Posted on January 11, 2011 by Kurt Shuster
To our valued coaches,
Happy 2011! The past year has seen a number of big changes here at Noomii, and I wanted to take some time to answer some of the questions you’ve been asking lately, as well as to give you an update on where we’re going in the next 12 months.
By far, the most common types of questions I hear when I talk to coaches about Noomii involves client leads. As a group, you have told us loud and clear that you want not only more client leads, but also a better way of matching coaches and prospective clients.
We’re listening. This coming year, we have 2 big goals for Noomii. First, we aim to increase the number of client leads that come to Noomii looking for a coach. Second, we hope to improve the way we match coaches and clients. These are both big goals, and so I’d like to go over them both one by one.
2011 Goal Number One: Increase our client leads to 500 per month.
The chart below shows the number of client leads per month over the last 6 months. Keep in mind the chart shows ONLY the client leads who have asked to be matched with their coach; this does not include coaches who are directly contacted through our directory. As you can see, we’ve made steady improvements this year since we launched our new coach-client matching system. We’re currently on pace to have our best month ever – over 100 client leads, or just over 3 per day on average. Our goal for 2011 is to increase this by a factor of ten: 500 client leads per month, or more than 15 per day.
How are we going to do this? Glad you asked! We’ve begun a number of initiatives designed to help improve our client lead numbers. The first thing we’ll be doing is re-launching our blog with a major focus on the kinds of stories that would interest prospective clients. Our goal is to become the number one online resource for people looking for a coach, and our blog is going to help us achieve that goal by focusing on the types of issues that prospective clients want to know about. Second, we’re constantly increasing our marketing initiatives, through optimizing our content for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid advertising through Google Pay Per Click (PPC), as well as a number of partnerships with other websites whose readership matches the demographic profile of coaching clients.
In short, we’re working hard to make sure that we keep improving our traffic, and we’re doing this by making the site better and more relevant to the kinds of people who are looking for a professional coach.
2011 Goal Number Two: Improve our coach-client matching system
The other question I often hear from coaches is how we can improve the system for matching coaches and clients. You’ve told us that you want a better way of being notified when we receive client leads whose goals match your particular training, background, and expertise. You’ve also told us that it needs to be easier for prospective clients to contact you once you’ve been recommended.
On this front, there are a number of things we’ll be doing. First off, it’s important to understand that clients vary enormously in their motivation to find a coach. While some clients are highly motivated and want to start coaching right away, others are much less so, and sometimes are merely “feeling the waters” when looking for a coach. Recently, we’ve noticed several clients mentioning they initially found us through promotions on Sweeps Cash Casinos, highlighting an unexpected but interesting crossover between gaming enthusiasts and people seeking personal coaching. Because of this, we’re doing a number of things to ensure that prospective clients are given the best possible service from us to answer their questions, help them with choosing a coach, etc. We’ve recently hired a dedicated customer support manager (Dana – some of you have already spoken with her), who calls each and every client lead we receive, and makes sure they’re clear about the process of finding a coach, what to expect from coaching, how to choose a coach, etc. Dana will also be collecting feedback from these clients and we’ll be making sure we make changes to our process over the year to better reflect what they want to see in our system.
The second thing we’ll be doing is giving you, our coaches, more tools to “pre-filter” the kinds of clients you’d like to see. The system will include a sophisticated pre-selection tool to allow you to select, for example, only clients who are willing to coach on the phone, or only clients who want an ADD/ADHD coach, etc. When the system is in place, you’ll only receive emails when we receive clients who highly match your criteria – rather than a daily email containing all the latest leads.
A final 2011 goal: Better communication with our coaches
Finally, I’d like to commit to better communications between us and you, our valued customers. The past year has been one of many changes on the site, and sometimes we’ve taken it for granted that our changes are going to be self-evident to you. What we’ve learned is that we need to do a better job of communicating our changes as we make them. More importantly, we also need to give you more opportunities to provide feedback on the many changes we make, and make sure we do our best to implement those changes in a timely manner.
On that note, I’ll conclude with a reminder that we LOVE to get feedback, so please leave your comments below. Alternately, you can always talk to one of us directly. We’re just a free phone call away: 1-800-278-1057. Give us a call any time!
With best wishes for you and your coaching practice in 2011,
Kurt Shuster
CEO and co-founder,
Noomii.com
Why don’t you let the coach and client chose each other and stop the bidding for clients to see coaches. Clients are smart enough to know what they want,
Thanks
Coach Bob
PS
This screen is terrible. I can bearly see what I’m typing.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your feedback. We are always making changes (big and small), and suggestions from coaches are the best way we have to know what’s working and what’s not.
First off, we’ve just changed the commenting functionality to make the text larger and darker, so it should be easier to type comments from now on.
As for your other suggestion – yes, I agree that the current system is suboptimal, and we’re not going to be satisfied until we have the best possible system for matching coaches and clients. There are a number of constraints that may not be obvious to coaches which explain why it is the way it is.
First, we needed a system that allowed clients to state their goals in their own words, and give them a list of potential coaches. This was done because clients told us that the other method (manually browsing the directory) was difficult and confusing for them – they told us time and time again that they did not know which coaches to contact, or what to look for in a coach. That’s why we introduced the “client leads” system, which allows them to tell us, in their own words, what they’re hoping to achieve.
Next, we needed a way to send them a list of coaches who best met their needs. Originally, we did this manually here in our office – pouring over each and every request and finding coaches in our network whose profiles appeared to match the client’s goals. As you can probably guess, this was very time-consuming for us, and came with it’s own set of problems. Coaches would sometimes not reply to our requests, or they would be busy/on vacation, etc. Often, we missed out on several highly compatible coaches because we simply do not know all the details about every coach and their background, training, and experience.
So we needed a system to allow coaches to tell US when they thought they were a good fit. This is why we put the requests out to coaches in a daily email. It’s based on the premise that coaches themselves know better than anyone if they’re a good fit for a particular client’s goals (certainly better than us!).
The final consideration that led us to our current system is that we needed a way to limit the number of coaches who recommend themselves to a given client. Consider the client’s perspective: if they get too many recommendations, they no longer have the desired outcome: to reduce the number of prospective coaches to consider. Without some way of limiting coaches, we found that many coaches were applying the “shotgun” approach – recommending themselves to clients who were not really a good fit. So we needed a way to ensure that fewer coaches replied – but better fitting coaches. This is why we added the monthly “credits” system, so that coaches would more carefully consider which clients to recommend themselves for. Keep in mind, too, that clients see ALL the coaches who add their names; the credits only serve to arrange the order in which the coaches are displayed. The idea here, again, is that it allows coaches to tell the client that they REALLY are a great fit, because they closely match what the client was looking for.
The last thought I’d like to leave you is that we’re just at the beginning of our journey. We want Noomii to be the E-Harmony or Match.com of Professional coaching. We’ll be making a lot of changes in the coming months (and years!), and it’s quite possible that the credits system itself will be replaced by something easier, faster, and ultimately results in better matches for our coaches and clients.
Regards,
Kurt
I’m glad to hear you are creating a better matching system. You are probably aware of what the ICF does to match prospective clients with coaches.
For me, as a coach who works exclusively with women, it’s important for me to know if the person requesting coaching is male or female. A simple check box would help me enormously!!!
Thanks,
Amy
A system other than credits would be good and there is one out that you will find works the best. A questionnaire that we can fill in/check off as well as the client would be able to match up client/coach quickly. Looking forward to seeing what you have in store.