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The Savvy Client Experience Guide For Coaches, Consultants, And Freelancers
High-ticket offers need a client onboarding experience that feels high-end. For values-led businesses, a series of generic emails with links to sign paperwork and pay invoices isn't it.
In this guide:
The difference between a client experience that feels transactional and transformational and why it has such a big impact on your success as a business owner.
The disconnect between ethical marketing and transactional onboarding that turns easy clients into headache clients.
The touchpoints any business can create that boost client results, referrals, and repeat sales.
Client portals that feel as high-end as your offer
100% human ideas and written by humans, no A.I.
Right now, no matter what you sell, there's an anxious moment after the sale that leaves your new client feeling like they either made a smart decision or a mistake.
From the moment your client enters their payment info, and waits while the little wheel scrolls before the confirmation message loads, they're wondering if this was the right move.
What if it doesn't live up to the hype?
What if this is another slick marketer who's better at making the sale than delivering results?
Is it even possible for them to solve this problem?
Were any of the testimonials on that sales page real?
Is this person really an expert or will they just feed all the info into A.I. and call it done?
So many of your clients have been burned before. Not just by bad actors in the market but also by their own failed attempts to solve their problems.
And, if you've been in business for more than a minute, you've probably had at least one client that didn't get the results you were hoping for. Maybe even a client that's left you a bit traumatized because it was such a nightmarishly bad match.
You can adjust your messaging and marketing to make sure you're attracting the right people, at the right moment, so you never have to go through that again. But, sometimes, even the best marketing materials can't restore your confidence in selling your high ticket offers. And it isn't a wound that time alone can heal.
Today I'm going to show you how the right client experience can help you sell your high ticket offers with confidence. And, ensure every client trusts the process while you do your thing.
Because the touchpoints after the sale set the tone for whether your new client feels completely confident in your expertise (i.e. whether they need to push back on every decision you make and be that client.)
And if you roll out the red carpet every time a new client hires you, then your clients will feel confident referring you to others; knowing you'll roll out the red carpet for their clients, friends, and peers too.
Transactional vs. Transformational Client Experiences
You're human.
Surely you've purchased things online before. An $8 ebook, a $27 mini-course, maybe even a $300 workshop.
So, you've been through different types of post-sale experiences. You know what it is to be a "customer."
Some of the experiences are amazing! A group program that made you feel like you met your community of biz besties, or a 30-minute workshop helped you solve a problem you've agonized over for 3 months.
Sometimes you get to see whole forests being planted as a result of your purchases or communities being lifted up by the number of schools built, wells dug, and more.
Of course, some of them are forgettable. Like the Thank You page that said, "Thanks for your money, we'll call you, don't call us" I mean, "You're in, now check your inbox for details."
Or worse, the digital product that's collecting dust somewhere because it was too hard to finish and you never got a single result from it.
And, as a business owner, you've probably hired your share of people to help you grow your business. I mean, you get it.
You’ve been the client who bought the $3000 package, only to be sent a Docusign link to sign the contract, followed by an invoice that's bigger than your mortgage, and after that you get and a Dropbox folder and a Zoom link with little to no context.
Or worse, an intake form that'll take 30-45 minutes to fill out while you dig through your archives, for a service that promised to "take this off your plate."
And you’ve had to keep the faith yourself the whole time, that this was a good decision, that you’ll see a return on your investment, and that this will work out.
As a business owner, you’re probably thinking, “Well, yeah. There’s a list of things that need to happen before we can start the work. How else am I supposed to access the info my client has?”
That's exactly what this guide is about ~ showing you how to get what you need as a business owner while delighting your clients.
An offer that costs thousands of dollars shouldn't feel as transactional as a rental agreement when a $17 workshop can make you feel like the business owner just poured you a warm cup of tea in their kitchen.
I get it. Certain things need to happen and boxes need to be checked off. This onboarding process isn't only for the client's sake.
But it can be an amazing experience for both you and the client.
You can get the contract signed, the invoice paid, and still get a voice note from your client saying:
"Holy shit that was so easy. It wasn't all clicky-clicky, everything just flowed, and it didn't feel all fussy... I'm done & I feel like I already got a win from this! What is this sorcery?? This is so cool!"
#TrueStory from one of my clients who immediately left me a voice note because this kept happening to her again and again as a result of her client experience.
It's possible. It can be fully automated (or not.) And everything will be organized and easy for both you and your client to access later.
The Disconnect Between Ethical Marketing And Transactional Onboarding
All of the business owners I've worked with have one thing in common ~ they have integrity and they want that integrity to come through in all their sales, marketing, and nurturing.
They want to stand out from all the bro-marketers and AI slop as someone who has experience, expertise, and ethics.
It doesn't matter if you're selling your first high-ticket offer ever or your 50th. What matters is that you see your clients as valuable human beings with a problem you can help them solve.
You're not trying to trick as many people as possible into handing over their cash. You're trying to earn a healthy living wage while helping people.
If your marketing is positioning you as someone who genuinely cares, then your onboarding needs to show them that your integrity isn't just a sales gimmick.
People will remember how your onboarding process made them feel. And if it doesn't match how your marketing made them feel, it's going to feel like a bait and switch.
This is especially true for changemakers using their business as a vehicle for change! BIPOC, LGBTQIA2s+, and allies know that how you do business is just as important as what you do. Don't let a disconnect like this drag down your profit margins while nasty business owners become billionaires.
I've seen so many amazing, do-good businesses lose all the trust they worked so hard to build, the moment the sale is made.
The social media posts, the nurture emails, and the sales page had a certain energy that kept building and building until the client said YES!
And then all that energy fizzled the moment money was exchanged. It wasn't intentional! It was just bad design.
In fact, most of the tools on the market for automating the onboarding process are so linear and limited. It's no wonder business owners don't realize they have options.
Today's technology (and I'm not talking about A.I. here) makes it possible to deliver personalized experiences at scale.
And for an offer that can't hold more than 10 new clients per month? Wildly personalized, without adding more to your plate.
A Smooth Client Experience For Both The Client And The Business
This isn't about you, the business owner, doing more work so your client has less.
The entire experience can be automated, organized, and easy-to-manage for both sides.
Efficient for the business.
Exceptional for the client.
Enjoyable for both.
The problem is, most tools are built for one or the other. To keep the business owner happy (because that's who pays for the tool each month!) Or they let the client choose the process they prefer and the business is left scrambling trying to tie all the pieces together.
In both cases, one party is always left trying to learn the other's system and feeling like there's more chaos than they'd hoped for.
How many client experiences have you heard of that include video tutorials on how to navigate the Client Portal or how to use the Notion dashboard or whatever tool the business chose?
And how many times have you partnered with someone that made you want to pull out your hair because it felt so disorganized and overwhelming because you went through their process instead of yours?
It's a nightmare either way that can ruin relationships!
I don't care which tools you use for your client experiences, as long as they make your relationships feel stronger, deeper, and easier to maintain. For both sides.
I'll show you how I do things in Fern CRM because that's the tool I use, but it's not the only option. Many tools can do the many things. (But if you're not in love with your tools, I recommend checking out Fern CRM because it can save you a ton of money and stress.)
After years of working with clients in a range of tools, I always felt like they were OK for the business, but frustrating for the client.
None of them seemed to care what the client was experiencing as long as the client signed where they were supposed to sign and paid on time.
And when a client didn't pay on time? "Oh, sorry, I missed that invoice because the email went to my spam folder..." Did it though? Or was that just a convenient way to put off paying it? Depending on the tool (and the client's inbox tech), there was no way of knowing for sure.
If you've been nodding your head at the examples I've shared in this post, I want you to know it's not just you.
You didn't decide to make your client relationships harder to manage. The tools did.
And they want you to keep paying the bill every month, so they're not out here publishing posts about it.
I am. Because I want every ethical business owner to see it and learn ways to fix it.
Enough talk ~ want to see an automated high-ticket client experience in action?
Now that you understand how important a high-end client experience is and why it might be the disconnect in your marketing-sales-delivery process, check out the "Red Carpet Client Experience."
In this video walk-through, I show you exactly how I build smooth client experiences that are better for the client and the business.
Without expensive tech or complicated backend operations.
Click to check it out:
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