making real progress. You will be less stressed knowing that every important activity is accounted for! 

Sources: Automation Agency, Wisernotify, LightSpire, Joyce Layman, EMTWO Digital, Profi 

FAQs   

1. How do I automate my coaching business?  

Automation of processes in any business has the potential to free up time for entrepreneurs and help them prioritize what’s important, and the same is true for coaching business owners as well. A few ways you can execute some business process automation is by using an email marketing tool to send out lead nurturing emails to prospects and using an automation tool to schedule and post social media posts on your behalf at optimised times. Use an effective coaching management platform to automate, templatize, and systemize processes like client onboarding, sending contracts and invoices to clients, and collecting payments from them. 

2. What are the benefits of automating your coaching business?

Using automated processes for your coaching business is one of the smarter ways to take care of all your other organizational tasks and free up your time and resources to focus solely on serving each of your clients with the very best coaching experience possible. Some of the main benefits of automating your coaching business include using an all-in-one integrated platform for ease of business, more transparency and accessibility and open interaction with clients that fosters greater trust, optimum time utilization to focus on core coaching, faster and easier communication with clients, all of which can lead to increased client base and business growth.

About the author

Ipsita Nayak

Content Marketing Manager @Simply.Coach

Ipsita Nayak is a full-time writer-editor-content strategist and a part-time NLP coach & yoga teacher. She believes conventions are overrated, has a disproportionate need for solo time over social time, and loves a good mix of sci-fi and trashy TV in her free time!