The CoachAccountable Blog

Hi y’all!  It was my honor to say a few words of introduction for our newly-minted #3, and now I welcome you to get better acquainted by the words of Jaclyn herself!

– John

Hi…I’m Jaclyn, the number 3 of the CoachAccountable team, and I am excited!

It’s remarkable the quality of photography you can get with a well-timed screen capture during a routine pandemic video conference.

I started working at 14, construction with my Dad; roofing to be exact. I also babysat and then I moved on to working for grocery stores, arts & crafts stores, and flipping burgers. At 19 I made my first big career move and decided to join the Marine Corps.

I begin my story with work because, looking back, that’s been over half my life.  Work. Making a living with the belief that if I worked long enough the actual living would eventually begin.  I became a wife and mother, then an ex-wife (still a mother) and watching my little boy grow up, something shifted.  Living has to happen now. I don’t want him to think all there is to life is working hard and playing little.  Play now, explore now, LIVE now.

So, I started (ironically) working towards that goal.  I thought if I get another degree, I’ll get another promotion, I’ll make more and I’ll finally get to start really going after some work/life balance.  Spoiler alert…the harder you work for corporate the harder they want you to work.  Life was severely out of balance.  Though I’d take time off for the short vacations, the school plays, the school music festivals I’d be rushing from or to work and a piece of my mind always stayed there, thinking of the tasks.

In 2018 both my parents began having health problems. I had to go back to Texas, and I would need to be there for three weeks. While I drove towards Southeast Texas, by myself listening to my favorite true crime podcast, I thought there has to be something more.  Someone somewhere lives life fully and while maybe not perfectly in work/life harmony, they are aligned and happy.  I also wanted to celebrate those that were coping and surviving trauma, anxiety, and depression. To find out their why and how of, not just surviving, but truly living life by their design.  The ANBRWY Podcast was born and through the last two years I have met people that transformed their lives and in turn began transforming mine.

In March, exactly 2 days before the world went on a global pandemic lockdown, I left my corporate job and concentrated full time on consulting, coaching, and podcasting.  The pandemic didn’t slow this business. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I gained clients and made them a lot of money. I coached them through fears of startup, hesitation of growth, and through software and process gave them confidence to make the first step to start momentum.  I talk to them often, the momentum has grown.

As life would have it, I came across a job posting. It wasn’t asking for a resume, they didn’t want to hear about my degrees, or past projects completed successfully or within budgets.  Instead, they asked for a short video.  It took several takes. Not so much because I was nervous but looking back, I realize I was being entirely too corporate.  Given data and experience instead of personality.

I got the call; I spoke with both John and Morgan individually and I was asked to come aboard.  Have you ever been in a place in life where all of your experiences, learnings, and life decisions seem to make sense because they were preparing you?  That work/life balance I was working towards, that need to be in a place where I can make an impact but I still get to learn everyday…it’s here. CoachAccountable, since day 1 has made sense and I have had the amazing experience of being able to relax while still working full days and spending time with family.  I’m able to meet extraordinary people every single day and support them while they do their life’s work.

Does it get any better than this? I think so, because I get to do it all again tomorrow!

Turns out the mic serves for more than just successfully applying to CoachAccountable.

“Wow, that’s a serious microphone!”

That was my under-2-seconds first impression of Jaclyn, as gauged from her video introduction (as I mentioned earlier, for this hiring we completely nixed the usual resume/cover letter dance as meaningless noise, mandating a video to apply instead).

But by the end of 10 minutes and 49 seconds my impression of her was so much more than curiosity around her boss audio equipment, for during that intro she detailed insight and experience that brilliantly fit the bill of what we were looking for in a candidate.

Her experience spans an impressive career of IT support, deployments, training and coaching in corporate environments, and preceded no less by 4 years of service in the Marine Corps (which hardly surprises, given the abundant sense of professionalism, rigor, and can-do spirit that Jaclyn exudes).

Her insight (into who we are and what we’re about) was deep, ranging from the genuine delight of that moment when someone sighs a breath of relief by recognizing their life is now better thanks to some software, to finding our utter disregard for conventional competitive SWOT analysis refreshing, to intuiting that our lack of outward marketing hustle might well be a better-serving strategy of authenticity in and of itself.

All that in a 10 minute riff!

Naturally she advanced to the interview round, and Jaclyn did not disappoint.  She was, has been, and continues to be everything as advertised in terms of the acumen, professionalism, personability, and thoroughness.

Over the last two months Morgan and I have been training Jaclyn of the deep kung fu that is CoachAccountable Customer Love and Hand Holding.  Along the way she expressed being surprised at how lengthy the onboarding process was; that, in other roles, she was more used to getting in and doing much sooner.

It would be fair to say there’s a certain preciousness that I (and Morgan as well) have about doing this role “right”: far beyond merely knocking out answers to questions and moving on (à la more conventional tech support), we endeavor to be coaches, guides, and teachers to those we serve as well, meaning we’ll often go beyond answering the question at hand by looking for (and addressing) the underlying intention as well.

Fun fact: what with the ability to do in-person photo shoots compromised as it is, this was taken as a screen capture of a Zoom call.

Jaclyn has rolled with all of this nuance and nit-pickery with grace and earnest desire to not only learn but master the game at hand.

She has a warmth and patience that I am proud to share with the CoachAccountable community in support of their work.  I’ve delighted in getting to know her over the last several months and suspect you will as well.  (Quite frankly, I can’t wait to actually meet her in person when this whole pandemic thing subsides!)

And that boss microphone?  Turns out Jaclyn does a weekly podcast, currently 59 episodes in, wherein she interviews authors, speakers and coaches on what it is to live fully, both personally and professionally.

In short, she is a delightful, fitting, and so very worthy addition to our merry band.

Please join me in welcoming Jaclyn!

Though not a hard rule it generally holds that, sooner or later, all coaching relationships come to an end.

When you’re done working with your client, you can deactivate them in CoachAccountable so that they no longer count towards your subscription plan.  This means they’ll no longer have any interactions with the system, BUT all of their data remains intact, ready for you to reference at any time AND ripe for picking up where you left off ,should they ever come back to resume working with you.

It’s nice to give clients a souvenir of their time spent working with you.  The record of notes and accomplishments serves as a handy treasure trove of insights, and a compelling reminder of what they got out of working with you.

For years the Client Export file has been a nice, portable record that you could generate and send to your clients whenever you like, and moreover makes a fitting parting gift when the work is done.

But for those clients who are wrapping up this segment of work with you, you can do them one better in addition to that parting gift: you can keep your relationship with those parted clients a little more alive by enabling continued access to their CoachAccountable client portal with you, and do so WITHOUT having those no-longer-active clients count towards your subscription plan.

Granting your deactivated clients read-only access to their account is a snap.

When you first deactivate a client, do so as usual from their Client Manager with a click of a button (or two, when you need to confirm that it’s okay to clear out things that would naturally no longer apply, such as future appointments!).

The system will kindly alert you to what, if anything, will be cleared away as part of the deactivating.

Upon deactivation, you’ll be given the option to grant read-only access:

Aye, she might indeed like that!

Inactive clients who have is special access are noted as such in your Inactive client listing:

Note the friendly purple “access” sash in the upper right corner.

Finally, you can toggle this access on or off for any of your clients whenever you like by revisiting the Delete/Reactivate section of the client manager:

Either way, it’s just as simple as flipping the switch!

Simple as that!  Inactive clients who are granted access in this manner are able to log in as usual, only the Overview tab will be gone and most all of the interactive elements will be removed (for example, no + buttons for adding things like Actions or Appointments).

There are two exceptions to this “removal of interactive elements” rule.

First, they’ll still be able to click that little email icon next to your head shot in the upper left, meaning it will be easy for them to drop you a line if and when they’re keen to resume working with you.

Second, IF you’ve setup one or more Offering Collections for in-app display, they’ll find those under their top right user menu.  This gives them an easy way to reengage with your services if they feel inspired to do so.  Signing up for/purchasing one of your Offerings in this manner will automatically reactivate their account, granting them once again full privileges of using the system.

And that’s all there is to it!  Granting your past clients read-only access in this way is great for several reasons, including:

• Your past clients get to retain live access to all the records of the work they’ve done with you.
• You can make it easy for past clients to resume working with you in a completely self-service way.
• You can easily view which among your past clients have logged in recently (just sort by last login date), giving you clues as to who might enjoy a friendly hello.
• You can offer programs that boast “lifetime access” beyond the initial, more hands-on portions.

Enjoy!

We’ve added a small-but-powerful feature called Resource Packages. These allow you to install various resources (like files, courses, and templates) that were created by other coaches right into your own CoachAccountable account.  Likewise, these make it possible for other coaches to install YOUR resources (should you ever want to create and share your own packages.)

A couple scenarios in which this might be useful:

• Finding Additional Resources From CoachAccountable. When you signed up, you automatically received some content from us pre-loaded into your account. We’ve provided even more content and templates for you in these packages.
• Licensing Your Coaching Material. Many coaches start expanding their business by teaching other coaches their methods, with the additional value-add of providing ready-to-use templates. By using Resource Packages, you can make available your Courses, Worksheets, Agreements and more with just a couple clicks – and provide that package only for coaches who have paid your licensing fee. This is a way to sell your well-tested coaching tools.
• Related Coach Accounts. Smaller teams sometimes vacillate between setting up with two single coach accounts or a Team Edition account (more on how to make that choice here). Now, those who choose two single coach accounts can replicate their resources and save time.
• Coaches With Two Accounts. Some coaches use two separate accounts, for reasons like varied tax law with international clients or operating under two different coaching brands.
• Franchises. We’ve heard from The Growth Coach and similar businesses: getting new franchisees set up quickly is key to their success. Corporate-sanctioned tools at their fingertips right away can help get new business owners inspired and active.
• Referrals. If you’re someone who refers CoachAccountable to other coaches in your industry, giving them materials to start with can help solidify their use of the platform.

“Shop” Our Provided Resource Packages

Navigate to Settings >> Resource Packages >> Installable Packages. Here you’ll see the packages that we make available available. We provide them to you free of charge and we encourage you to use them!

Note the orange “installed” banner appears to indicate when you’ve already installed one.

Click on any of these packages to peruse contents and install some (or all) of the items included. For any item, click the “Preview” button to help decide if you want it:

Choose what you like and preview to decide.

Feel free to use these as-is or adapt them to your own coaching style: once installed, they are your own copy that you can modify freely without any ties to the original.

Creating Your Own Resource Package

If you want to share your own resources with other coaches that are NOT part of your own CA account, you can create packages of your own.

Go to Settings >> Resource Packages >> My Packages and click “+ Package.”

Under Basics, enter a name for this package (whomever installs the package will see this name).

Next, go to Included Resources to build your Resource Package.

When designing a Resource Package you can include any of the following:

• Courses
• Worksheet Templates
• Session Templates
• Agreement Templates
• Engagement Templates
• Offerings & Offering Collections
• Library Files
• Appointment Types

For each type of item you can choose to include some or all that you have.  You do not need to include items from all categories; in fact, you can make a Resource Package that has just one item.

Sharing and Installing

To share the resource package, close the package builder window. Then, from the list of your available packages, click “Share this….”

You’ll find a link, which you can share with any coach.

When clicked, the link will bounce someone into their CoachAccountable account and prompt them to install some or all of your package (the experience is just like when you click on one of the Installable Packages as shown above).

If someone clicking to install your package has not yet signed up with CoachAccountable, he/she will be prompted to do so first.

Resource Packages and the Referral Program

There’s a nice little caveat to when someone installs your Resource Package: if they do so during their 30-day trial period, the system will automatically credit YOU as the person who referred them¹.

So if you’re creating a Resource Package to share with your colleagues, be sure to take a minute to establish your own referral account first!

Resource-Sharing Tips

A few things to keep in mind as you create and share Resource Packages.

Making Changes

If you make a change to a package, such as adding items, it won’t affect people who have already installed that package. They’ll have only exactly what was in the package at the time they added it. If you make changes and want them to receive the new or updated items, you can send the link out again to those same people. They’ll receive only the added material.

You cannot remove resources from other people’s accounts. If you remove an item from a resource package, future people who install it won’t see that removed item, but anyone who already has it, has it.

Similarly, you can’t remove an installed resource package, in whole or in part, from another user’s account.

Intellectual Property

When a package is shared, those resources exist fully in the other account. That means the other coach can make changes or additions to those items you’ve provided.

How, then, can you protect your intellectual property?

We recommend that you address all intellectual property concerns with whatever contracts you and the other coaches set up. Ensure that you’ve explicitly stated what you consider ‘open source’, available for others to use and adapt as they like, and what you require to stay intact and unedited (including with or without attribution to you as the creator of that material). If this is part of a franchise business, does the other coach need to stop using your material if selling the franchise? We recommend having an attorney review all this to ensure you’re covered in the way you want to be.

Already-Installed Resources

If someone is installing a package but already has some of the items within, only the new items will be added.  The system detects when one already has the same or similar item based on select criteria lining up (always name, and sometimes others, like folder, description, etc.), and will skip over the installation of any items already present.  This is to prevent both duplication AND accidental overriding of any alterations you may have made (and to honor the fact that you may prefer to keep an item in whatever state it was when you first installed it!)

To get updated versions of already-installed items, one may need to delete the item first and then re-install.  Happily, this is easily done for items that originated from a prior-install: by visiting the installer a subsequent time one sees an “uninstall…” button that allows the easy removal of some or all installed items.

When to NOT Use Resource Packages

Keep in mind that Resource Packages are NOT for sharing resources with clients. If you give a client the link for a package, they’ll then be prompted to create a coach account! To share or assign items with clients in a big chunk, consider using Courses, particularly a Starter Kit Course.

If you want to maintain oversight of other coaches and how they use your resources, these packages aren’t the way to go.

Instead, you’ll want a Team account, wherein other coaches using your resources are part of your team. Likewise, if you need the ability to cut off access to these resources at any time, a Team account will be your choice (you’ll simply deactivate a coach who is no longer working with you; without access to their account, that coach won’t see those resources).

Get Started

Resource Packages allow you to both give and receive.  You can find and install some new content (that can serve to merely inspire, or even be right for working with directly), and they are a great way for you to share material, license out your coaching methods, and earn money as a CoachAccountable referral partner.

Get started in Settings >> Resource Packages.

Haven’t started our free 30-day trial yet? Get started now and create packages to share with other coaches. 

Note:

Morgan and I continue to have a good time doing our thing here in our little corner of the internet, delighted as ever to serve coaching and coaches.

But our days of being able to get by as just the two of us are numbered!  So it’s time to add another to the mix.

It was late April when we published our job posting for CoachAccountable’s Number 3.

Rather than like last time, wherein I got deluged by 141 resume/cover letter combos in a 48 hour period, we made applying a little less, er, automate-able, shall we say!

Poring over resumes and wading through cover letters to find what we’re looking for is both super boring and a deeply imperfect process: they’re too easy to game, and for those not hip to the game, too easy for a genuinely remarkable candidate to get passed over.

So we did something a little different.  This time, the way to apply was to watch a video wherein I talked about what specifically we were looking for, and then send a hello video right back.

If you’re at all curious about the internals of how we roll and what we’re aiming to create in our team, you may enjoy to see below the very job posting we put out.

Hi!

We’re looking for a third person to join our merry band in the role of customer support, love and handholding.

Before you read too far, be advised that some form of experience with coaching, specifically transformational and/or business, is a hard requirement. If you’ve never been in some sort of personal development program where coaching played a part, you will not be considered (sorry!).

Structure of the role

The customer support role is split, more or less, into three thirds:

The first third is fielding customer support issues as they come in. Generally via email, though sometimes we take the initiative to call and knock it out over the phone (in our business, customers are often really stoked to hear from a real person!).

The second third is making ourselves available for demos, help sessions, consultations (affectionately referred to as hand holding sessions, these are where we get to shine by letting our customers get to talk to and be guided by A REAL PERSON).

The third third is where we have time and bandwidth to do things above and beyond just reacting to incoming needs and requests. This is when we do outreach to our customers (affectionately dubbed “doling out customer love”), improve and expand our learning resources (like writing articles and making help videos), and take on other sorts of projects to further our mission to serve coaches.

Each of these thirds affords opportunities to shine and excel, and gives a lot of variety from day to day plus opportunities to learn. The third third in particular is ripe for you to bring your creativity and have your voice heard to make lasting contributions.

Structure of the position

The position is full-time, 40-45 hours per week during business hours in North America. On average about 2 of these hours per week will be over the weekend to cover incoming support issues. The position is remote, though may occasionally require commuting for in-person demos and meet ups, and several times a year entails travel for conferences and in-person work with the team (er, when things settle down with this whole COVID-19 thing, ahem!). You must be a US resident.

Compensation and Benefits

Because our team is so small, it is vitally important for us to find the right fit in adding number three. Therefore the first two months is a test period during which you’ll be an hourly contractor earning $30/hour. You can start full time to begin or we can be flexible to allow you to ramp up as needed to assist with your transition.

After two months if we agree this is a Good Thing™, congratulations! That’s what we’re going for and you will then be offered a full-time salaried position starting at $60,000 per year. As a salaried employee vacation benefits apply: holidays plus THREE weeks off per year. Your discretionary paid time off is earned pro rata as you go starting from your official employment hire date.

After two months as a salaried employee, the following additional benefits kick in:

• $100 monthly fitness allowance ($1200 per year)
• $500 per year continuing education allowance (to learn ANYTHING you want, doesn’t need to be job related; we know that curious and happy employees are the best kind)
• $50 monthly internet/phone allowance ($600 per year)
• QSEHRA health insurance premium reimbursement benefit of up to $5,150 per year for self-only employees ($429.17 per month) and $10,450 per year for employees with a family ($870.83 per month)
• SIMPLE IRA 100% match of up to 3% of salary (3% of $60,000 is $1800)

Cash value of these benefits maxed out: $1200 + $500 + $600 + $5150 + $1800 = $9250

Total compensation adds up to $69,250 + 3 weeks paid vacation.

Requirements and Applying

Again, you need to have some sort of transformational and/or business coaching experience to be considered. Please do not apply if you don’t have that.

Have that sort of background? Great! The next step is to watch this video:

And that was it.

Frankly, Morgan and I had no idea what to expect by way of response to our posting.

We knew we wouldn’t have the flood of dry resumes & generic cover letter like last time, but would the hard requirement of being a coach, PLUS having to make a video, be too high a bar for anyone to bother?

Turns out we had nothing to fear.  Over the 28 days we left our posting up we got 110 responses, most every one of which came with a thoughtful, heartfelt video introduction.

It was a lot to watch through, but it turns out video intros do indeed provide a MUCH clearer signal by which to make the right choice.

We’ve made that choice and she’s been training up with us and doing great.  I’m excited to introduce the CA community to her, stay tuned!

This feature’s not a big deal, but can be kind of nice.

When sharing written materials or giving assignments to clients, it’s often handy to reference certain files or other media as part of the content.

For a long time, CoachAccountable has supported embedding videos and other media right into your Worksheets and other documents.  (In fact, if you’re curious about THIS topic go check out THAT first… because that’s what you’ll probably want 90% of the time!)

But SOMETIMES the thing you want to reference is a file that just doesn’t lend itself to embedding (like a spreadsheet, or PDF), and OFTEN, that something is a file that you’ve shared with them (be it from your Library, as part of a Course, or even just as a one-off).

For those cases, it’s workable (but admittedly kind of clunky) to say “Please go find such-and-such file in your Files tab…”  Better instead to have a button that takes your clients right to the file you want them to access, and have it open right there with no need to jump away from the Worksheet/Whiteboard/etc. at hand.

Linking to a shared file is super easy.  Just like for embedding videos and other media, click the “Embed Media” button on the WYSIWYG toolbar:

The one you seek is the 4th in from the right!

In the pop up that appears, choose the 3rd option, “Link to an already-shared File”:

It’s vital to make sure the title matches that of a file already shared!

Linking to files is done by title of the file.  Though you can freely type one in, the system will offer suggestions of files you might wish to link to.  When composing on a specific client’s Client Page, these will be the very files that are already shared with that client.  When composing within your Library, these will be the Library Files that you have.

As the cautionary red text states, you must link to a file that matches the name of one already shared, otherwise it will be a broken link.  Thanks to the suggestions this is easy to get right when on a Client Page.  However if you’re linking to some file within a template from your Library, (say a Worksheet Template that’s not yet assigned to any specific client), you’ll need to make certain that that file will have already been shared with a given client by the time that client sees that template.

Once you’ve chosen a file and customized the button text however you like ([fileTitle] is a magic tag that works just as you’d expect it), your embed will be inserted as a button:

Clicking the button is a shortcut to going to the Files tab, finding the right file, and double clicking it. Nice!

And that’s all there is to it!  When your client clicks on that button, it’ll bring up the file as usual (provided that file exists in their Files tab).  This button will even work from an email: clicking will bring them to the system (having them log in as needed) and bring up the file once in.

Linking to files as a media embed works not just in Worksheets, but anything you compose using the WYSIWYG, including:

• Session Notes
• Whiteboards
• Journal Entries
• Client Messages

Like I said above this feature’s not a big deal, but can nevertheless enable a nice bit of seamless interaction that makes your clients’ experience that much more elegant.  Enjoy!

Offerings allow new or established clients to schedule themselves for an appointment with a member of your team.  Usually a given Offering entails scheduling with a specific coach, BUT what if you’ve got a collection of coaches, and the “who to book with” part of the equation is really a matter of whomever is available at the desired time?

For example, say Alice is available on Mondays and Bob is available on Tuesdays: what we’d really like is for our clients to be able to pick whichever time works for them on Mondays OR Tuesdays.

In another example, a certain school of business growth encourages teams to utilize a “round robin” strategy for assigning initial coaching calls for prospective clients. This allows all enrollment coaches (or, in other words, sales folks) to have a balanced volume of conversions.

To address these scenarios and others, you can now configure your Offerings to have multiple coaches be considered for scheduling purposes.  Let’s see how this works!

Multi-Coach Scheduling for Offerings

Setting this up is a matter of configuring the Appointment component of your Offering.

When configuring this, you usually just pick a coach / Appointment Type combination, and the system does the rest.

By clicking the “Allow other coaches for availability” checkbox you can choose other coaches who should be considered as available for this Offering Appointment.

When you indicate other coaches, the appointment time options that your clients are presented with will be the union of availability options from each of the coaches you’ve indicated.

This may LOOK like a lot to setup, but the bulk is to do with how CA should choose which coach when a multitude are available!

Check out the note indicated with a star: when you choose to let other coaches be considered for scheduling based on their availability, it MIGHT be the case that those coaches ALSO have an Appointment Type of the same name.  When they do, that coach’s Appointment Type (of the same name) dictates settings that are pertinent to that coach, such as weekly availability, padding, cancellation rules.  Each coach can set those preferences in Settings >> Appointment Config >> Appointment Types.

Once you’ve chosen your coaches, you’ve got a number of settings to govern WHICH coach should be scheduled when more than one happen to be free for a chosen time.

You can opt to default to the main coach indicated in the “With whom and which type?” option, a good choice if you’ve got a head coach or perhaps the others are still in training.  The “Prefer whomever has fewer appointments…” rules work nicely to spread out appointments over a day/week/month to avoid overwhelm and schedule saturation.

These rules are applied one by one, in order, until a clear winner is revealed.  As you can see, if it’s completely a tie per each of the rules you pick, the system will choose randomly from the remaining candidates.

Beyond those rules, you can set your preferences for defining more precisely what “fewer appointments” means.

Factoring in duration is often a preferable way to determine what’s considered a full schedule.  For example, if Jaclyn has four 15-minute appointments scheduled, and Morgan has three 60-minute appointments scheduled for the same day, we’d consider Morgan busier (3 hours versus 1) and thus we’d want Jaclyn to be the one to receive a new client appointment.

Finally, note the “Booking caption” setting towards the top:

Generally [coachName] is a nice magic tag to use, but because it could be someone other than the coach indicated in the “With whom and which type?” option just above, you’ll want to replace that with something more generic when it could be one of several coaches. “Our Team” or your company name might be good choices. We’ve replaced it with “CoachAccountable Support” in this example.

Additional Considerations for Multi-Coach Scheduling

Continue down to the Welcome Message tab, and you’ll see [coachFirstName] as an available tag. That will automatically fill in the name of the coach with whom the appointment has been scheduled.

You’ll see the same in the Confirmation Email, which will show as if sent by that scheduled-with coach. The coach will also receive an email with the appointment’s details, and as usual will see the appointment show up in any synced calendars. Visit the Team Dashboard to see all scheduled appointments account-wide.

And that’s all there is to it!

Wanna see a live example of this in action?  Visit the Offering we use to let our customers schedule with our support team!

Use this new round-robin setup to expand your availability with a single Offering link, allowing coaches with different time zones or working hours to share. Here’s to helping grow your coaching business with expanded features from CoachAccountable!

Have you been hanging on to another scheduling system in order to maintain round-robin appointment distribution? See how much more it can be as set up with CoachAccountable – start your free 30-day trial today. 

CoachAccountable Offerings were originally designed to be, first and foremost, for your prospective clients: those clients who were just checking you out, not yet having any working relationship with you, and certainly not yet set up within your CoachAccountable account.

An Offering allows them to schedule that introductory call with you, or purchase a Course of yours, or join one of your groups.  All of this can be done from a widget on your website, or by following a link (as shared any which way): both are perfect for a casual visitor with no established relation with you yet.

But it turns out it’s darn handy to allow your established clients to sign themselves up for (or purchase) additional Offerings in a self-service sort of way.  By making certain Offerings readily accessible from in-app, your clients can peruse and select from your “mini-marketplace” of coaching services at any time.

Let’s see how it works!

Setting Up Offerings for Established Clients

Making certain Offerings accessible in-app to your clients is as simple as creating an Offering Collection, choosing one or more Offerings to be part of that collection, and checking the “List this for in-app access by established clients” checkbox, like so:

Note how there’s also the option to make this collection ONLY accessible to established clients… more on that later!

When you dedicate Offering Collections as listed for in-app access, your clients will see them as new items in their top-right user menu.

If there’s just one such collection, it appears by name in the menu:

If you list more than one to be client-facing, they’ll appear in the “Offerings” sub-menu:

If you designate the Offering Collection as available only to your established clients, anyone who accesses that collection when NOT already logged in (say, if they get to it by the direct URL rather than the the in-app link) will be redirected to log in first.  In this way, by checking both check boxes you can designate collections of Offerings that are truly meant only for your established clients, and not the prospective ones.

The Client Experience

When your client clicks on the collection, they’ll be sent the the Offerings Collection page to choose and sign up (or purchase).

Unlike the usual flow for new clients, they’ll not need to fill in their name and email, since that is naturally already known. The other key difference is that they’ll be able to use any payment cards they have on file to make purchases, making the process as quick and seamless as possible.

As you would expect, their signing up for a new Offering this way has whatever effects occur on their existing client account, rather than creating a new client account.

These effects can include:

• Scheduling themselves for an appointment (this can be one that they might not otherwise be able to schedule themselves for)
• Paying for an appointment
• Purchasing several appointments by way of a new Engagement
• Participating in a Course
• Gaining membership into a Group
• Having a new Client Agreement to agree to

Single-Item Offering Collections

Offering Collections are generally meant to be just that: a collection of several Offerings.  The Offerings Collection page presents a menu of all contained items, like so:

Clicking the “view more…” link reveals the detailed description.

However, you can make an Offering Collection with just one Offering.  In that case, presenting a menu with just one choice would be a little silly, so instead the system puts the blurb and description for that Offering front-and-center, like so:

Since there’s just one option, the description shows front-and-center.

This allows you to have an Offering that is, in many ways, its own standalone landing page, with all the information about it to let visitors make an informed choice.  (Incidentally, the behavior works whether the collection is meant for established clients or new ones.)

Offerings have always been a powerful and flexible way to let your new clients start in on (and optionally pay for) your coaching programs.  This ability, to feature Offerings specifically for your existing clients, gives them a similar self-service capacity by which to engage with you further.

Enjoy!

In addition to Stripe and Square, you can now use PayPal to allow your clients to pay your invoices and purchase your Offerings.

CoachAccountable’s support for PayPal has been a bit of a winding path.  PayPal was the original and only payment processor one could choose for client invoice payments for several years.  It was phased out in favor of Stripe and Square, both of which had better support for in-app payments (as opposed to the need to bounce on over to paypal.com), and the ability to save client cards on file for later invoices.  The former advantage was especially nice for Offerings, and the later for automatic recurring payments in coaching Engagements.

We really wanted every payment processor option to be on even footing, meaning we didn’t want some users to have less functionality available than others based on that choice.  Everyone using PayPal was grandfathered in, but we removed it as an option to steer folks towards Stripe and Square for what they made possible with Offerings and Engagements.

AND YET, it turns out that years later, with the growing CoachAccountable customer base in an increasingly varied set of countries, for many Stripe and Square simply aren’t options due to more limited country support.

So, in spite of the limitations, the time has come for PayPal to rejoin the ranks of payment processors supported by CoachAccountable.

Let’s see how it works!

As always, you choose your payment processor from the Settings >> Client Invoice Config page:

A fine choice if it’s the only one available, but do mind the notice in red!

Despite having more coverage, globally, even PayPal supports billing only in select currencies.  If you try to choose PayPal while having selected a currency that is not supported, the system will alert you of as much.

Instead of entering payment details in-app, like with the others, a button will whisk your customers off to PayPal to complete the transaction.  In the case of Offerings, this is a pop up window, like so:

It appears more centered than that–I just wanted to show off a little more of what’s going on. :)

PayPal offers a few trade-offs from the other payment processors.  For one, one needn’t even have a PayPal account to get started: you can simply enter your email address.  Whenever you get your first payment this way, PayPal will let you know you’ve got money, and guide you through the steps to retrieve it (and set up your account in the process).

Your customers going to PayPal means they can pay in alternative ways to just a credit card, like bank transfers or with their PayPal balance.  Though not guaranteed, this opens up the possibility of you collecting on your invoices without being subject to the usual merchant processor fees.  (The flip side of this, of course, is that the activity of making the payment is all happening at the PayPal side of things, and thus there’s no way for you, as a merchant, to store information about their payment instruments for later payments.)

Overall it works fine, both to allow your new clients to purchase your Offerings and your established clients to pay your invoices.  We recommend Stripe or Square over PayPal for the aforementioned reasons, but to all of those for whom those aren’t an option, PayPal’s got you covered!

In a recent conversation with a coach, I heard the following request:

I want to nurture my clients through a very specific sales funnel.

1. They should come in through a basic, self-paced Course, which only includes a few items (Actions and Worksheets).
2. Then, if they want to (and have proven themselves as a good fit), at the end of the Course they can see what else is possible with the system and upgrade to Group Coaching.
3. After that, I want to upsell with my One-on-One Coaching.
4. (Optional) the big-ticket private mastermind.

How can I best use CoachAccountable to make this funnel happen?

Enter Offering-Specific Page Arrangement. Let’s take a look.

An Offering allows clients (or prospective clients) to sign up and book with you, with other items kicking in automatically if you want. These automated items can include:

• an Appointment,
• a set of onboarding materials (Course),
• enrollment in a Group,
• a set of signup questions (Worksheet),
• a contract (Agreement),
• a series of invoices (Engagement).

Now, you can also set a specific Page Arrangement as part of signup.

New Client/Prospect: Pared-Down Portal

For the above example, the coach will set the Page Arrangement for the self-paced Course to only show a bare-bones setup: Overview, Stream, Actions, and Worksheets.

Set that in the last tab of the Offering editor.

Now, when a client signs up for this Offering, they’ll have a brand new CoachAccountable account with just these things showing!

Here’s what that looks like from the client’s perspective.

Bare-bones setup in action!

And just like that, our client is off to the races.

The Upsell Opportunity

Then, at a later point, our coach can turn on some of the other features and introduce these items to the client (here’s how). The ensuing conversation can open up discussion around how the other features can help the client reach her goals – and the coach’s sales funnel is set up to include certain items at certain price points, as listed in the original request.

Step up your sales game by giving new clients a tangible view into your system. Sign up for your free 30-day trial of CoachAccountable here.