As a coach, you want to provide your clients with a quality experience. From onboarding to offboarding and every step in between the process should be simple and smooth. To provide a simple and smooth experience for your clients you’ll need the right tools.
You don’t have to spend a fortune or loads of time learning new tools. The tools listed below are cost effective and user friendly. Reclaim your time and provide your clients with an amazing experience by implementing the right tools.
Contracts & Payments
First things first, let’s explore a few tools for the most important tasks in your business: contracts and payments. Running a streamlined business starts with professional contracts that are easy to navigate and sign. Once your contract process is running smoothly you’ll want to make sure your payment collection process is up to par.
Without the right tools for these processes, you’ll waste a ton of time preparing contracts and collecting signatures. You’ll have to have awkward conversations about missed payments and declined credit cards. Spare yourself the back and forth fiasco of awkward contract and payment conversations.
Implement the tools below for a smooth, painless contract and payment process.
Docusign
As a coach, you’re sending a lot of forms. You need a secure and seamless way to send and collect your contracts and intake forms. DocuSign is an essential tool for sending and receiving confidential forms.
DocuSign makes it easy to securely send confidential forms and collect signatures. Send easy to navigate forms right to your client’s inbox and get notified as soon as the signatures are complete.
DocuSign with spare with a slew of back and forth emails and give your clients peace of mind as they disclose personal information. Plans for DocuSign start at $10/month.
PayPal
You’ve delivered a coaching contract and your client has signed it, now, it’s time to get paid! Make sure you have the right payment capturing tool in your toolbox. Provide your client with a smooth and professional payment experience with a tool like PayPal.
Set up a PayPal Business account to seamlessly collect payments. Take your seamless payment process further with features like automated invoicing and payment reminders. PayPal makes it easy to streamline payments and provide your clients with peace of mind that their payments are securely received.
The best part, there is no fee to sign up. Rather than paying a monthly or annual fee, PayPal takes a small percentage of your transactions.
Communication Tools
Once you’ve got your contracts and payment running smoothly, you’ll want to streamline your communication. Contrary to what you might think, communication goes beyond the coaching session.
You’ll need to communicate with your clients about scheduling, progress tracking, where you’ll host your sessions, and how to get support between sessions. In other words, you’ll need tools that help you cut back on the flurry of emails it takes to coordinate all of the administrative tasks associated with your business.
Streamline communication in your business with the tools featured below.
Google Workspace
By far, the best tool you can invest in for admin activities is Google Workspace (formerly G Suite). Google Workspace is a one-stop shop for professional email, calendar, forms, storage and so much more.
This tool makes it possible to seamlessly share your work, plan meetings, and stay organized. You can store important client documents in the Drive, track client progress in Sheets, and collaborate on documents in real time. Google Workspace makes it easy to keep all of your important documents in one place.
With plans starting at $6/month this is a really affordable tool that your business will benefit from.
Grammarly
Google Workspace is the hub for your business email and documents but it won’t automatically screen the contents of your communication for errors. Believe it or not, clients can be really turned off by grammatical errors.
Never send a document or email littered with grammatical mistakes again. Grammarly screens your writing for grammatical errors. This tool integrates seamlessly with Google Workplace products and will help you maintain a professional persona in all of your written communication.
Start using Grammarly for free or splurge to unlock all of the software’s features.
Calendly
With peace of mind that the next email you send to schedule a session with your client will be error free, take a moment to consider how efficient your scheduling process is. Unless you’re using Calendly, your process probably consists of sending a bunch of emails back and forth until you finally find a day and time that works.
Cut out all of the back and forth with Calendly. Calendly gives you the ability to automate the scheduling process by simply setting your appointment hours and sending your clients a link to claim their appointments. Sounds too easy, right?
Calendly really is that simple. Use the scheduling service for free or upgrade to offer various types of appointments (Discovery Calls, one-on-one sessions, group sessions, etc.). Plans start at $10/month.
Basecamp
Basecamp is the ultimate tool for fostering an epic client experience. Through Basecamp you can easily deliver important documents and resources.
Rather than sending a flurry of emails and storing client documents here and there, store everything your client might need in one place. Upload contracts, progress tracking, and homework directly to Basecamp.
You can also use Basecamp as a hub for communication. Get notifications when your client reaches out without cluttering up your inbox. Basecamp offers a free 30-day trial and a flat rate of $99/month after that.
Zoom
More important than the location of your client documents and resources might be the location of your coaching sessions. Zoom is a fantastic meeting tool for your online clients. Provide your online clients with a high quality video and audio experience with Zoom.
You can customize your virtual background, adjust audio settings to cut out background noise, and record your sessions. Zoom easily integrates with tools like Google Calendar and Calendly so setting up a meeting doesn’t have to be a hassle.
Zoom is free for one-on-one meetings and for 40-minute meetings with more than 2 participants. Zoom offers annual payment options for unlimited meeting time and more participants for group coaching.
Voxer
Staying in contact with your clients between sessions is important. Clear up the clutter in your text message and email inboxes. Send voice texts, written messages, and even share photos with Voxer.
Go above and beyond a reminder text or boring email with Voxer. Enrich your client’s experience with a dedicated space to communicate with them between sessions. Download the Voxer app for free or upgrade for Pro features.
Marketing Tools
You’ve streamlined your contracts and payments process and upgraded your communication. But what about tools that help you get clients in the first place? You want to create a professional persona from the first moment your potential clients come across your content.
You’ll need professional looking graphics, branding that speaks to your ideal client, and automations that help you create more without the stress of scheduling. You don’t have to be a design expert or tech wiz to market your business like a pro.
Let’s dive into must-have tools for top-notch marketing that don’t cost a fortune.
Canva
Canva is a tool that every DIY content creator swears by. When it comes to graphic design this tool can do it all. You can design social media graphics, free downloadable PDFs to share with email subscribers, and even print products.
You don’t have to be a graphic design expert to use Canva. This tool is super user friendly and totally free to use! Take advantage of the free templates and unlimited downloads or upgrade for more advanced features.
Creative Market
If the DIY functions of Canva are intimidating, Creative Market is a great alternative. You can shop graphics, WordPress themes, stock photography, and other digital products through the creative market.
Jazz up your digital content with plans starting at $37/month.
Tailwind
Save time creating and scheduling social media content with Tailwind. Tailwind is the ultimate tool to plan out your content and automate the scheduling process. Simply upload your graphics and captions, set a date and time for your content to go live, and let Tailwind do the rest.
That’s not all this amazing tool does. Tailwind also offers a content creation feature that helps you design your content directly from the platform. You provide the title and color scheme for your content and Tailwind does the rest.
Use Tailwind for free or upgrade for more amazing features with plans starting at $9.99/month.
Convertkit
An engaged email list is a great way to grow your business. You don’t want to use any old method to send your subscribers emails. You’ll need the right email marketing platform to create beautiful, engaging content that your subscribers can’t wait to read. That’s where Convertkit comes in.
Seamlessly capture emails from potential clients and send professional looking emails with Convertkit. You can also create landing pages, email sign up forms, and automations with Convertkit. Your potential clients will definitely be impressed by the professional quality of your email marketing process.
Convertkit offers a free 14-day trial and plans starting at $0/month after that.
Kajabi
Ready to expand your business beyond one-on-one coaching? Kajabi is an incredible tool for creating and selling online courses and memberships.
Convert your knowledge and expertise into an on demand digital course or host large group coaching sessions with Kajabi’s membership feature. Kajabi makes it easy to create, design, and publish beautiful, professional looking digital products.
As your business grows so will demand for your time. Reclaim your time with on demand digital products and group coaching through Kajabi.
Kajabi offers a free trial and plans starting at $149/month after that.
That’s a wrap!
You are well on your way to running a seriously streamlined business. The tools above will help you run a smooth, professional looking business and provide your clients with a quality coaching experience.
Want even more insight on how to run a successful coaching business? The Coach School was created to help coaches like you learn the ins and outs of running a coaching business.
The Coach School provides step by step guidance on how to launch your business as well as interactive group coaching and tools crafted by coaching experts that you won’t find anywhere else.
