The Dark Side of “Personal Coaching” Part 2

Okay, here’s the flip-side of the personal coaching issue…

If you’re a customer who is expecting to get "coaching" with the purchase of a $30 product, then you are out of your mind. Period.

Chances are that product was sold via an affiliate and the vendor is probably offering 75% commissions (at least in the IM world) so that $30 product after fees and affiliate commissions probably made them about $7.

How much time is worth $7? For me, you’re looking at less than a minute. Now, I do understand they may have promised it to you but seriously, if someone is offering coaching for $7 then they are probably not worth listening to anyway.

Realistically, newbies need coaching. Even pros keep mentors, so how much more does someone who is just starting out need help?

A good coaching/mentor program is going to run you at least a hundred to a few thousand per month (or 5-6 figures if you are at that stage of the game). I highly recommend you find someone who you can mirror and get advice from. Preferably someone who has accomplished what you want to accomplish.

Some important criteria for a coaching program though…first off, never ever ever agree to the type of "high-pressure" coaching that is telemarketed to you unexpectedly. These are the guys that ask questions like, "how much available credit do you have?" This crew is just a bunch of aggressive retarded salesmen. They can’t help you and will be certain to extract maximum cash from you and you will see little return on that. There’s been a massive rise in this sort of thing lately in the IM arena and I think it’s shameful.

Secondly, always get involved in coaching that allows you to actually speak to your mentor directly- not assistants. if you have to deal with assistants as a "go-between" then I would say that should discount the price of the coaching considerably.

And finally, never sign up for coaching if you don’t plan on listening to your coach! Yes, they may not want to do things the way you’ve "heard about" and they may direct you to do completely different things than you may have planned, but if you are trying to mimic success then you owe it to yourself to follow their instruction.

Now, let’s say you’re a product vendor and you want to offer some sort of personalized help with your product. As covered already do NOT say "free coaching" unless you want to suffer.

I recommend something like the following:

"As a way of saying "thanks" for grabbing your copy of [product] i will personally answer any one question you have about [subject] via email at any time during the first 30 days after purchase. After purchase I will give you my personal e-mail address for just this thing so you can reach me directly"

Note that the above email address should be something just for said purpose "questions@domain.com" works well.

If you get a customer who simply keeps asking questions, I would respond as such, "Hi [customer], it appears that you may need more personalized attention than I can offer in one question. If you’d like to purchase one of my consulting packages please head over to [link] and I’d be happy to set something up for you." And that’s it.

Coaching is a double-edged sword, but used wisely it can increase sales and customer trust.

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