As your health coaching business grows, you may find that handling a larger volume of clients becomes overwhelming. After all, you have an increasing number of clients needing your attention day in and day out.
It isn’t uncommon for health coaches to hit a business plateau when client work starts picking up. If you don’t have a solid foundation with efficient workflow processes in place to handle a larger workload, it may be difficult to maintain the same quality of coaching services as you sign more clients.
Fortunately, there are various tools and productive business procedures you can implement in your health coaching business right away to help increase your work capacity, become more organized, and efficient.
In this article, you’ll learn more about the most effective strategies you can incorporate into your business to help you manage a high volume of health coaching clients.
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Understanding Your Ideal Client Load
Before you start implementing workflow processes into your business, it’s important to understand how many clients you think you can handle at any given time. Ask yourself, would you rather train 10 to 15 clients two to four times a week or 50 clients once a week?
The key to handling a larger client load isn’t always to work longer but to work smarter. While it may be an exciting period in your business when prospects are regularly reaching out to work with you, there comes a point where it could do more harm than good.
Once your client load increases, consider taking a step back and auditing your current business. As a beginner in the industry, your main goal was most likely to get as many clients as possible. But now that you’ve reached this point, your business challenges change.
These steps can help you gain a better understanding of your ideal client load:
Step #1: Evaluate how many hours you can confidently put in each week without burning out or showing up as a less efficient health coach for your clients.
Step #2: Decide on your yearly revenue goal.
Step #3: Based on your rate, determine how many client sessions you need to complete to achieve your income goal.
Step #4: If you don’t have enough hours available to reach your yearly revenue goal, consider increasing your rates instead of trying to handle more clients.
This process of reverse engineering your business goals provides more clarity as to how many clients sessions and hours it will take for you to reach achieve your yearly target income.
If you currently have a high volume of health coaching clients, the strategies below will help you continuously grow your business without sacrificing the quality of your services.
4 Strategies to Help You Manage a High Volume of Clients
Successfully working with a large volume of health coaching clients begins with building your business on a solid foundation.
The sooner you identify where you may need assistance as client work increases, the easier it becomes to incorporate a more efficient and effective business plan to easily handle an increasingly busy workload.
Here are four strategies to help you manage a high volume of clients as your health coaching business grows.
#1) Hire, Outsource, and Delegate
As client workload increases, you may find it difficult to do everything yourself. A great way to invest back into your business is by hiring an employee or virtual assistant to help ease your workload.
But not all health coaches have the same tasks to complete on a daily basis. While some coaches may see more value in hiring a freelancer to write marketing pieces for their blog and social media presence, you might need help in other areas of your business.
Before you start out searching for an employee to hire, spend some time auditing your current workload and assess which tasks in your business could be outsourced or delegated to an employee.
Consider asking yourself these questions to help you gain more clarity before hiring an employee:
- What tasks do I enjoy doing myself?
- What part of my business needs the most attention? (ie. marketing, sales, prospecting, accounting, product or service fulfillment)
- What part of my business can I confidently outsource without sacrificing the quality of my health coaching services?
- What business tasks am I currently doing myself and feel that my time could be better spent elsewhere?
- Is the client-facing portion of my business automated enough to where I can hire an employee to consult with clients without any issues?
Once you understand the key activities in your health coaching business, it’s much easier to find an employee or virtual assistant that could help you manage a high volume of clients while continuously growing your business.
If you’re currently running your business alone, a great place to start is by hiring a virtual assistant to take care of mundane tasks such as follow-ups, creating invoices, interacting with prospects on social media or even organizing your schedule for you. Internet job boards like Upwork.com have hundreds of freelancers who could help solve your exact business needs.
Side note: Many clients sign up for your health coaching services because they want to work directly with you. As your workload increases and you’re looking for help with the client-facing side of your business, it’s important to mention to new and existing clients that they might receive consultation from your employee instead of you.
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#2) Automate When Possible
While you may be tempted to handle everything yourself as your health coaching business grows, this could be a recipe for burn out. There are several health coaching apps and software that can significantly improve your quality of life as well as the efficiency of your business.
For example, consider using a CRM (customer relationship management) software to easily store all of your clients’ personal information, metrics, and health goals into one central hub. A CRM system not only helps you improve your relationship with prospects and clients, but it also saves a significant amount of time from manual data entry.
In addition, there are health coaching apps that let you track your client’s health and nutrition metrics. Instead of creating a new excel sheet and spending hours on formatting, there are various apps that can automate the entire process.
Here are a few of our favorite health coaching apps to help you easily handle a high volume of clients:
Health Coaching App #1: Healthie
Known as the all-in-one practice management and telehealth platform, Healthie is one of the most comprehensive applications to help you run your coaching business in one place.
With its intuitive interface, you can easily set appointments, update your availability, video chat in groups or one-on-one, and securely process and track payments.
Health Coaching App #2: Nudge Coach
Often times, clients find the most value in health coaching services because they’re constantly reminded to stay on track with their health and wellness goals.
With Nudge Coach, you can send personalized reminders and check-ins to give each of your clients a customized experience on a global scale. It’s a great app for health coaches who want to continuously stay in touch with each and every client as volume increases.
Health Coaching App #3: Trainerize
Easily create workouts for clients on the go, track their progress as they work towards their goals, and monitor their nutrition. If you have clients who want help with losing weight, Trainerize is a great way to automate the process.
Trainerize allows you to:
- Build training templates once and use them for various clients
- Create your own meal plans and send them to clients through the app
- Take advantage of hundreds of professional instructional exercise videos so clients know exactly how to perform the workouts
Each of these applications allows you to streamline and automate a specific section of your health coaching business. Consider implementing one at a time to help you handle more clients as your workload increases.
#3) Create Effective Business Workflows
Putting systems in place is crucial not just for clients but also for your personal needs. Not only does it establish more professionalism with your services, but it also saves you time for every new client that works with you.
Instead of starting from scratch, consider creating a step-by-step guide that eases the transition of first-time clients with your health coaching services. Create health questionnaires to help you better understand what they’re specifically trying to achieve by working with you. Then, send them a template that lays out the exact roadmap of what they can expect from you.
This makes it easier for both you and the client to start working with each other.
On the personal side, consider creating systems to streamline the activities that help move your business forward. Personal systems help you stay energized throughout the day by avoiding the dreaded “decision fatigue”. Instead of starting your day not knowing what needs to get done, an effective system will help you stay on track.
For example, if your main source of leads come from social media, a simple content schedule can work wonders. Having a system of publishing content online for an hour or two a day before dealing with clients is an effective way to continue growing your business.
#4) Stay Organized
The strategies mentioned above regarding automation, outsourcing, and incorporating systems are designed to keep your business running like a well-oiled machine.
As the volume of your health coaching clients increases, staying organized becomes extremely important. Having systems in place allows you to handle more work. Being organized will ensure that you successfully follow through and implement these systems.
Staying organized can be simple and it’s a matter of personal preference. While some health coaches prefer apps and software for organization, you may find it easier to stick to pen and paper.
Here are a few great ways to stay organized as manage a high volume of health coaching clients:
- Use reminders on your smartphone for upcoming client sessions
- Map out your week on a calendar and block out times for important revenue-generating activities
- Consider hiring a virtual assistant to manage your calendar
- Batch tasks like social media content creation, prospecting, or answering client correspondence and stick to a regular schedule
- Create a daily to-do list and break up large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks
Set These Habits in Place as a Foundation for a Successful Health Coaching Business
Handling a high volume of health coaching clients can become stressful if you don’t have the proper systems in place.
As your business continues to grow, it’s important to audit your current business model and determine where you could benefit from a helping hand.
Outsourcing mindless tasks to a virtual assistant, incorporating apps for automation, and staying ruthlessly organized is a great way to streamline activities that move your business forward while maintaining the high level of coaching services for each and every client who works with you.
If you’re interested in helping others achieve their health and wellness goals, consider becoming a health coach with AFPA.
