Starting a sports coaching business from scratch? How can you make your dream of turning your passion for sports — or your side-hustle sports coaching service — into a full-time job, come true? Let’s go through a few strategic tips and tricks, along with alternatives you may have not thought of, to help you start and give a boost to your coaching business. Ready to set the ground for business success?
How to kickstart your coaching business
We’ve compiled a list of ten things you should keep in mind to make your venture successful:
1. Tier your services or products for different levels of affordability
They say that everything comes after the price, and they’re right. It’s the price range that will encourage – or discourage – customers from paying for a product or a service you’re offering. Price may even affect the intention of some of them to give it a try or not. You should, therefore, consider carefully what you’ll be offering to whom; and what they’ll be willing to pay for it.
2. Simplify and automate your billing methods
Once you finalize your pricing plan and decide on the price for each one of the services you’ll be offering, you’ll then have to plan how you’ll receive payments. It’s, undoubtedly, a win-win situation for both parties to make it easier for your clients to complete their payments and simplify the payment collection process for you.
Keep in mind that a smooth collaboration with your customers is a core part of your business. And by simplifying that aspect of your business, i.e. payment transactions, you make it easier for you and your customers to focus on the coaching part of your communication. How’s that feasible? Just use a service that helps you securely accept money online. There are numerous alternative solutions available in the market to choose from (Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, etc).
3. Create a website for your services or products
The next thing to do, in order to increase the credibility of your coaching business, is to curate your online presence. Apart from the social media accounts you may have already been working on, you’ll also need to create a website. There, with the help of an expert, you’ll have to focus on two core objectives:
- To explain what you’re doing, how, and why
- And to try to keep your content clear, short, and concise
Note here that it’s critical to put in the extra effort to make your online presence look more professional. By doing so, you’ll manage to promote and market your business efficiently and stand out in a competitive market.
4. Register with local or online directories
Now, what can you do so that you make it even easier for people searching for coaching services to find you? Leading sports coach directories is certainly an option you should also exploit. Here’s how: If your goal is to first target customers in your area, you need to improve your local visibility. And you’ll do so, by listing your coaching business to the most up-to-date local business directories.
Once you get the hang of it, why not increase the chances of getting more customers on board? Make your services known to a wider audience, by listing your coaching business to top coach directories; and don’t worry about coaching workload. With an easy-to-use software solution like Endogusto, you’ll be able to efficiently coach a long list of athletes.
5. Tend to your sales
What’s a business without revenues? Once you’re done with indirect ways to approach prospective customers as we described above, you’ll need to give your best to attract new customers. Here’s how you can do that:
- Understand audience needs: this is an ongoing process that won’t only help you improve your website content, to communicate your offering better. It will also help you finetune your services.
- Keep customers happy and use them as your ambassadors: encourage them to share their track records — a representation of what you’ll be helping them achieve — online.
- Hire help: look for specialists that will help you curate your sales funnel and make your coaching business more successful.
- Ask for reviews: ask for and publish ratings on your website and let your audience know more about the quality of service you’re offering.
6. Always be available
Your customers are highly likely to expect continuous support; and you’ll need to deliver on the expectation, to build a thriving coaching business. Your responsiveness equally touches both the customers who will be enjoying your coaching services and the ones getting in touch with you to learn more about your offering. Thus, try to offer immediate support; and don’t forget that every interaction with your audience is important.
7. Optimize your rates
Why not partner with other professionals such as a dietician to broaden your services? You may as well adjust your training services, so as to offer variability to your clients; or some of your clients. Perhaps you could conduct a relevant survey, asking them what they need or what they would like to try in the coming months. This way you’ll manage to diversify your training and increase your revenues, by offering your existing clients additional services. In a similar fashion, you may also consider adjusting your pricing, if needed, for new clients.
8. Work on your network
Networking is also critical when you’re starting a coaching business from scratch. That’s why you should put in the effort to let your network know all about your new venture. This will help bring athletes who are on the lookout for sports coaching services, closer. Communicating your services to your network may even encourage people to start their fitness journey with you, from scratch.
9. Try out different things; don’t be a perfectionist
Now, this tip may sound commonplace. But you may, indeed, get carried away by your intention to polish each and every simple detail you’ve set in mind before you finally feel ready to launch your coaching business. Don’t do that! Try to make gradual, small improvements in all aspects we’ve been discussing above.
10. Always keep improving
This one is pretty simple. Stay up to date with respect to your coaching techniques and advancements in your field. This will help you better support your customers and, hopefully, help you make decisions that will grow your coaching business some more. The same is true for your business strategy too; polish your skill to better support your coaching business in the digital world.
Want to give your new coaching business a boost?
As we sum this up, we’d like to emphasize one last piece of advice, which we believe will help you make your new coaching business more fruitful. And what’s that? Well, why not give Endogusto, our online coaching platform, a try for free?
With it, you will not only get your athletes on board in seconds, but you’ll better interact with them, from day zero. On top of that, you’ll get to coach them much more efficiently than you would do without it.
Especially if you’re an endurance coach who specializes in any of the following sports categories i.e. running, cycling, triathlon, or ultramarathon you’ll enjoy sophisticated functionality that will upgrade your services.
Endogusto will be an important ally to support you in starting and growing your new coaching business 💪