The coaching industry has been growing exponentially, going from $2.3 billion in global revenues and 53K professionals in 2015 to $15 billion and 104K coaches in 2019. This skyrocket expansion of the industry has been accompanied and expedited by the evolution of software: industry-specific as well as CRM systems for coaches.
Business coaching, life mentorship, sports training experts have all been laboring to bring more efficiencies to the lives of millions. And the calling brings its positive results to the world economy: according to the report called “Building a Coaching Culture for Increased Employee Engagement” by the International Coaching Federation, 63% of the organizations with a strong coaching culture confirmed more robust revenue growth.
Such positive financial impact of this HR practice is recognized by the C-level executives, who are happy to invest in their team’s training and mentorship programs. The human talent & expertise in the field has been propelled to its heights by specialized software, which is the focus of our attention here.
In this article, we are scrutinizing the technological pillar of the coaching industry.
Nimble hereby provides a quick overview of the Coaching software solutions, inclusive of the CRM usage for the segment. This guide can help readers make informed decisions about the SaaS tools to boost their practice & drive clients’ results.
Sports, Life Coaching, Or Executive Coaching: Technology Is Your Friend
Coaching takes on different forms from corporate mentorship programs to group sports coaching. Moreover, it keeps adapting to the demands of the era: Forbes piece pinpoints these coaching niches as trending in 2019:
- Employee satisfaction
- Women empowerment
- Sexuality
- Sales Coaching
- Chronic Illnesses
Whatever the specialty, coaches the world over come to discover the blessings of the technology for their highly revered profession sooner or later.
The principles and techniques are the same if you are helping business executives, patients battling chronic disease, sportsmen, or struggling families. There is an algorithm every client goes through and routine processes that need automation.
This is when the technology comes in with its tools available from any device to tackle issues on the go and be able to jump into action when your patient needs you most.
Let’s review the Coaching Software instrument kit available for the segment.
Coaching Software Solutions: The Online Help For The Helpers
Coaching management software has been expanding fast to cater to the growing demand and improving the industry to make otherwise intangible results of a mentor more traceable & measurable.
The market of the technology offering is big as it is with more new players entering the field every year. These are the major characteristics that are provided in major tools.
Key Features Of The Software Systems For Coaches
- Appointment scheduling
- Billing & Invoicing
- Goal Setting tracking
- Mentor / coach matching
- Learning Plans
- Program management
- Sports / Life / Business coaching
- Group / Individual Mentorship
- Progress tracking
Best Online Coaching Platforms
- CoachAccountable
- Paperbell
- Cognition
- Coaches Console
- Life Coach Office
- CoachMetrix
- Coaching Loft
- Satori
CRM For Coaching Companies & Individual Coaches: Universal Instrument
How is an industry-specific SaaS solution different from a general-purpose Customer Relationship Management System?
Well, in a nutshell, CRM is:
- Less specific to the industry with some customization needed
- Cheaper, as has a way bigger addressable market to start with
- More versatile as has to cater to professionals across all industries
- Extremely customizable so your imagination is your limit
- Abundant with marketing & sales tools and features to grow your coaching practice.
This is why many independent solopreneurs across all industries use such CRMs as their only SaaS tool. On the other hand, bigger companies may use this technology for sales and marketing departments to drive business growth on top of having industry-specific technology for the main body of experts.
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Key Features Of CRM For Coaching Business:
- Email Marketing & Automation
- Client Database Management
- Customer Profile Enrichment
- Calendaring & Scheduling Module
- Social Insights & Engagement
- Reporting & Analytics
- Task Management
- Deal & Pipeline Management
Those are just the foundational modules of most of the CRMs, let’s now deep dive into the specifics of how one of the best CRMs in the world like Nimble can help a coaching business grow, facilitate client progress, and track results.
CRM For Coaches: Valuable Tool In Coaching Management Software Arsenal
Having over 140 000 professionals using Nimble CRM across the wide range of economy segments, our team knows that professional and personal growth is paramount to the overall success of individuals and companies.
This is why our team has set our minds to showcase how Customer Relationship Management software can be used to automate and optimize the process for coaches, mentors, trainers.
KYC: Know Your Customer + Know Your Prospect
Any coaching process starts with learning about the client. No session is possible without an introductory chat and finding out as much as you can about the subject of your psychological assistance.
Nimble Prospector is an extension that allows its users to get access to a myriad of data points about a person and their employing company in an enriched profile. Moreover, the extension works anywhere on the desktop: while surfing the web, in an email environment, on social media sites as well as third-party applications.
Not only do you find out lots about your potential customer, but you also minimize the manual entry, as you can add people right from inside the social media platforms.
If client research used to take up loads of time – no longer this endeavor is a painstaking feared occasion, but an enjoyable digital adventure.
Segment Your Database To Apply Group Actions
Any CRM is a tool that contains the contact information of everyone you come across and deal in business: be it a client, a vendor representative, a partner, or a colleague from a local coach association.
This is why there are basic segmentation settings available to group contacts: you can choose a title, location, gender, and other demographic parameters to group your contacts.
Best of all users can create a custom field and add any parameter they please to segment their database. Alternatively, they can use custom tags for contacts: “active patient”, “inactive patient”, “prospect”, “Business Coaching Group Therapy”, “Coaching Conference Attendee”, “VIP Referrer” etc.
There is no limit on the tag for a profile, so you can get as granular a drill down as you need.
Further down the line you can group email such segments of contacts, schedule appointments with them, share files.
Assign Tasks & Distribute WorkFlow Within Team
If your company is getting bigger and you are no longer a solopreneur, team management is another pair of shoes to fill.
Nimble CRM has an extensive yet intuitive task management module that allows us to create, assign, schedule, and postpone tasks.
The hierarchy of access to the CRM will provide access to the team leaders and supervisors for a helicopter view of tasks and deals in the pipeline.
Create Package Email Drip Campaign
The email feature is the favorite of the most ardent haters of inboxes of all sorts. As you can automate the most boring of the working routines here.
You can mass email, schedule correspondence, check open rate stats, and create drip campaigns.
Why not create an introductory drip campaign with the packaged services? Advise your potential customers of the offers you might have:
- An introductory complimentary half-an-hour phone call,
- 3 months of one-on-one sessions,
- 6 months of one-on-one sessions, etc
Share Action Plan For Clients And Control Its Progress With Reminders
Coaching results are hard to measure, this is why discipline has become the focus of the industry. There should be accountability on both sides of the coaching duo synergy.
Action plans can be created, shared, and monitored for progress with the help of shared documentation, reminders, and task management modules of a CRM for coaches.
Make session notes in deal management pertaining to progress so you are never stuck for a lost piece of info.
Journaling progress is vital, this is why assignments and reminders help to discipline a client into taking notes and marking agreed-upon actions as complete daily.
Create A Client Library Of Useful Resources
All of the mentoring experience and expertise is your most valuable asset when it comes to coaching practice and tenure.
Once you create a working action plan for a specific condition of issue, that is topical for your clientele, you can add it to a respective folder on DropBox or GDrive, that Nimble is compatible with.
Name those libraries respectively as per groups or practices: life coaching, diet coaching, business coaching or go even into more detailed resource filing. You can then provide access to these treasures of wisdom when you onboard clients as per interests.
Group Coaching: Mass email, Grant access to shared files, Assign tasks
Group coaching has its downsides and advantages. With Nimble CRM for the coaching industry, you have the chance to enjoy all the benefits of group work and eliminate or minimize all of the negative sides.
Reduce your workload by tagging all contacts in specific groups with one tag.
Now you can group email them, see if and when they checked email, comment on their activity on social media, grant access to shared files, create WIP documents for the common group use, and more.
Get Valuable Insights From Reporting
Analytics and reporting are one of the most underused features of any CRM yet the one with the highest ROI in terms of time spent on work and potential bottom-line boost.
Any data point can be turned into a column in your reporting as you can add a custom field to any module in the system. Once you learn to ask the right questions, the system will provide insights as to where your strongest and weakest spots are in business for you to work on them.
Nimble CRM For Coaching Companies & Individual Professionals
According to Statista, average annual earnings for coaches worldwide go up to $122K annually for 10-15 years of tenure and $160K for those coaching over 15 years. With that solid remuneration, paying for coaching CRMs or other industry-specific software is a non-issue, but for those at the beginning of the career, choosing the right tools at the right price point may be challenging.
This is why a Customer Relationship Management software might be just the way to go for a solopreneur in this niche, who has no possibility to pay 50-100 dollars per month for industry-specific tools. Nimble CRM only costs 19 dollars per user per month if billed annually and $25 if billed monthly – irrespective if you have 5 clients, 10 or a 100.
Best thing – you can try Nimble for free for 2 weeks with full access granted with just an email.
- Nimble is on top of Capterra and G2Crowd‘s rankings of Best CRM lists.
- It’s intuitive yet is abundant with all the handy features
- It helps 140K user the world over to save 90 minutes a day
- It’s GDPR compliant
- It’s part of the Piesync and Zapier suites of apps, so you can easily integrate it with your best coaching software
Start your free trial now and see how quickly your coaching practice grows due to all that newly found efficiencies!