If you’re a high-ticket coach drained by unproductive calls and no-shows… Or surrounded by OtterAI and human clients who just won’t say anything…
There’s a high chance that you’re not using these 5 tweaks consistently enough.
If you don’t know me yet, I’m Jaime Miller. I’ve taught groups of adult learners since 2008. I’ve been a student of entrepreneurship since 2010 and I’ve led online classes since the days when Skype was literally the only option (circa 2011 if you’re curious).
All this to say… I wracked up my 10,000 hours teaching online a while ago.
In the article below, I’m compressing time for you with 5 ultra simple changes that automatically make you to exude purpose and authority while you lead the weekly group calls in your coaching program, no matter your niche.
You’ll notice the improvement during the very first call.
After the first month, you’ll be feeling the vibe rise up as inactive or checked-out clients tune back in.
After the first quarter, you’ll see an uptick in your clients’ Success Rate and speed of results with your program… and you’ll wonder why anyone would ever do it any other way. 🩷
So without further ado, let’s get to it.
Tweak #1
Announce the Call Plan in Advance
The percentage of clients who are willing to do a trust fall with their time is lower than you hope. Especially if they’re busy professionals.
Clients want to have a reasonable explanation of what you’ll do with them during the call so they can identify how that fits into their current situation implementing your program… so they can organize their priorities accordingly.
Even if you’re an expert…
You already know that you do NOT get 100% of your enrolled and registered clients showing up to every single call just to see what happens.
The clearer a picture you paint for them, the more of them will show up. That is why it’s worth telling them the plan at least 24 hours in advance.
If you think you’ll forget, add a repeating appointment to your calendar so that these announcements are queued up in your CRM.
Tweak #2
Explain the 3 Different Call Structures to Your Clients
In a moment, I’ll tell you what they are. The reason your clients need to know this is because it helps them understand how to use their access to you, not squander it.
Coaching programs are the wild wild west. Every coach runs things differently, so it does not matter if you inherited a client who’s already been in other coaching programs before OR if you’re their first.
No, it’s not immediately obvious to clients what YOUR weekly calls are for. The clearer you are about this early on, the faster your clients will align with you and make progress.
The first call type is a training or demonstration where you’re teaching them how to do something. Although clients might ask some clarifying questions, the focus is on you, the teacher, and they can relax into learning mode which tends to be a very quiet and passive state. It’s normal for communication to be a one-way street from you to them.
The second call type is Q&A where your clients ask you questions. Seems simple enough, right? “Just ask me anything. What questions do you have?” In my experience (both as a learner and a leader), this tends to walk the call out into a pit of quicksand that drains time and energy because the right structure just isn’t in place. The problem is that Q&A puts the focus and “creative burden” on clients. And if you’re surprising people with a creative burden? Well, that leads to the call leader’s time and energy being wasted, too.
So when you’re doing Q&A, it’s all the more important to send out the Effortless Call Organizer (free at the bottom of this article) to all of your clients to keep things snappy and purposeful.
The third call type is feedback where your clients bring you evidence of the skills that your coaching program teaches them how to do… and you give feedback.
Here are some examples of how feedback calls might be for different niches:
- For Fitness: The client submits a video of themselves doing deadlifts. Everyone watches it. The coach discusses what is going right and wrong in the video.
- For Mindset Calls: The client submits their thought process mapped out. Everyone can see it. The coach discusses what exact shifts are necessary to get beyond limiting beliefs.
- For Facebook Ads Training: The client submits data from their ad campaign. Everyone looks at it. The coach discusses what is going well and what needs to change.
- For Marketing Training: The client submits copy for an email or landing page. Everyone can see it. The coach discusses what needs to change.
- For Sales Training: The client submits a transcript of their call with their audio or video. Everyone can review the portion in question. The coach discusses what needs to change.
- For Operations: The client submits the draft of their Standard Operating Procedure or Job Description. Everyone can see it. The coach discusses what needs to change.
You might have noticed all of those examples have 1 thing in common:
Everyone can see it.
Because everyone can see it, correctly-executed feedback sessions automatically create the kind of shared group experience that humans are excited about showing up for. Even better? Because virtual notetakers like OtterAI can only summarize conversations (not visual information on-screen), you disincentivize using OtterAI and you loop real humans back in. 😉 You’re welcome.
So those are the 3 main call types: how to, Q&A and feedback.
Although it is possible to do all 3 types in one call, you *really* need to keep your eye on the clock, so use a timer if you’re… shall we say… generous… with time.
Whenever you’re feeling indecisive about which of the 3 call types to choose, the most valuable call type is the Feedback Call.
YOU CANNOT OVERDO FEEDBACK CALLS.
Feedback is literally what accelerates clients’ skill development so they get results implementing your coaching program… Which makes them more likely to rave about you… Which makes them more likely to send you referrals and decrease your ad spend.
I’ve done 90 minutes of feedback every single week for the last 56 weeks in a row. Although it’s pretty repetitive for me, my clients literally never get tired of it because their skill level is always growing and changing. Again, you cannot schedule too many feedback sessions.
⚠️ HOWEVER ⚠️
YOU MUST GIVE CLIENTS TIME TO PREPARE FOR FEEDBACK SESSIONS. Without that preparation time, adult learners are likely to just clam up and leave you in that awkward role where you feel like you’re pulling teeth.
The easiest and most efficient way to lead feedback sessions is by using my Effortless Call Organizer. I created this with 14 years of experience teaching online. You can get the Effortless Call Organizer for free at the bottom of this post.
Tweak #3
Use the Weekly Group Call to Give Feedback
There are so many reasons your weekly group call should be a feedback call and not the other two options.
The biggest reason is (especially if you already have an archive of trainings or demonstrations / “how to implement” inside your website… and unless there’s something wrong in those videos [in which case the best choice is to edit and declutter your video archive]), it’s highly unlikely that your clients need MORE training.
Why? Because most clients are already behind schedule implementing all the stuff you presented in your basic video course.
Your clients’ progress happens when they follow your instructions and implement your training… not when they get paralyzed by info-stuffing on more possibilities and even further behind on their “To Do” list.
You will see an uptick in the Success Rate of your coaching program when you consistently give feedback during the weekly call (especially if you pair it with the Effortless Call Organizer at the bottom of this post).
The best part is that these feedback sessions naturally flow into perfectly-contextualized (super valuable) Q&A sessions. In fact, clients are actually more likely to chime in and ask questions because everyone is looking at the same concrete thing.
Tweak #4
Stick to the Plan During The Call
It is important to follow the plan that you announced because it respects the clients who took time out of their day to join you.
Don’t change the plan at the last minute just because you’re bored or you think things got “too predictable.”
In addition to that…
#1 – Use a timer to keep yourself on track if necessary. (That’s what new teachers do. I literally had a timer going off during classes for the first two years.)
#2 – Focus on the clients who arrived on time and signed up with the Effortless Call Organizer… Not those who are late or didn’t sign up. This helps bring structure to your group call.
#3 – Resist the temptation to pry open quiet clients in front of the group. When they don’t chime in or sign up for feedback, it’s probably because (a) they aren’t ready for the spotlight; (b) they don’t know how to play by your rules yet AND/OR (c) they don’t want to look stupid in front of you or their peers. These are all issues that you should be communicating about privately with each client.
If clients aren’t engaging with the confidence or energy that you would like to see, take a moment to reflect on these questions:
- “When did I tell clients specifically what to expect in this call?”
- “How much time did I give clients to prepare?”
- “Are these clients getting a consistent and predictable experience, week to week? Or are these clients being surprised by significantly different call types and structures from week to week?”
Tweak #5
Keep an Open Channel of Communication with Clients
It is so simple and easy.
It sets you apart from any so-called competition.
It also nips damaging reviews, refund requests, cancellations and chargebacks in the bud.
Win. Win. Win.
Here’s exactly how to do it.
During your onboarding (ideally in an email titled something ridiculously obvious like: “How to Give Me Feedback or Suggestions”), make an explicit point about how you are open to getting feedback and recommendations from them. You might say something like,
“I’m so excited to lead you through <name of coaching program> and if you see any opportunities for me to do better, I hope you’ll let me know by writing me an email / filling out the form on this page of my website / etc because we want you to be super successful.”
You can also schedule emails to go out monthly and simply ask:
“Now that you’ve been in <name of coaching program> for a while, is there anything I can do that would make our live calls better?”
If you’re worried that you’ll be drowning in messages…
The good news is that 90% of the time, clients will not have feedback.
By stepping into this role, your clients will know you are safe to approach with suggestions and recommendations, AND that you genuinely value them as a human, not a wallet.
That is the kind of leadership, strength and integrity that inspires ride-or-die loyalty, resubscriptions and free referrals, especially after the honeymoon effect wears of.
And when you take action on their feedback, it’s also what minimizes refund requests or chargebacks and stops many clients from going public with any negative opinions.
So... How many of those tweaks did you do consistently in the past 3 months?
If you neglect to implement these tweaks, you will continue to have your time and energy drained by unproductive and inefficient group calls.
This can be avoided just by putting extremely simple structures in place.
And you must put these structures in place because your group calls are so essential for delivering the transformation of your coaching program.
So I finish with this…
Commit to making your group calls better right now.
Decide when you’ll tell your clients that you’ll be implementing a new structure for the weekly calls.
Let me know how it goes and make sure you save the link to this article so you can refer back to it!
Ready for the
"Effortless Call Organizer"
that I mentioned a few times?
(with ideas about how to customize it for your coaching program)
inside our free Facebook group.
Simply Click & Join
our Facebook group, "A-Player Activator"
where you'll find the Effortless Call Organizer and more tweaks that eliminate competition.
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