How to Attract New Coaching Clients with Your Own Telesummit

Want to get on a roller coaster of success?

If you’re relatively new to coaching, you probably realize how time-consuming and labor intensive it can be to get your name and message “out there.”  Coaching has become increasingly competitive, with a handful of well-known people in the field seemingly grabbing a lion’s share of the publicity (and business).  What’s a new coach to do?

One extremely effective way to get noticed is to hold a virtual event, or telesummit.  It consists of coordinating a handful of speakers, including you, in order to provide free or low-cost lectures or interviews on related topics via webinars or telephone conference calls over the course of a few days.  How does this get you tons of free publicity?  It works because all participants in the telesummit promote the event to their clients, on their blogs and/or in their newsletters, just as you will to yours.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

First, you need to decide on a broad topic for your telesummit, one that would appeal to your particular client niche.  For example, let’s say that you mainly work with women over age 50 who want to pursue age-old dreams.  Your topic could be “Yes, Virginia: There is Life After 50–How to Create the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of.”  Then you can select the topic that you’ll cover during your portion of the virtual event.

Next, look for other entrepreneurs who might want to target the same niche as you, but have non-competing specialties.  If you’re a life coach, for example, you might find a book coach who’s willing to do a presentation on writing a book after fifty, a health coach who can speak to midlife wellness issues,  a relationship coach to talk about one of the many family or work relationship issues women from that age group face—you get the picture.  Look for speakers whose talks will complement yours and add value to the event as a whole.

As you seek partners for your telesummit, try to find business people who already have their own strong followings on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, appear to have good-sized e-mail newsletter lists and/or a number of loyal blog readers or radio listeners.  Why?  Doing so will maximize your event’s exposure, as all of the telesummit’s participants will be expected to promote it to their clients, readers and followers, just as you’ll be doing.

Other aspects to consider as you plan your telesummit include:

• Scheduling: You’ll need to coordinate times that work for all of your co-presenters as well as attract the most listeners over a period of a few days.  A good thing to keep in mind is that holding the event during the peak summer months or around major holidays might negatively impact the number of people who register for the event. You’ll also need to consider that both your speakers and those who interested in registering for the event might reside in a wide range of time zones.

• Recording and Resale Rights: Decide on how you will monetize the event.  Will you charge for it up front or package the calls into an infoproduct that you can sell?  Will the other participants be able to resell the package as well, or can they use their particular presentation as a giveaway or a bonus on their Web site?  To make sure everyone who participates is clear on what they can and cannot do with the recording, it’s a good idea to provide them with a written agreement that they need to read and sign in order to be a part of your event.

• Promotional Strategy: Where and how frequently will you promote the event?  What promotional expectations will you have of the other participants, and how will you gauge the success of their efforts?  Be clear on both so that, in the end, the telesummit will indeed provide sufficient exposure for you and the other speakers that you line up to make it worth everyone’s while.

If hosting a telesummit sounds like a lot of work, well, it is.  In terms of costs, logistics and reach, however, holding a well planned virtual event can generate a tremendous surge of new business for you. In other words, the potential benefits of a telesummit far outweigh the time and effort you’ll put into organizing it.  Your name and business get a major visibility boost, you get to broaden your professional network through joint venturing with other speakers and you end up with a product that you can sell for years to come.  Plus, you get the added feel good bonus of helping the other participants grow their businesses as well.

If you are excited about the possibilities and want to start planning your very own telesummit now, be sure to check out Leesa Barnes’  Virtual Events Boom telesummit, where she’s teaching the step-by-step process of creating, marketing, and dominating your niche with your very own telesummit!