How to design a simple CRM for coaches

The reason why most coaches keep their practice small is that they don’t treat it like a business. Adding a CRM for coaches is one simple way of catapulting your practice to business status - and it doesn’t need to be complicated.

Most business CRMs contain the following elements:  

• Lead management systems
• Lead follow-up
• Goal tracking
• Analytics
• Financial tracking
• Workflow automation
• Email automation
• Human resource administration
• Invoicing
• Etc

But a CRM for coaches doesn’t need all the bells and whistles above. As a coach there are mainly 4 things to track: 1. Your leads

2. Your finances

3. Your clients

4. Your hires (if applicable)

Here’s how to design every part of the system specifically for coaches:

1. CRM for Coaches: Managing your leads  

Managing your leads requires simple tools. However, the way you set it up is important because it dictates how easy or difficult it will be for you to keep it up.

CoachVantage has a very simple tool for this but you need to ‘tag’ your contacts wisely. Most coaches will work with the following, however, use them as a guideline and think of your own:

Tag 1: Inbound lead (from the blog, website/social enquiry or referral) This tag is for the leads as they come in - this is the first tag to use when you create the contact. At this stage, you haven’t had a discovery call with them yet. Tag 2: Meeting Booked This tag is for those who have booked a discovery call. Depending on the outcome of the call, you could then assign a  ‘client’ tag or ‘proposal sent’ or ‘long term follow-up’ if they were not ready to buy.  

Tag 3: Proposal Sent his is for people who have received your proposal - it reminds you to follow it up.

Tag 4: Long-term follow-up This one’s for people who were not ready but might buy later - it’s a reminder to keep in touch every 30 to 90 days to stay in their front of mind.  

Tag 5: Client Congratulations! These are the ones that have paid you and are on board.

2. CRM for Coaches: Managing your finances

It’s important that you also track how much money you’ve made - most CRM systems just allow you to enter a numerical goal. CoachVantage has an invoicing section so you can report on the sales really easily and have real figures in hand, not just projections.  

3. CRM for Coaches: Managing your hires When you start growing, it’s important to be able to onboard new hires easily onto a platform that you own. 

CoachVantage gives you the opportunity to onboard hires and integrates them into your processes so they can support you by coaching your clients or supporting the administrative tasks of your business 

You will be able to set up roles and customize account privileges easily for each member of your team, including whether they should have admin rights or not. Using a coaching platform will make sure that your systems stay the same when you onboard people. This is very important because if employees start adding their input to your systems it becomes a recipe for future confusion and disaster as employees come and go, often with little time for hand-overs.

Would you like to take CoachVantage for a spin? Register for the 14-day trial below