7 Ways Your Podcast Creates New Prospects & New Sales for Your Coaching Business

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1. Your Podcast drives home your C&C Idea

Your Clear & Compelling Idea is the living, beating heart of your business. It’s the idea that creates demand for your coaching by communicating your value and who benefits the most from that value.

Take BMW for example. Their Clear & Compelling Idea is the Ultimate Driving Machine.

That Idea sets that brand apart AND speaks deeply to car buyers who care about the driving experience. That Idea also repels those who care more about other things, like Tesla drivers for example.

Your Clear & Compelling Idea sets your coaching apart from other coaches and attracts the right people while repelling everyone else.

In a perfect world, even the title and tagline of your podcast communicates your Clear & Compelling Idea, so people are exposed to that idea just by coming across your podcast.

Beyond that, you can use the guests you feature, the solo episodes you record and the success stories you share, all together in a strategic push to communicate your Clear & Compelling Idea. All the content revolves around that one idea and drives it home from a thousand different angles.

It’s the way you look at the world, and no form of marketing allows people to spend as much time with you as podcasting, so it’s a perfect place to communicate more information and drive home one idea from a variety of different angles.

2. Podcasting gives you complete control of your message

Unlike being a guest, or doing speaking engagements or other forms of marketing, you are in complete control of every element of your podcast. There’s no one standing between you and your audience.

Want to deliver some hard truths or unpopular opinions? Your podcast is the perfect place, because you can share your reasoning behind it and not get muzzled or shouted down by people who disagree.

Want to build credibility and authority? Bring on influential experts in your space and focus on topics that reinforce your message. Dana Malstaff’s Boss Mom podcast is a great example, where she brings on people like Amy Porterfield to share how Amy’s program fits into the Boss Mom approach.

Want to build anticipation for the book you’re launching? Record solo episodes where you read excerpts or entire chapters, like Mark Divine is doing on the Unbeatable Mind podcast.

Whatever message you want to deliver to your audience at any given time, your podcast gives you complete control to put a message in front of your audience based on the needs of your business at the time.

3. Podcasting is Scalable (Unlike Your Sales Skills)

Relying on your sales skills to grow your coaching business keeps you trapped trading time for dollars. You can only talk to so many people one-on-one.

Could you close more sales if you get more people on the phone? Of course. But how many sales calls do you want to do? Can you double that number and still take all the calls yourself? As any of my clients can tell you, sales calls are great in the first couple of years, and once you’ve done enough, they all start to blend together and you get tired of them.

Same thing applies to speaking gigs.

Could you get more clients by doing more speaking gigs? Of course. But can you double the number of speaking gigs you do in a year? Most of my clients can’t. Certainly not without putting their family life at major risk.

Yet your podcast can double in listeners, and double again, and again, without zero additional time from you.

So of course, leverage your skills. But why not put more time into your podcast where you can double your audience without taking up any more of your time?

4. Podcasting creates converts

When the right people hear a Clear & Compelling Idea, leading to a unique Point of View, delivered on a regular basis, from different angles and topics, a certain percentage of them come to see the world in a completely different way.

They literally become converts. They are converted to your Point of View, your message, your belief system.

The best podcast hosts I know are evangelistic. They evangelize their Point of View and suck other people into that Point of View.

When people start to see the world the same way they do, it’s natural for people to want a solution from them.

To take advantage of this potential, get more passionate about your message.

Become evangelistic. Stir up the passion for the change you can deliver to people, the change you want to make in the world, and base your podcast around that passion. A powerful message delivered with passion will convert people.

Then as a coach, you go from becoming one of many choices, to becoming the only choice. Because you’re the only one who sees the world the way they do. You’re the only one who diagnosed their problem in the same way. So you must have the right solution.

5. Podcasting Can Transform Demand for YOU into Demand for Your COMPANY

This is the key to freedom in any coaching business.

Some coaches want to work with a limited number of individual clients and that’s great, but most coaches tap out around 40 one-on-one clients. To scale beyond that point, many turn to hiring other coaches. Let’s call them ‘staff coaches.’

When a coach first hires a ‘staff coach’ they almost always run smack into a wall - Clients only want them.

Podcasting gives you a solution by bringing in your Staff Coaches as co-host and guests to build their credibility.

You can use podcasting to put more focus on the tools and systems you’ve developed, and then shine the spotlight on your staff coaches.

Guys like Jeff Cohn, Lars Hedenborg and Michael Hellickson are all really good at using their podcasts for this. For example, in Jeff Cohn’s company, Elite Real Estate Systems, each of their staff coaches are subject matter experts based on their roles in Jeff’s original real estate business.

They now serve as podcast co-hosts to do solo episodes or conduct guest episodes around their subject matter. In doing so, the podcast creates demand for the coaching program, not demand for more of Jeff’s time. That allows Jeff to continue focusing on building content and systems that deliver clients better results, rather than one-on-one coaching.

6. Podcasting helps up-sell and cross-sell other offers

We all know it’s easier to sell more stuff to an existing client than selling anything to a new prospect.

Podcasting takes this to another level, by giving you a platform for content that people spend a lot of time with. More time means you can add more calls-to-action for other offers, and drop casual mentions of other offers into your episodes that builds familiarity and gets people curious.

You can even use your podcast to feature affiliate partners and drive traffic to them, which you monetize when your audience buys one of their offers, that’s very common.

Or you can use your podcast to interview guests at your upcoming live event, and drive ticket sales in advance. This takes some of the burden off you to do hand-to-hand combat it usually takes to sell out live events.

You can also bring people on to share success stories from taking advantage of your other offers, and make a direct call-to-action to your existing audience, promoting an offer that isn’t available to the outside world. These types of offers can be far more profitable than your core offer.

So podcasting can help up-sell and cross-sell.

7. Podcasting builds the most rare commodity online today - Trust

One of my favorite writers said that trust is the result of promises kept over time.

Podcasting is a promise to your audience. That you’re going to show up and deliver something of value, week in and week out, for an extended period of time.

When you actually show up and deliver like you promise, that in itself builds trust.

Completely apart from the content you share, which can also build trust, just publishing content on a regular basis, that is all based around your Clear & Compelling Idea, builds trust.

It demonstrates that you’re not just jumping from offer to offer, audience to audience, pivoting to whatever you think will make you the most money today.

You’d be surprised how many online influencers are doing exactly that.

By running your podcast and delivering value around the same Point of View consistently for an extended period of time, you set yourself apart from all the influencers who are just chasing the latest fad.

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To me, running a coaching business without a podcast is like starting a church and never preaching a Sunday morning sermon.

Coaching is about leadership. And podcasting is a platform for leadership.

Specifically, thought leadership.

Leading with ideas.

Podcasting allows you to convert people to new beliefs, which lead to new actions, which create new results.

As a business coach, you have a message that can change lives.

You just need to get that message in front of the right people.

That’s what podcasting does best.