By Kristin Laffrey, business coach for women leading impact in fertility, birth, postpartum, motherhood, parenting and matrescence.
If you are looking to grow your sleep consulting business, the most valuable thing you can do is recognise the importance of creating a steady flow of clients.
Having worked with sleep consultants since early 2020, through private business coaching and the Mothermind business academy, I have seen the challenges that most consultants face in their business and their greatest challenge is building out their business to be able to attract a steady flow of clients. As a result, their business feels overwhelming and so many women get to the point of feeling like they have no other option than to give up.
As a business coach, specialising in working with businesses within the motherhood/parenting space, I bring so much emphasis to the importance of building out the foundations and strategies within your business that are going to create consistency in leads and clients and as a result consistency in income and impact within your business.
The underlying importance of this is that to be able to create a profitable and sustainable business, your business needs to be intentionally set up for this.
This article outlines the elements within your business that when established and refined are going to create consistency within your income.
Why aren't more sleep consultants creating consistent income?
One thing I have recognised within the sleep consulting industry is that many businesses are not established for consistent income. There appears to be a lack of emphasis within education and training on the difference between foundations for starting your business and foundations for succeeding within your business.
One of the most important things to acknowledge within business is that it's not just about launching a website with your packages on them and setting up a social media account and posting, there are elements of your business that need to be established, like your strategy for growing your audience, a marketing strategy for attracting a steady flow of leads and a sales process for moving leads into your packages. This is where stability within your income is established.
So what does it take to create consistent income?
There are 5 components to creating consistent income within your sleep coaching/consulting business:
Solidifying your business foundations
Having a strong foundation to build on within your business is essential and this comes down to having a clearly defined niche, understanding who it is you serve and how it is you serve them.
One of the greatest gaps I see with sleep consultants is that they don't have a clear framework for how they support their clients and are lacking clear messaging that supports them to communicate that. As the sleep consulting industry continues to grow at a rapid pace and more sleep consultants continue to enter the market, your unique process and messaging is more essential than ever because your ideal clients are looking for "how do you support me?" to find the sleep consultant that is most suited to them and their preferred approach.
Packaging and positioning your core offers
There is a lot of focus within business around diversifying your income streams when it comes to sleep consulting and although this is a key way that I support my clients in strategically growing their impact and income, the most valuable thing you can do within your business is create core offers to be able to create a steady flow of clients. If you are early in business and trying to focus too much on diversification it can take you away from creating a consistent flow to your offers.
Your core offers should consistent of your packages that include different levels of support and price points. Once you have clearly refined offers that align with your unique framework for supporting clients your focus then becomes on creating a simplified and repeatable process for attracting clients.
A client attraction strategy
Building an online presence is about creating a home for you and your brand. It represents a place where you can build your audience and nurture them to be able to move them into your packages. Having a client attraction strategy for your sleep coaching business is about having a strategy where you can get in front of your ideal clients and move them into your community online (whether that is your social media, your Facebook group, your email list), it's important to connect with:
How are you reaching a steady flow of ideal clients?
Where are you directing them to come into your community?
How are you continuing to nurture them?
A client conversion strategy
Having a client conversion strategy is having a sales process where you can confidently move clients into your packages. This is to follow on from your process of bringing them into your audience as it addresses what happens with these ideal clients once they are in your audience. This comes down to two core elements:
Your client journey
Your messaging that moves them into your packages
This is the gap I see time and time again where sleep consultants don't have a sales process in place and so although they are bringing potential clients into their audience (either organically or through paid ads), they don't have a process to move them into their packages to become paying clients. This is one of the greatest shifts I see for the women that come into the Mothermind business academy is that we focus on building out their sales process to book more free calls and more consults with their clients. Not only is there a whole module focused around selling and converting clients but I personally audit their current sales process and identify direct shifts we can create immediately to start increasing the conversion of clients.
The greatest sign that you are lacking a conversion strategy is if you are getting people to your social media or there are people clicking on your website but they aren't moving into your packages. This can be a sign that you don't have a process in place to convert the potential clients you are currently reaching.
Client retention and referrals
The final piece in the puzzle is creating a process for client retention and encouraging referrals as two further avenues of attracting clients. Rather than this being your core strategy for attracting clients, this is a client attraction process that works alongside your strategy for bringing potential clients into your audience.
Creating consistent income
It is so important to emphasise that when you build out the foundations and strategies for creating consistent income this becomes a process that you can repeat time and time again within your business meaning that these foundations and strategies continue to serve you within your business. However, it is important to note that you need to intentionally create these foundations within your business and continue to refine them until they are operating effectively.
If you are yet to create consistent income within your business, this is where I encourage you to focus your time, energy and money, creating the foundations and strategies that are going to allow you to attract and convert a consistent flow on sleep consulting clients into your business.
Want to know what actions to start taking today to attract more clients and grow?
My free Massively Intentional Action Plan breaks down my step-by-step client attraction process to support you in building visibility, cultivating connection and selling your services with confidence to your potential clients. Download now to start implementing your action plan immediately.
Want to start building the foundations and strategies to attract more potential clients, book more client consults and convert more clients into your sleep consulting packages?
Jump on the waitlist to the next round of the Mothermind to be supported for 3 months to build the foundations and strategies within your business to attract more clients, grow your business and create more income.