Can your ideal client picture what you're promising?
“Realise your full potential.”
“Reconnect with your authentic self.”
“Create more space in your life.”
I've used phrases like these to explain my coaching. No judgement if they're currently on your website too. 🙃
As coaches, we understand the depth behind those words. We can see the beliefs, habits and assumptions that may be keeping someone stuck. We know why exploring them could make a difference.
But a potential client reading your website may have a much more immediate question:
“Will this help with the thing I'm struggling with?”
Your answer needs to connect the depth of your work with something she can recognise and wants to change.
That's where my Cake vs Quinoa™ approach to positioning comes in. 🍰
What are the cake and the quinoa?
The ‘quinoa’ is the valuable work involved in coaching. Exploring values. Questioning beliefs. Understanding patterns. Building self-awareness. As expert coaches, we know she needs it but your ideal client doesn’t. Yet.
The cake is the change your Goldilocks Ideal Client™ wants to experience in her life or work.
Perhaps she wants to put herself forward for promotion, charge a fee that makes her business sustainable, or walk into a difficult conversation without spending three days rehearsing it first.
Those are situations she can picture. They give the deeper work a meaningful context.
You can explain both clearly. Leading with a desirable result should still give someone an honest understanding of the work involved and the part they'll play in it.
An example: from belief work to the promotion she keeps avoiding
Imagine you're a career coach explaining that you help women “unpick the belief patterns keeping them small”.
Another coach may understand exactly what you mean. Your potential client might have no idea how that relates to her Tuesday afternoon.
Try making the situation visible:
“Understand why you keep talking yourself out of applying for promotion, and prepare to put yourself forward for the role and pay rise you've been thinking about for six months.”
Now she can recognise something happening in her own life.
The belief work still matters. You've given her a reason to care about it.
And you've described what you can help her work towards without promising an outcome, such as a promotion, that depends on other people's decisions too.
Find the ‘cake’ inside your own offer
Take a sentence you currently use to describe your coaching. Then ask:
What is she trying to do? Get specific about the situation. “Feel confident” could mean speaking up in a leadership meeting, naming a higher fee or setting a boundary with a client.
What keeps happening instead? Perhaps she volunteers for more delivery work while someone else gets the strategic opportunity. Perhaps she discounts before the client has even queried the price.
What would she notice changing? Look for a decision, conversation or action she could describe to a friend. This helps you move beyond attractive but vague promises.
How does your approach help? Connect your methods to that change. If you use psychometrics, reflection or strengths work, explain what those help her understand or do.
You don't need to cram all of that into one heroic sentence. Please spare yourself the word salad. 😅
You do need a clear connection between her current situation, the change she wants and the support you provide.
Make the destination easier to see
I call that desired destination your Goldilocks Ideal Client's™ Island B.
What does life look like there? What can she do differently? What becomes easier, more possible or more satisfying?
If you're selling a holiday, the itinerary and transport matter. So does helping someone imagine being there.
The same principle helps when you're explaining coaching. Your session structure, tools and credentials support the decision. A recognisable, valuable destination gives that decision a purpose.
Try reading your offer description from your client's point of view. Can she see the cake?
If you'd like help creating and positioning a signature coaching offer around the transformation your clients value, explore Fruitful Founder™.
