If you’ve been studying how to most effectively market your coaching you probably realize that people are more interested in solutions to their problems than in hiring a coach or experiencing coaching.

That’s why you want to position your coaching services as the fastest, easiest, most enjoyable and most effective way to address the critical, specific and pressing problems that your target market has. The bigger and more urgent the problem, the more likely the person will hire you.

Think of these important, specific and pressing challenges as “$10,000 Problems.”

$10,000 Problems…

• are the issues that keep your ideal clients awake a night.
• cause your ideal clients a lot of struggle and stress.
• are things that your ideal clients realize they cannot effectively address on their own.
• are so significant because the person has compelling reasons why addressing the problem now is so important.

Perhaps the best way to describe a $10,000 problem is by comparing it to a generic problem. Here are some examples…

Generic Problem #1: Small business owners who need to attract more clients.

$10,000 Problem #1: Small business owners who realize that in order to achieve their financial objectives they need to create a high-end offering that leverages their unique gifts and skills and then find the A-List clients who will happily pay for the extra value they provide.

Generic Problem #2: People who want to make a career transition.

$10,000 Problem #2: BabyBoomers who have been laid-off and want to use the opportunity to make a complete career shift. They have a limited window of time and resources to explore and pursue new career options. They are concerned that if they don’t act quickly they will be sucked back into their former profession.

Generic Problem #3: Executives who want to improve their leadership.

$10,000 Problem #3: Newly hired executives with a directive leadership style who need to balance taking charge effectively while also getting buy-in from the existing team in order to achieve their first quarter milestones and “pass” their 90 day probation period.

What differences do you notice between the generic problems and the $10,000 Problems?

In general, $10,000 Problems…

• are specific and when addressed will have a sustainable impact.
• are time-sensitive and need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
• occur within a subset of a broader target market.

How to take the “$10,000 Problem” concept and utilize it in your business:

1. Develop a list of at least five $10,000 problems that your target market faces. You probably have a sense of what these are. Start off by listing the “generic” problems that your coaching addresses or the results it enables clients to achieve and then go deeper. Identify possible scenarios and situations when these problems commonly occur. Explore why solving these problems are so important.

2. Identify the subset of your target market where the $10,000 problems occur most and focus on reaching out and finding those people. These are the people within your target market who have the highest “Readiness Factor” and therefore most likely to hire you.

3. Develop specific marketing campaigns geared towards the subset of your target market who have $10,000 problems. Whether you are focusing on speaking, networking, internet marketing or another marketing strategy, you will get the best results from your efforts when you create campaigns that address $10,000 problems.

4. Focus on and discuss $10,000 problems in your complimentary consultation with prospects. If you’ve learned the step-by-step C&GR client enrollment system, you already know that this is a critical part of your sales process. When you enable a prospect to articulate their $10,000 problem and you show how your coaching is the best solution, it then becomes very easy for that person to say “Yes” to your coaching.

5. Really connect with the fact that your coaching “solves” $10,000 problems. Although the $10,000 number is a bit arbitrary, it’s important for you to think about your coaching as having that kind of impact. This helps you see the value of what you provide. It also put your coaching fee in perspective. For example, if a client invests a total of $2,000 in your coaching and as a result is able to address their $10,000 problem then they are getting a great return on their investment. (And if you are doing corporate or organizational coaching you might want to bump that number up and focus on identifying the $100,000 problems that the corporations and organizations you most want to work with are facing.)

FACT: People hire coaches to solve their problems. The optimum way to fill your practice with eager, well-paying clients is by positioning your coaching as the best solution to your prospects big problems.

What $10,000 problems do you and can you support people in solving?