Why Coaches Lost Clients Before the Sale Call Even Starts
Coaches can lose potential clients before a sales call ever happens because people make buying decisions based on trust—not simply on how qualified you are or how much information you can give them.
That trust is being built, or lost, everywhere: on your website, in your branding, when you introduce yourself at a networking event, and in the way you explain what you do. If your marketing feels generic, overly focused on proving your expertise, or disconnected from who you actually are, a potential client may stop trusting that you are the right person for them.
The answer isn’t necessarily more credentials, better sales tactics, or more visibility. It’s learning to trust what is distinct about you and letting potential clients see enough of the real you to decide whether they trust you to help them.
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About This Episode
If you’re talking to people who could genuinely benefit from your coaching but they still aren’t becoming clients, it’s easy to assume you have a sales problem.
But the problem may have started much earlier.
In this episode, I’m talking about the role trust plays in how people choose coaches—and all the places you can accidentally lose that trust before someone ever gets to a sales conversation.
Your branding can do it. Your website can do it. Even the way you introduce yourself at a networking event can do it.
I’ll explain why leading with certifications and expertise can sometimes have the opposite effect you intended, why information alone isn’t enough to make someone want coaching, and why your marketing needs to feel like the actual person a client will meet when they work with you.
There’s also a deeper piece to this: creating that kind of marketing requires you to trust yourself.
When you understand who you are, what you uniquely do, what matters to you, and what you’re willing to stand for, your marketing can communicate something far more useful than, “I’m qualified.”
It can give the right client a reason to trust you.
What You’ll Learn
Why people often make buying decisions based on trust rather than information alone
Where coaches can unintentionally lose trust before a sales conversation happens
Why putting your credentials front and center on your website can actually work against you
How generic explanations of your coaching can make potential clients tune out
Why your branding should feel consistent with who clients actually experience when they meet you
How trusting yourself changes the way you market your coaching
Why Am I Talking to Potential Coaching Clients but They Aren’t Buying?
First, make sure you’re talking to enough of the right people.
But if those people genuinely have a problem you can solve and they still aren’t moving forward, I want you to ask a different question:
Where did I lose their trust?
That could happen well before a sales call.
A potential client is forming an impression through your website, branding, networking conversations, content, and the language you use to explain your coaching.
If those pieces don’t help them recognize their problem, understand you, and believe you may be able to help, the relationship can break down before you ever have the opportunity to “sell” anything.
Instead of automatically treating this as a closing problem, look at the entire experience leading up to the sales conversation.
How Do Coaches Build Trust With Potential Clients?
Trust doesn’t come from repeatedly telling people you’re trustworthy or proving how many credentials you have.
Imagine a doctor walking into the examination room and spending the first several minutes explaining where they went to school, how well they did in their classes, and why you should trust that they’re qualified to be your doctor.
At some point, you might start wondering why they’re trying so hard to convince you.
Potential coaching clients often arrive at your website already believing there is a possibility you can help them.
Use that opportunity to talk about them.
Show that you understand the problem they’re experiencing. Share the experiences, perspectives, and ideas that help them understand how you see that problem.
Let your marketing give them an accurate experience of who you are rather than presenting a polished version designed simply to look impressive.
Should Coaches Put Their Certifications on Their Website?
Certifications can have a place on your website.
But I don’t want the front page of your website to become a giant argument for why you’re qualified enough to help someone.
Someone visiting your site probably isn’t there because they desperately want an inventory of your certifications.
They’re trying to figure out:
Do you understand what I’m dealing with?
Can you help me?
Do I trust you enough to keep going?
Lead with the problem your client recognizes.
Help them see themselves in your message.
Your expertise still matters, but you don’t have to make your potential client dig through proof of your qualifications before they can understand what you actually do for them.
Why Does My Coaching Message Sound Generic?
Sometimes coaches explain their work by leading with information their audience has already heard many times.
Imagine someone saying:
“I work with women in menopause around their weight because not enough of them eat enough protein.”
Is that information necessarily wrong?
No.
But we’ve heard about protein.
We know protein.
Information by itself isn’t enough to create the relationship.
Trying to sell people on information coaching doesn’t automatically build trust.
Talk about the problem your client actually experiences.
Bring in your own relevant perspective and experience.
Show people how you understand the situation rather than repeating information they could hear from dozens of other coaches.
That gives them something much more useful to respond to.
Do I Need to Be More Visible to Get Coaching Clients?
Maybe.
But there’s a difference between being visible and actually allowing yourself to be seen.
You can do more lives.
You can speak on more stages.
You can create more posts.
And you can still carefully control the version of yourself people are allowed to experience.
Real visibility comes when you stop trying to be seen as the person with the most information, the most motivation, the most fun, or the most power.
You become willing to be seen as you.
That requires self-trust.
When you understand who you are and become more comfortable revealing that person through your marketing, potential clients get a clearer picture of what working with you will actually be like.
That consistency helps create trust.
What Endotype Changes About This
My approach to marketing is based on the Endotype Formula because I’m not trying to make every coach market the same way.
Understanding your Endotype can help you understand yourself more clearly—and that matters when your goal is marketing that genuinely represents you.
The point isn’t to manufacture a more marketable personality.
It’s to understand who you already are well enough that your branding, messaging, and marketing can accurately communicate it.
When the person clients eventually meet matches the person they experienced through your marketing, you create consistency instead of disconnect.
And consistency builds trust.
What Might Be Getting in the Way
Trying too hard to prove yourself can look like good marketing when it’s actually hesitation about whether you are enough.
More certifications.
More expertise on the homepage.
More information.
More carefully constructed visibility.
Authentic marketing asks something different of you.
It asks you to reveal your perspective, your story, what matters to you, what you stand for, and how you actually work.
That can feel far more vulnerable than hiding behind expertise.
If you notice yourself constantly trying to prove why someone should choose you, consider whether the next thing you need is another piece of proof—or greater confidence in communicating what is already uniquely yours.
You have to build trust with your clients.
And some of that trust starts with your ability to trust yourself.
Your Next Action Step
Spend 20 minutes looking at the first section of your website through a potential client’s eyes.
Write down how much of that space is about your expertise versus their problem.
Then rewrite just one sentence so it speaks directly to the recognizable problem your client is dealing with instead of proving why you’re qualified to solve it.
One sentence.
Don’t rebuild the website today.
Want Help Taking the Next Step?
If you recognize that your marketing doesn’t quite communicate what is uniquely you, private work with me may be the right next step.
This is work I love doing: mining through your Endotype, your coaching, your perspective, and what matters to you so we can get clear on what you uniquely do—the thing you can stand in, stand for, and communicate to your clients in a way that builds trust.
Want to start by understanding your Endotype?
Take the Endotype Formula Quiz:
www.endotype.com
Listen Next
How to Make Better Decisions in Your Coaching Business
This episode is a natural companion to the conversation about trust because understanding yourself and trusting the way you naturally operate can change the way you make decisions throughout your coaching business.
About Laura Hulleman
Laura Hulleman is the founder and creator of the Endotype Formula and host of Getting Coaches Paid. She helps coaches understand themselves, their clients, and the way they naturally build their businesses so they can create an income and impact they are proud of.
Episode Transcript
Laura Hulleman:
Why do you buy coaching programs? Why do you buy marketing programs? Why do you choose to allocate your funds to this person, this program, this solution?
Many of us would answer, “Well, because it made sense. It made sense for me to use this CRM. It made sense for me to join this marketing program.”
“It makes sense.”
And I’m going to write, like, that’s my BS bell. That’s BS.
The majority of our decisions are made not because we have all the information, not because you sat down and you compared this CRM and this CRM and this CRM and this CRM.
No. It’s because somebody told you, “This CRM that I’m representing can do all the things that you have just told me that you want, that you need for your business. Plus, it has these added bonuses, these added functions and features.”
And as they were talking to you, you built a relationship with them. Maybe it was a short-term one, but you built a relationship, and you believed what they were saying.
Even if you bought off a website, you still believed the things that were said.
Now, sometimes our belief gets damaged because you bought that CRM and you found out it’s super hard to work with. Or you decided to do this and then found out you needed that for your business. Or you bought that marketing program for $30,000 and you found out, “I would never market this way.”
But oops, too late.
Sometimes our belief gets shaken.
But do you know what that currency is?
It’s trust.
You buy based on trust.
So do your clients. They buy based on trust.
Are you developing a bond of trust? Or, even more importantly, where are you losing their trust?
If you right now are thinking, “I would like some more clients”—that’s what I’m thinking right now—where am I losing their trust?
Now, it may be more than that. It may be that you’re not getting yourself in front of enough people. It may be that you’re not getting yourself in front of the right people.
But if you’re talking to enough people, and they are the right people, and as you’re talking to them you’re like, “I could absolutely serve them,” but they can’t see it and they continue to say no, where did you lose their trust?
Big question.
Marketing requires that you create trust and that you not lose trust in so many different places. So many different places.
That’s what branding builds.
Your brand is not a kitschy idea. That’s what most people think it is, right? And sometimes it’s got some kitsch to it, right?
“I’m the mad scientist of marketing.”
I was going to go with that for a minute, friends. And I realized I was throwing my brand into a kitsch that wasn’t actually representative of who I am and what I do.
But it seemed at the time to be a really fun idea and kind of kitschy.
No, thank you.
Fortunately, I stopped before I released all of that to you guys.
So when it comes to branding, if I were to do a very black-and-white, super elegant, super traditionally professional brand, and you saw that brand—or you listened to this podcast and then you went over to my website—you’d be like, “This doesn’t feel like Laura.”
Laura does weird voices on her website. Like, what the heck?
Or in the previous episode, which is also on trust, so if you haven’t listened to that one yet, please go back and listen.
I’m not really a black-and-white, buttoned-up, super professional kind of vibe.
I’m grounded. I’m authoritative. But some of my messages—and if you listen to the podcast long enough, you’re going to know—some of my messages get a little punch in the face.
And that’s why I use punches of color, specific fonts, specific types of pictures, to be able to give you both that heart-based, nurturing energy that I have, but also the funny, weird, punch-in-the-face kind of realness that I have.
Matching my brand to my personality creates—say it with me, friends—trust.
When you get on my website, you’re not going to find, “Laura has been certified, and she has certified others, she’s built this certification, and she’s released these five books…”
You’re not going to find all of that.
I find it on some of yours as the first thing.
Let me ask you this.
If a doctor walked into the room and was like, “Before we get your checkup started, I would like to cover my ability to doctor you today. I would like for you to know, I did really good at my class. I graduated from this school, which is rated this many in the United States.
“Well, I wasn’t that great in microbiology, which is why I didn’t go into that. But on my other classes, I did this, this, and this. And these were my grades.
“And you need to trust me. Trust me. I’m an expert. I’m an expert in what I’m going to do. Okay? I’m going to do some stuff, and I’m going to be the expert. I’m going to do a really good job.”
The more they justified themselves at the very beginning of the consultation, the less you would trust them.
You’d be like, “This is super…”
Like, I trust in the fact that you’re a doctor. I’ve come here to your clinic because I believe that you can help me.
People—friend, friend—if they are on your website, they’re there because they believe you might be able to help them.
Please stop trying to build and justify a case for your expertise on the front page of your website.
Please instead talk to them about their problem.
Otherwise, you lose their—say it with me—trust.
How you describe your work in a networking group.
I pick on the naturopathic and the homeopathic a lot, so let me pick on something else.
“I work with women in menopause around their weight because not enough of them eat enough protein. And so I coach them and they have good results.”
I almost fell asleep saying those words.
And I will tell you, my brain does fall asleep in the networking groups while you’re saying those words.
It sounds like everything else.
I mean, how long have we been—do you remember SlimFast? SlimFast was selling us protein back, uh, I don’t know.
It existed when I was like 10.
That’s only 10 years ago.
No, I’m lying. I’m not 20 years old.
That’s like 40 years ago.
We know protein. We get it. Protein, we get it.
But information is not enough.
Trying to sell us on information coaching doesn’t build a bond of—say it with me now—trust.
Talking about the problem your client experiences, talking about your own unique personal experience or story that matches with your clients—that’s what makes them want to trust you.
Why is this so hard for us?
Please go back and listen to the previous episode of the podcast because we haven’t learned to trust ourselves.
You see, the type of marketing that I do with my clients really gets pretty vulnerable and authentic and reveals a lot of themselves.
There are people that throw around, like, “Oh, I help people become visible. Visibility.”
And what a lot of them are doing is teaching you how to do lives or teaching you how to be on a stage or whatever it is.
So before any of that visibility, friend, you need to be able to be seen for who you really are.
Not to be seen as the person who has the most information.
Not to be seen as the person who has the most motivation.
Not to be seen as the funnest person in the room.
Not to be seen as the most powerful person.
Real visibility comes when you don’t care how you’re seen. You just want to be seen as you.
That’s the type of marketing I do because it’s based on the Endotype Formula.
But what it requires is that you start trusting that that’s enough.
That’s part of the process that you and I do together when we’re working together.
But I’ll tell you, it’s not going to work until then.
You have to build trust with your client. And that trust that you build with your client really comes from your ability to trust yourself.
And that doesn’t come from your certification.
That comes from understanding who you are, being comfortable revealing who you are, and then working with a marketing professional that takes that understanding of who you are, what’s important, what your soapbox is, and why, and placing that into your marketing.
That’s when your clients get who you are, get what you’re about, and get into your programs.
It is all about—say it with me, friends—trust.
I would love to help you.
If these last couple of episodes really have stirred and churned some stuff for you, I would love to help you because this is what I do best.
This is what I trust myself to do all day and all night—well, spectacularly well for individuals—is help mine through them, their Endotype, their coaching, and get so clear on what it is you uniquely do, the thing that only you can do, in a way that you can stand in it, stand for it, stand about it, and then we explain it to your clients so that we build trust.
I hope this helps, my friends.
If you would like to reach out and would like to connect with me more, we’re going to include that link in the show notes.
If this just triggered something for you, I’d love to hear about it online.
So drop me a comment either in your podcast, go over and find me on LinkedIn under Raving Coaches, find me on Facebook under Endotype Formula.
You were connected, right? That’s how you know about the podcast.
Connect with me and let me know.
Those are some of my favorite comments and favorite moments, when you let me know that something I said hit you in a specific way.
All right. Have a great week.
