What’s the Difference Between Offerings and Engagements?
When setting up your coaching business in CoachAccountable, the difference between Offerings and Engagements can be confusing. Here, we’ll detail what each one is for, and how to use the two in tandem.
What’s an Offering?
Offerings allow the automation of your sign-up process.
Offerings are client-facing.
With an Offering, you can have clients:
- Choose a coaching product
- Enter their basic contact information
- Complete an intake form (or not)
- Book a consultation call with you (or not)
- Pay (or not)
You can also use Offerings to automatically have the client:
- Become part of a Group (or not)
- Start receiving your materials, such as onboarding videos and intake forms (or not)
- Be presented with a Coaching Agreement to sign when they first log in (or not)
- Begin a monthly payment plan (or not)
The client or prospect is automatically given a CoachAccountable account, which makes it more likely for them to say yes to your coaching (for prospects) and be more engaged (for clients).
You can embed Offerings directly on your website, or use the standalone link when you’re emailing your list or posting on social media.
What’s an Engagement?
Engagements allow the automation of your billing and packages.
Engagements run behind the scenes, visible only to coaches/admins.
With Engagements, you can:
- Set up recurring invoices (like a monthly subscription, or installments on a payment plan)
- Track how much of a client’s coaching package has been used
- Notify yourself and/or your clients when the client is coming to the end of a coaching engagement
- Limit clients’ ability to book more sessions than they’ve paid for
You’ve got a nice at-a-glance display of where the client’s at and what’s going to happen next. Each individual’s Engagement is easily adjusted if necessary.
How Do Offerings and Engagements Work Together?
The interaction is this:
Starting an Engagement CAN BE part of an Offering.
That means that (along with whatever else you’ve got starting automatically for the client via your Offering) you can have a sequence of invoices automatically begin upon signup. If someone’s purchasing a 3-month coaching package that includes, for example:
- one invoice per month and
- 4 coaching sessions per month
the Engagement tracks how many sessions have been used, and sends out the monthly invoices for you so that you don’t have to think about it.
For more on how to include an Engagement as part of an Offering, check out this article.
Together, Offerings and Engagements can automate away some of the drudgery of getting clients started, so you can focus on the coaching itself.
Get started with a free 30-day trial of CoachAccountable now.
(And if you haven’t seen this video showing how to set up an entire Offering in just 3 minutes from a brand new CA account – we recommend it!)
More recently: If you’re thinking about getting started…
Previously: Direct Sync with your Apple Calendar
Thanks for this Morgan. We have invested a fair bit of time trying to fully understand the distinctions between offerings and engagements.
Your clarity about client-facing offerings and behind the scenes engagements is really helpful.
You have strengthened my resolve to get both elements fully implemented!!
February 25, 2020 @ 5:56 am
Yes!
Thanks Morgan for another super clarifying blog post! Keep rocking it with Mr Johnny ;)
Warm greetings
Glenn
March 4, 2020 @ 12:03 am