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Today, I want to talk to you about some of my favorite business tools for coaches. But maybe not the kinds of tools that you might be thinking about, because eyelash curlers and lipstick will not help you grow a successful coaching business. If you feel overwhelmed with all the different tech business tools out there, I understand. You’re not quite sure what you need, what you don’t need, and where to spend your money. If you need some guidance, I’m here to help – watch the video below, or simply read on.
Ontraport is one of my favorite online business tools because it does so much and you get so much for your money. Ontraport is, at the core, a customer-relationship management tool. It has so many different features, but as a new coach, you will mainly be using Ontraport as your email management system, the system where you send your newsletters, where you send your follow up sequences for your lead magnets. And then later on as you bring in clients into your business, you can actually charge your clients with payment plans and all those important things.
ClickFunnels is an amazing tool. Not only is it very flexible and high end, but this year, we were awarded the Two Comma Club Award – which means that we have officially earned over a million dollars in income with ClickFunnels!
Now, I use ClickFunnels for many different things, but at the core, it helps you with your lead generation. You’re able to create a sales funnel that brings new leads and prospects into your business – it’s literally everything you need to create a high converting sales funnel.
Podio is a customer-relationship management tool. As your business grows and you go from 20 to 30 clients, then into 50 to 100 clients…then maybe hundreds of clients, it will be more and more important for you to track what’s going on within your customer base. It’s no longer only me coaching my clients, but I have a team of experts also coaching clients. Therefore, it’s really important that I have an eye on my client base – as well as their progress and results! As you grow and scale your coaching business, it will be more and more important for you to install a business tool like Podio so that you never lose track of your customers.
As your business grows, it will be important for you to maintain a support desk. Zendesk makes it really easy for you to track incoming support tickets to make sure that you’re answering everything, see who a question is assigned to, know the status of an issue (whether it’s open, closed, or pending), and to reply. Zendesk provides us with a simple way for you to manage clients and cultivate a great experience for your clients.
Oh, how we love Canva. Thank you so much to the founder of Canva for creating it – because if you want to design it, you CAN design it inside of Canva. We use Canva for almost all of our design work in our business. I highly recommend it because it’s inexpensive, an amazing tool, and it’s going to save you tons of time and allow you to simply create professionally designed marketing materials for your business.
Google Analytics is a business tool that does so many different things, but in our business, we use it for tracking purposes. We look at how many hits or visitors we receive, track the results of our YouTube advertising campaigns, and so much more. Google Analytics is a tool that will help you analyze the traffic you’re receiving, where it’s coming from, how it’s finding you, and help you make those important decisions you need to make as a business owner for your coaching business.
QuickBooks is a business tool you should be using from day one. It helps you get your finances straight and make sure that you have everything in order when it comes to your income and your expenses.
Inside of QuickBooks, you want to make sure that you enter your expenses and you categorize them appropriately. You also want to enter your income by customer and enter payments that you’ll be receiving in the future. Clearly knowing what’s leaving your account, what’s coming into your account, and having an accurate representation of your profit and loss at the end of every month will make it really easy for your accountant to do your taxes at the end of the year – and give you total peace of mind.
In our business, we’re using Wufoo to collect information from our prospects before they jump on a call with us. As our leads flow through our sales funnel and complete the call booking with my team, they will be asked to fill out a pre-call survey. The best part about Wufoo is that it actually integrates with our scheduling tool, Acuity Scheduling.
Our completed and integrated Wufoo forms show the complete data inside of Acuity. When you see these calls booked on your calendar, you can click on them to see the data that comes from Wufoo inside of Acuity – which saves you a tremendous amount of time. It makes it really easy for you to be prepared, and with just a click, you can see who you’re about to speak with.
If you don’t already have Dropbox, I highly recommend it. In Dropbox, we store our workbooks, videos, checklists, examples, and more. Inside our membership site, we have links to these documents in Dropbox, so our clients can easily access the important information and documents they are looking for.
Oh, how I love Acuity Scheduling. It’s one of my favorite tools. (As a matter of fact, we had someone from Acuity come and speak at From Passion to Profits LIVE in Las Vegas last year, and we were so honored!) Acuity Scheduling is great for so many different reasons. In the beginning, it might just be you and that’s okay. You still need a professional way for your clients to be booking their sessions with you as a coach.
Now, the beauty of Acuity Scheduling is that it is extremely flexible and it can accommodate a lot of customizations. For example, we customize the confirmation emails. We insert our logo and custom texts so that the confirmation emails and reminder emails are branded and personal. If you want to see Acuity Scheduling in action, check out our discovery call booking page at carolinsoldo.com/booknow to see how it works.
Adobe EchoSign is a business tool you should be installing on day one, even as a new coach. In Adobe EchoSign, you can actually upload your client agreements, insert a signature line, and send them electronically to your clients. Your clients can receive, open, and review their agreement and sign it right then and there. It’s a very easy way for you to have your clients sign your coaching agreements and get on your way to coaching them.
Zoom has so many different capabilities. It can screen share and record your sessions, has a chat feature, and enables you to create break out rooms. In short, it gives you the flexibility you need to create an amazing customer experience. Zoom actually allows you to host public webinars – you can advertise your webinar, and people can actually join and watch you live as you present your topics and you give your expert talks.
If you’re looking for a complete listing of these business tools and all the different systems you may want to consider for your coaching business, here’s a link to our business tech tools checklist. This includes all the different tools we recommend to you and where to get them.
If this is just a start for you, and you want to know how to get all the coaching clients you could ever want, sign up for our latest web class. In this free masterclass, I’m going to show you the three simple secrets and the three steps you can take right away to get all the coaching clients you could ever want.
I hope today’s article served you and I was able to take away some of that frustration and overwhelm for you. Go ahead – explore the tools, approach them with a playful attitude and you’ll see that they will save you lots of time and money in the process.
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