What's the ROI on Your Coaching?

If you're a health coach, relationship coach, or life coach, you might think that "return on investment" is best left to business coaches and marketers. But if you identify the ROI on your coaching offer, it becomes a superpower that helps you confidently articulate the value of your coaching.

In this episode, I talk about the different types of return on investment that coaching can have, and how to build it into your content, messaging, and conversations with prospective clients.

Today's topic is about how you identify and communicate the ROI, or return on investment, of your coaching. And before you stop this episode because you're thinking that “Oh, I'm a life coach, or I'm a health coach. My coaching doesn't have a concrete, tangible ROI,” well, hold on, because this episode is specifically for you. That's because, as coaches, it's often hard to focus on the right thing when we're talking about the value that our coaching brings, and we know that people buy the result. At the end of the day, their biggest priority is the result that you're going to help them achieve. 

But oftentimes, it's easy to slip and focus on, say, the deliverables, which are what your clients actually get, like the number of one-on-one coaching sessions, the number of group coaching sessions, any online training content you may have, the actual concrete things that your clients are getting when they work with you. It’s also easy to slip in focus on your own experience, what makes you qualified, how many years you've been coaching, how many people you've helped. Those things are a really important part of your coaching offer, but at the end of the day, like we said, people are going to invest in the result and not in the deliverables or in your extensive experience. If you have a really solid understanding of your ideal client and the issues they face, then that's going to position you really well to identify what that return on investment is going to be for your clients. And that's what we want to focus on, that ROI. 

Now, say you help businesses get more clients or get more customers. If you work with businesses in any way, the ROI is pretty easy to identify; it's some sort of hard financial return that they're going to receive as a result of working with you. That's where an ROI is stupid easy to identify. But, like I said, if you're a health coach, a relationship coach, or a life coach, it might not be as readily apparent what that return on investment is, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an ROI, because there is 100% still an ROI on your coaching. Otherwise, no one would invest with you for your coaching. 

There are several types of return on investment, and they're not all quite as simple as “Well, if you work with me, you are going to make more money,” but we'll start with that financial ROI because that is the most obvious, the most common, and no matter what your niche is, you will probably still have some sort of financial ROI that your clients will achieve. A financial ROI means that your client is either going to make more money or save money. Both of those are a financial return on investment. 

If you are a business coach who helps your clients get more customers, then the clear ROI there is that your client is going to make more money, but say that you are a business coach who really helps business owners with management and leadership in their company. In that case, one of the returns on investment could be a significant increase in employee retention. As a business owner becomes a better manager and leader, his or her employees are going to stick around longer, and increasing employee retention results in saving a ton of money, simply because of how much more expensive it is to keep hiring and firing and have a high employee turnover rate, rather than to hire once or twice and keep your employees and keep them happy and there for a long time. 

Now, let's say you're a health coach, though. What is the financial ROI in that situation? Well, you're probably going to help them save money on doctors and hospital bills, just from the health issues that you're going to help them avoid. Plus, because your clients are going to start to feel so much better, physically and emotionally and mentally, well, their performance at work is going to go way up. And what's that going to do? Well, that's going to position them for career growth that just isn't possible with their current health and energy levels. In that way, health coaching, when done right, helps the client both save money and make more money, and that is a really hard, concrete financial return on investment. 

As one more example of a financial ROI, let's say you're a relationship coach. Well, you're going to help your clients save so much money, because what you're going to do working with them is help them deal with issues now in their relationship, rather than waiting until they're in a crisis mode and are shelling out for expensive couples therapy and an even more expensive divorce. But a financial return on investment is not the only type of ROI that you can help a client achieve. For example, there are health ROIs, in terms of avoiding health issues, improving quality of life, and improving general satisfaction with life. There are time returns on investment, which are helping your client either save time or create more time in their day, both of which are incredibly valuable to the right ideal client. Ultimately, there should be and probably already is a return on investment in every part of your client's life, so that means that your client is benefiting not just in this specific area that you're helping them in, but instead, benefiting in all these different areas. 

It's important to note that once you identify the ROI, it doesn't mean that in your content and messaging you just need to be listing out all of these returns on investment, because that's going to dilute your messaging. What it's going to help you do is, when you're talking with prospective clients about your offer, you're going to be able to say concretely how it addresses all of the concerns that they're sharing with you. It will also help when it comes time to address any objections or concerns that your ideal client might have. Let's say that you're talking with a prospective client, and they seem like they're ready to move forward, but they say they don't have enough time to really give the coaching the attention that it needs. Well, that's when you—because you know what the ROI is on your coaching—can say, “I completely understand that that's such a huge issue, and in fact, here are all the ways that this program is actually going to help you save time.” 

To wrap up, the moral of today's story, of this episode, is that you really need to be clear on the return on investment that you are offering in your coaching, and that return on investment is not limited to helping people make more money. In fact, it goes way deeper than that, and there are so many types of return on investment, such as financial, health, time, relationships, and so many other areas of life. And when you are really clear on what that ROI is, you're going to be able to focus your messaging and much more, and then really better communicate the value of your coaching.