Should You Sell to Beginners?

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One of my friends in the coaching space forwarded me Sam Ovens’ video on how he’s spent the last 2 years breaking down and rebuilding his business.

If you don’t know, Ovens started a business that became Consulting.com, which helped beginner experts and course creators turn their expertise into courses and productizable consulting.

At one point he was doing $30 million a year in revenue.

However, in remaking the business he decided to discontinue Consulting Accelerator, their signature program for beginners.

Turns out it was more headache than it was worth, at least for Ovens. And I can completely relate.

In our podcast agency, I’d rather work with those with genuine and deep expertise in their space. They may be new to the coaching or consulting space, but they already have skills and expertise, the only question is how to best position them for ideal clients.

So all this got me thinking of the question I see lots of my friends and clients wrestling with, “Should I sell to beginners?”

I think we all struggle with this question at some point because that’s where the biggest businesses are.

There’s simply more beginners than intermediate or experts. So there’s more people to buy from us if we make something for beginners.

Think about ClickFunnels. If Russell Brunson only sold that software to advanced course creators, there wouldn’t be enough customers to make a profit, therefore the product could never get better.

So we need brands who sell to beginners, and brands who cater to the more advanced.

The big question for any coach or consultant is, Which will you be?

Putting it in terms we can better relate to, will you be the Mercedes-Benz of your market, or the Toyota Corolla?

If you want big sales numbers and a huge brand, get ready to sell to beginners. That’s where you’ll find big markets and big opportunities.

Yet beginners come with a lot of frustration, and I wanted to flesh out *why* and what can be done about it.

So first let’s get into the 3 things that hold beginners back from getting results and creates headaches for those who sell to them.

Foundation of Performance

Beginners often lack a basic foundation of methodical, consistent action in their lives.

So when you try to help them take action, there’s no foundation of consistent action to build on. There’s no ongoing action for you to tweak and improve. They have no history of successfully building new habits or making uncomfortable changes.

As a personal trainer, it’s much easier to work with someone who is active and has already made some basic diet changes, than to work with someone who’s never hit the gym in their life.

I asked a mentor one time if I should go to a Tony Robbins event. He said I might get something out of it, because I had the foundation of performance to handle it.

But he had seen many who didn’t have that foundation, and once they came back from a transformative experience, and they couldn’t translate that experience into action, it actually had a terrible, negative effect.

Some even slipped into a major depression after they came home, and he had to help them pick up the emotional pieces and get back on track.

So working with beginners often means working with folks who don’t know how to break old habits and build new ones, which makes coaching them extremely difficult.

Clarity

It’s impossible to take bold, confident action when you’re unclear on what you want.

Yet beginners are looking for programs and courses to give them the clarity they can’t get on their own.

They simply don’t know what they don’t know.

If they knew exactly what they wanted, they’d probably be well on their way to having it.

The dirty secret of selling coaching programs to beginners is that often, the testimonials you’ll get will be based on clarity.

“This program helped me decide to _____! Now I know exactly where I’m going and how to get there”

If you sell programs for beginners, don’t expect them to just take your word and run with it.

If they don’t feel clarity, they probably won’t take confident action. So plan your program accordingly.

Good Decision-Making Process

Many of my friends in coaching or consulting aren’t the first experts that people find online.

Often many of their clients and buyers have come through other programs first and not had success, or were disappointed by the low level of content in those other programs.

That’s because beginners don’t have a good decision-making process.

They’re scattered, chaotic, and go from one shiny object to another.

Today it’s a program about Instagram, tomorrow it’s a group coaching program about Clubhouse, the day after it will be a full website redesign, after that a LinkedIn messaging system.

Beginners typically find the biggest brands first, the ones who spend the most on ads.

Then they get excited about those programs and sign up for emotional reasons.

Coming to terms with this process will save you a lot of frustration.

And in today’s online climate, whoever is willing to outspend everyone else on ads will probably continue to reach the beginner market first.

So if you’re not willing to outspend everyone else on ads, accept that beginners will often come to you after going through several other programs, and might even leave your program because they get shiny object syndrome for another program.

It’s all a natural part of selling to the beginner market.

Maybe that makes me sound cynical, but I actually don’t look at any of that negatively.

We need brands and experts who bring in beginners. And we need brands and experts that serve the more advanced.

So this episode is about helping you make good decisions for yourself on who you serve and why.

Because you can either sell to beginners, or sell to the intermediate and up.

It’s nearly impossible to sell to both.