Hello, and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf. And first and foremost, I'm an executive and leadership coach with more than 20 years experience as a coach, and now I have the privilege of helping coaches in this space to build sustainable, profitable, and joyful businesses with more high-paying corporate clients.
I do this through my group coaching program, The Corporate to Coach Accelerator, and I am passionately anti-BS in marketing and in my coaching, so stick around for practical tips and advice from someone who has been there and done that. Now, before I dive into the episode, I just wanted to give you the very first notice that I am running a boot camp for executive and leadership coaches and consultants from 18th to 20 November.
Now, if you'd like to check it out, head to www.elliescarf.com/bootcamp, and I'm gonna share a little bit more about exactly what we'll cover a little later in this episode, but you do not wanna miss it. I promise it is going to be incredibly helpful.
Okay, so today I want you, if you are feeling like your business needs a little shot in the arm to get through to the end of the year and to fuel your opportunity pipeline into '27, I want to talk to you, because one of the things I firmly believe is that your business growth will reward activity and momentum.
So any one of the seven things I'm gonna share today could fuel opportunity, and doing all of them absolutely will. Think of these, each of these seven ideas, as seeds that you are planting for your business growth in the new year. And depending on your capacity, and, you know, which could just be sheer time availability, but it could also be your energy levels, your existing strategy, and depending on your goals as well, you can decide how many of these seeds you want to plant for 2027.
Now, before I dive in, I want to address the very commonly shared challenge with me, which is that I often have clients and coaches say to me, "But Ellie, is there any point doing anything right now because people are going to be on holidays, and no organizations are buying things at this time of the year?"
My answer is you may be right. In some cases, organizations do go a little quieter when it comes to buying coaching and consulting and training and facilitation. But- The flip side, the reverse is often true. And in fact, often I see the individuals that we are... that, you know, the buyers of coaching within organizations, they may be working through, right?
Maybe aside from the week or two over Christmas and New Year's or Thanksgiving in the US. And often because it is a little quieter in those organizations, they have more bandwidth and there's less noise, so they have more opportunity to respond when they hear from you. And my take is always to think of some of the marketing strategies that we implement at this time of the year as kind of a one-two punch, I say.
Obviously, a less violent metaphor would be better. Strictly non-violent marketing here. But a one-two punch being we implement the strategy now, between now and January, right? That's our first punch. And then in mid-January, we get to implement the second punch, which is a really great follow-up strategy, and it is turbo-powered because we have a good reason to follow up because, you know, everyone knows that, you know, that we can easily say, "Oh, you know, you may have been away," or, you know, "I know things are crazy at the end of the year, so I wanted to follow up."
So even if you are just giving yourself a reason to do follow-up next year, you don't waste anything if you implement these strategies now on this side of 2027. So I say go for it, go hard. These opportunities are the seeds of 2027. Okay, so here are seven activities that you can do between now and the end of the year with the intention of generating conversations, building your profile, and creating momentum and positive ripple effects on your ongoing sales funnel.
Now, if you feel like you need a boost, just do as many of these as you can handle. If you have any questions about any of them in particular, please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. Let me know what your take is, if you've got anything that I can clarify. Okay. So you know me, there will always be something about outreach when we are talking about generating sales activity fast.
So the number one strategy that I want you c- to consider is that I would love you to do a warm outreach sprint before the end of the year. And honestly, if you do nothing else, just do this one. So what does it look like? Well, it is taking your existing warm outreach strategy, which I hope you have, if you don't, just talk to me, and then very simply layer on volume.
Now, if you need some advice on what your outreach strategy should be, if you are just starting out, if you don't have an outreach strategy, then do check out some of my past episodes on outreach, or listen in for strategy number three, and come along to my boot camp where we're gonna help with just that.
So here's how I would do a warm outreach sprint. Option number one is to pick a number. So for example, I love 100 outreach message sprints. You know, you make sure you capture data on how many replies you get, how many eventuate into sales calls, of course. 100 messages is about the number where we can really get some meaningful data, and we can start to see which parts of your funnel work and which don't.
Now, you might, you might ramp it up and say, "I'm gonna do 100 messages every week from now until mid-December." Or you might say, "Look, Ellie, I'm only doing three a week now. 50 messages altogether between now and Christmas would be huge." You choose the number.
But I would really suggest trying to find what does a massive increase look like for you that you can manage within available time without burnout?
Now, one of my clients last week did over 300 messages, and even within that first week, was seeing incredible results in terms of sales calls booked. And remember, there is a really long tail to your outreach messages because some people just take longer to reply. You can follow them up in the new year.
It's all an incredible investment of time, really. This is probably the most literal example of sowing seeds for the future. Now, definitely, we want you doing your outreach right, so check out my past podcast or join my boot camp, which I'll tell you about in a moment. The second strategy is a different type of sprint.
So number two is a different type of sprint. It is more of a visibility sprint or a content sprint. And what that could look like for you is committing to posting every day or committing five days a week to posting on LinkedIn until the end of the year, or for 30 days, or whatever that looks like for you.
This one is a little harder to track the literal sales impact, but I guarantee you that there will be an impact, especially if you pair it with warm outreach. Because the job of your content on LinkedIn, your job of your content is to make it more likely that your prospective clients will reply to your outreach messages.
That is their job. We can't ask content to do the job of outreach, but we can really support outreach, and that's kind of its job, to make it more likely that people will reply.
We also know that the more you post and the more you're visible, the more inbound queries will happen, especially the more relevant you are to the pain points and stories that resonate with your ideal clients and ideal buyers.
Now, a few options here. Obviously, the number of posts can vary, but so can the strategy. You might do a series, you know? You might say, "Tales from leadership in the manufacturing sector," for example.
Or you might build out some content pillars that you post out about every week, and maybe that also particularly includes content that you find the most difficult, things like connection content that shows you a little bit more.
Or you might experiment with speaking specifically to buyers of coaching in a particular sector that you have credibility with and making every post extremely targeted As an experiment. But an increase of volume for a period of time is really the goal. You can be really clever with it, doesn't mean writing all new content.
Maybe one to three of your posts every week are refreshers of your most popular posts from past months or years with a new hook on them. Consider it an experiment, not something that requires you to spend hours and hours writing. So I would really encourage you, if you do this one, to give yourself time constraints.
So for example, if you wanna post five times a week, five to seven times a week, you give yourself 90 minutes to write five to seven posts and no more. So that's for example. Now, one thing I would say is don't do a content sprint unless you are doing an outreach sprint, because I know a lot of people who would say, "Oh yeah, I'll do a content sprint, and I'll just put the outreach to the side."
I'm gonna say these two, you can do a content sprint, but you have to do an outreach sprint as well. So I want those two to sort of sit hand in hand because that is gonna be what gets the best results. Now, will you get benefits if you just do a content sprint? Yes, you will. You'll see flow of positive effects.
Really turbocharge it by combining it with the outreach sprint. So number three at a high level is to get some support to actually do the things you need to do to build your sales funnel. To get support to move from your ideas and knowledge into implementation and action. So it may be that you actually know exactly what you should be doing, but you find yourself avoiding and procrastinating or just generally getting in your own way.
If that is you, you have a few options here. One, get your own coaching. Yes, we should always have a coach. I always have a coach. I always have more than one coach. And we need to walk the walk, right, as coaches when it comes to coaching. Another option is that you could form a peer accountability group. I do all of those things, of course, inside my group program, but that's not what I'd wanted to share.
What I really wanted to share here to help you with moving from ideas and knowledge into action and implementation is an event I'm running live from the 18th to the 20th of November.
It is a three-day boot camp that is aimed at getting a, a bunch of executive and leadership coaches and consultants together in a room with me to not just learn about best practices in building a funnel of clients or a pipeline of clients, but to actually get some of it done together.
Because I know that we all have great intentions after we attend masterclasses, and I run a lot of masterclasses and man- many of you may have been to them. We have great intentions after we attend those classes or we do courses. This bootcamp is intended to be all about practical application and action.
So in true bootcamp style, we will have three days together. We will spend 90 minutes together each day, and we are going to do a few big important things. On day one, we're gonna build out your sales funnel, including mapping your revenue target all the way down to the granular elements of your pipeline so that you can stop thinking about what you should be doing and actually do it.
So you'll be taking my funnel calculator that I'll be sharing and actually building your funnel with me. You're gonna take away your 2027 revenue target. You're gonna take away your weekly activity targets, and that is going to make implementing your sales funnel so much easier immediately and into 2027.
So the flow on ripple effect on your 2027 business will be huge On day two, we are going to create your corporate client map, which is where you are going to map out where your richest veins of opportunity lie based on your background, your professional experience, and your network, and we are going to figure out which parts of your network to prioritize.
On day three, we are going to fast-track your marketing for 2027 by assessing how you stand against the golden triad of factors of your network, your visibility, and your outreach, and we are going to go into high-level outreach strategies so that you have some outreach tools in your toolkit. And this is especially good if you want to do an outreach sprint or if perhaps you aren't sure what your outreach should look like.
You'll also receive my funnel calculator that you will... You can use it again and again every year. You can, you know, change up your revenue targets, figure out what it'll look like. And the cost to attend for all three days is a steal. It is 27 USD, 'cause I wanted it to be, you know, really accessible for everyone, for the first 100 registrants, and then it'll be 97 USD for any subsequent registrants.
We have multiple time zones available, so you can definitely find something that will work for your time zone. So if you would like to absolutely turbocharge your sales pipeline into 2027, definitely come and join me at the bootcamp. You can sign up at elliescarf.com/bootcamp. And actually, you know, we're gonna sit down and do the work.
It'll be very action-heavy, very practical, and while I will absolutely go through all the concepts, there will be a really strong focus on implementation. I would love to see you there. You know, anyone who I know through this podcast I always find is wonderful to work with. So if you sign up, please send me a message on LinkedIn or reply to the confirmation email that you get and just let me know that you've come from the podcast.
Oh, and there are a whole heap of bonuses, um, including if you come live for all three days, you do go into the draw to win a 90-minute strategy session with me, which always gets good feedback. So suggestion number four, getting back to how you can boost your sales in the back end of 2026. Number four is to lean into your end-of-year networking and celebration events.
So it's an event networking strategy. But here's the catch, not the ones you think. I'm sorry to say that for a sales boost, I am not recommending all of the networking and events for coaches or even HR. And I mean, absolutely go to coaching network events, but do them for the importance of being in community and potentially partnership opportunities down the track, not for the immediate sales benefits.
What I mean is attending industry events. So let's say you have three sectors that you are primarily focused on, and we will clarify those in the bootcamp, by the way. Look at their industry events. Look at their networking events. Look at their end of year drinks functions. Sometimes they're just for members, but usually you can pay for a ticket whether or not you're a member.
That is the networking we want you doing. This is going to be easier if it's a sector that you have a background in, professional background in, or a network that you have strong connections in. But you know, those are the ones to go to build the network that is going to become your next most warm connections.
You'll of course need to have networking event strategies to support you to do that, things like having a great introduction strategy. I've got a very popular podcast episode on that, so search it up. and you'll also need some good follow-up strategies, but this can be a really excellent way to build real warm human connections before the end of the year.
On a related note, number five is that you could also do a concerted push for podcast guest spots, and particularly booking podcast guest spots into 2027. So again, I don't want you on podcasts that only coaches listen to, unless it's to get confidence and practice, in which case go for it, but I mostly want you pitching industry specific podcasts, right?
Even like ones that are quite technical if the industry that you're in is technical. We want you to be the voice of leadership and people and culture and engagement that industry folks might hear alongside all of the technical or regulatory content and think, "Wow, we absolutely need that perspective in our organization."
You could send, for example, 20 tailored, and it will have to be tailored because you, you know, podcast hosts get lots of spammy messages, 20 tailored messages to podcasts either sharing a podcast guest bio one-sheet or just to, to start the conversation and then honestly just see what happens. Number six is, this is one of my favorites, is to do a sweep of all those folks from the whole year that you had a good call with, even though there wasn't an opportunity, or you sent messages to, but they just didn't really have any need at that present moment.
I want you to go back to every single one of those folks and share just a small offer, and I mean something that could be an easy yes for them. And so that could be like an end of year team building session, or a 90-minute lunch and learn, or breakfast briefing on something relevant. Now, make sure that you refer to your previous conversations, and you might say something like, "Hey, you know, since our chat, I've been working with clients, you know, in this particular way, and I thought they might also be interested because of conversation or factor X, Y, and Z."
Now, it could be something they can lock in now before the end of the year, or it could be something that they put in the diary for the new year. It should be aimed at getting you in the door. It's not quite a loss leader, but it should be an easy investment.
So something between sort of 1 to 2K is ideal, often won't need too much approval to get that sort of budget, and it builds your credibility and your relationship and the ability to have ongoing conversations.
I call it a coaching adjacent offer Now, one, beware of this. One thing I don't see being very successful is offering, like, one-off coaching sessions. So I would say this one is better off being something that is a program or, like, aimed at a group or a session, like, for a team or an organization level, um, rather than a one-on-one.
Now, it could be that something that is very specific, like an audit or something, that relates to a particular problem they've had, that could land. But, you know, I generally see something more, more programmatic and group focused tends to land a little easier. And then number seven, our last one, is to get your sales strategy and your sales methodology in shape for 2027.
And I mean ensure that you are getting advice and being coached on your strategy, on your business strategy. Now, in my world, that would be joining a program like how I work with coaches inside the Corporate Coach Accelerator. This is absolutely the best time of year to join a program like mine. It doesn't have to be mine.
There are others out there, maybe less focused on executive and leadership space, but there are others out there. Because when you join in November, you are about to dive into the 2027 planning season, which you really don't wanna miss because it gives you, like, a really incredible jumping off point for 2027.
So, you know, You might look at a program like the Accelerator, or you might look at getting a one-on-one coach, or you might have a mentor who can help you to build out your strategy for 2027. The overarching theme is getting support and advice from someone who has done it before to help you build a strategy tailor-made for your business so that when the calendar ticks to 2027, you are ready to fly.
Okay, so there you have seven strategies that you can put in place in the last two months of 2027 that will generate opportunities that will bear fruit in 2027. I just said in the last two months of 2027. Obviously, I meant in the last two months of 2026 that will generate real opportunities, sow seeds that will bear real fruit in 2027.
And just a reminder, I would love to have you join me at my boot camp coming up soon. Please head over to elliescarf.com/bootcamp. and I will see you there.
