Just Between Coaches – Episode 157
Why Clients Leave—And How to Make Them Stay (Shana Lynn)
Shana Lynn: Look at your onboarding, making sure that you’re doing a good job of getting members activated and then going back to finding am I attracting the right person? When I see a really, you know, low retention rate, I start to question whether the marketing and the delivery are in alignment.
Melinda Cohan: Do you struggle turning clients into fans? What if retaining clients wasn’t just about providing good service, but creating a community so compelling they never wanted to leave? Today we’re diving into the art of client retention. What keeps people coming back and how you can cultivate that loyalty in your own coaching business. I’m Melinda Cohan and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experience, experienced coach.
So how can community driven strategies take your retention to the next level? What systems and personal touches make a lasting impact? Let’s explore those questions with someone who has built a career helping businesses retain customers in meaningful ways. I’ve invited Shana Lynn to the show for this conversation and she is an expert retention strategies in helping subscription companies build loyal communities with her system based approach. She also hosts the Community Creators Podcast where she shares practical tips and insights for creating irresistible communities. Welcome, Shana.
Shana: Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.
Melinda: I am so excited to have you on the show and talk about this. And before we get too far into specifics, would you mind sharing just a little bit of how you became so passionate about client retention?
Shana: Yeah. So I started in marketing back in the day, working in corporate marketing, bringing people who had traditional marketing into the online space. And one of the things that came to be true is that we needed to build communities. And what I realized is that in building those communities online, we were able to retain our customers a lot better. And so over time, I really was able to get into the online coaching and consultant and membership and course space. And I worked with Stu McLaren, who you and I both know really well for three years, is his director of community, really helping build strong communities, community teams and retention systems for his memberships, for his course, for his mastermind, and then of teaching in person workshops to train community teams for other leaders to do the same.
When COVID shut that down, ultimately I was like, well, I need to do for myself what I’ve been teaching others to do. So now I have a community training course and I have a retention program and work specifically with people who want to keep their customers longer so that they can get more profit in their business.
Melinda: I love it. I love it. I love that we had a chance to interact and work together a little bit and that we’re getting to have this conversation. And one of the things that I’ve heard in the industry, clients come for the content and the strategies, but stay for the community. I don’t even know for how many years I’ve heard that is. Does that still ring true today?
Shana: It rings true to a point. So. So yes, people do come for the content. That’s what you put on the sales page. That’s what really gets people to pull out their credit card and they will stay for the community. Relationships are a big part of my retention accelerator framework. But without results, without progress, people won’t stay. So I think it’ll keep them around a little bit longer if there’s a strong community element. But eventually, if people aren’t making progress and aren’t getting a result, they’re not going to stay. That’s why community is a big part of what I teach and what I do, but expands beyond that because community alone isn’t going to keep people around.
Melinda: That is so important. One of the things that I witness, especially newer coaches, and I don’t just mean newer in their business, maybe they’ve been doing one on one coaching, let’s say, and they’re moving to a group model or you know, like you talked about the membership model or online courses and they put on the hat of coach or trainer or teacher and they’re like, oh my gosh, I want to share all of this material. When they get this material, they’re just going to love it. And they think about it from the coach’s perspective, but not the student’s perspective.
And a lot of times, that’s overlooked. What is the experience that needs to be had for people to get results? What do they need to engage with for the students to go on the trajectory and get the results? Bottom line, whether it’s content, community or other strategies, we have to make sure that our students and clients are getting results. And not just at the end, but another thing is making progress along the way. Let’s talk about that for a second. Talk about the importance of making progress.
Shana: Yeah. So we as humans, we want to see progress happen. One of the big things is we fail to recognize it ourselves. A big part of my framework is recognition, spotlighting progress. Whether you’re working with somebody privately as a coach, whether you’re working with somebody in a group setting, the biggest thing that we need to do is constantly be revisiting the progress that they’re making because we really don’t see that for ourselves. You know, especially if you’re in a coaching environment, your clients are often so focused on the muck and the mire that they are in right now that they don’t see how far they’ve come.
So making sure that we have a way to really guide people on a path towards progress, but also having these pauses where we recognize the progress that people are making along the way. Because if we only focus on the end result, if we only share success stories of the end result, it’s not going to feel achievable. You know, all of the studies that I’ve done on habits have all shown it’s those little micro improvements that are the things that keep us the stickiest. When we do small changes and small things every day, we begin to see progress over time, but without actually recognizing that progress, we feel like we’re failing. I’m sure many coaches can relate.
If you’ve ever had somebody you’re trying to renew, maybe you have a quarterly contract or a yearly contract or whatever, they can’t speak to their own progress. They’re on the call saying, well, I just feel like I’m still struggling with this and I don’t know that I’ve really made any progress. And you wanna scream through the screen, you’re like, no, just think about where you were. The onus is really on us as leaders to not only make sure they’re making progress, but also to make sure that we are recognizing that progress in them and stay spotlighting it for them.
Melinda: So many coaches forget retention. We forget supporting the client if we’re not careful. It’s like you’re on your own. We have to put equal attention on all aspects of the customer journey. How they came into us, how they start with us, the progress that they make along the way, the results they get, how they keep going or get off boarded. And so that part of it often gets overlooked. Why do you think that gets overlooked?
Shana: Because everybody tells you to focus on marketing and you feel like marketing is the thing that’s going to grow your business. And in some ways it is. Marketing and acquisition is really important. But what makes your business sustainable and profitable is retention. Because the longer we keep a client, the longer we keep a member, then the higher lifetime value we get from every single person that we bring into the business. So, you know, if I go from my average client bringing in, you know, $500, let’s say, to my average client bringing in $1500, that actually has a huge impact on my ability to market. I’m able to invest more in marketing, so I can increase my client acquisition rather easily if I just do a better job at keeping my clients. And that’s the data.
A lot of people don’t like the math and like the numbers. I’m a total data nerd. So I love showing people that if you just did a, you know, a 50% job at keeping the clients that you had, not only would you be way more profitable in your business, but you would also have more money to invest in marketing strategies that maybe even are a little easier for you. Maybe you haven’t been investing in ads because you’re not making enough to do so, but hey, now we’ve increased our profit margin so much, we can actually turn around and invest in ads, which may make acquisition easier. So I, I think a lot of it comes with what’s being taught in the industry, but I think a big part of it is we just don’t know our numbers well enough to see that one of these is really having a big impact on bottom line profit and our ability to acquire new customers.
Melinda: Now if a coach is just starting out or they’re trying to grow to that next level wherever they are in their business and they want to focus on retention, they’re like, okay, that makes sense, let’s do this. Where’s the best place to begin? Is it with community? Is it with looking at the student or client experience and the progress they’re making? Where do they begin?
Shana: The first thing I would want them to do is to identify their best client. And this is the thing I think a lot of people miss is when we look at our clients that are getting results and sticking around for the longest, we learn a lot that should impact our marketing. It should impact who we are trying to attract. And I know a lot of coaches struggle with niching down right? They want to serve everybody. But chances are that some clients of yours just seem to get more results and seem to stick with you for longer and you seem to enjoy working with better. Those are the clients that you want to start trying to attract because then naturally you’re attracting people that are going to stick around longer.
And then when we’re talking about the actual member journey part, you a hundred percent want to start with onboarding. Onboarding is what is going to set a client up for success. This is where you really make sure that you’re clear on your culture, you have within your coaching, your systems and processes, the identity that you’re helping them form. All of that starts being sold to them, if you will, in the onboarding. I always say, like, you never stop selling. And it’s because selling is simply getting people to buy into a belief or an action. And so when we start onboarding, it’s not just like, here’s where you’re going to find your replays, here’s where you’re going to find your zoom link or your files. Yes, those things are important.
But more importantly, we’re setting the stage for success for them. We’re setting the stage for them to adopt a new identity, to fall in line with the culture that you’ve created and with the system that you’ve created inside of your coaching system. Whether you’re doing private coaching, you should still have a system to onboard people, a system to check in, a system to retain and renew. So for me, when somebody completes our onboarding, we want them to be believing three things. First, I’m in the right place, and this is to help overcome that buyer’s remorse. To get them to buy into your coaching or your program, you need to repeat to them, you’re speaking to problem solution again, you’re reminding them this is the right program for them.
The next step is to make sure they believe this is possible for me, not just this is possible. You’re setting up for them like, hey, you’re going to encounter these challenges and you’re equipping them already with how to overcome them. They start to go like, oh, like, I can do that, I can do that reframe. So maybe this is possible for me. This is possible for me is really important. And then finally, I know my best next step. I know my best next step. This is where I use that belief to really help business owners tone back their onboarding. Often we think we have to explain every aspect of our program, give every link to every resource. Our goal is to help identify their best next step. So they know after onboarding what, what do I do from here? And that’s part of that progress journey. Always making sure they know their best next step.
Melinda: I love it. And it is that simple and it is that important. And it can’t be something that’s overlooked because this is what, as you said earlier, it lays the foundation of that retention. Now, you mentioned systems. I’m a systems gal. I know you’re big on systems. We geek out like that together. And so to make retention easier, can you share a system you love that keeps things simple but still feels personal for the clients and their experience that they’re having?
Shana: Yeah, you know, I love the book Unreasonable Hospitality, where he basically talks about the 95/5 rule, which is systemize 95% of the delivery so that you can wow them the other 5%. And that’s really what my whole business is based on is what we call member journey mapping. But just like people put a lot of attention on customer journey mapping of okay, I’m going to give them this lead magnet and then they’re going to get these emails and then I’m going to offer them this call or an application or whatever it might be. We use the same sort of member journey map system inside of our programs, which basically walks people through onboarding, all the way through member activation.
Like are they active in here in this program or do we need to do some extra reach out for them all the way through upgrades and renewals and cancellations. Like having all of those touch points mapped out and having email automations around those allows you to really spend time getting to know your client doing the extra touch points. Like I love a good handwritten note in the mail so we can add those things when the core system is built out. And the most simple one that you can build in any system that you want is what I call the stoplight strategy. But it’s just a way to identify green, yellow and red clients or members.
So making sure that we know what’s a green client, who’s somebody who’s making progress, they’re, you know, doing the things inside of our program, they’re showing up for calls, they’re submitting their work, whatever it might be that we want them to do. How do we know that somebody’s green and they’re moving forward in a healthy way? And then how are we going to celebrate them? And then yellow is when do we need to kind of raise a flag because somebody maybe has missed a couple calls or maybe they’ve stopped logging into the portal. And then how do we bring those people back before they’re too far gone and they’re canceling or not renewing?
And then we have red which do when somebody goes to cancel or when completely stop showing up and fall off the face of the earth or you know, they’re not wanting to renew. And how do we make sure that even if they cancel, even if they don’t renew, they’re leaving with such a good feeling about us that they have a desire to come back in the future or at least refer other people to us. So that, that stoplight system, if you can just think about those three things, how to identify my Green, yellow and red. And what action am I going to take? Do it without systems at first, and then once you figure out what works, then you can work it into a system.
Melinda: I love that. It reminds me of something we talked about a bit ago. You started out, the way to begin is to identify your best clients. And that can be forward looking and it can also be backward looking. I had this experience, I had been coaching in our program and we had several cohorts running with it. And all of a sudden I was noticing, I didn’t call it green, yellow, red, but now I can see where that would fit over. But I was noticing there were these certain clients and I was like, wow, Bob, he’s been in that program, he’s done this program. Wow, I want more Bobs. How do I get more Bobs in my world?
And so then we looked backwards to all of the people that had been taking our program. Right. A lot of coaches think in order to identify my best client, they have to think forward. Who do I want to work with? What is it going to be like? But for all those established coaches out there, look at who has been signing up, take that green, yellow, red, stoplight approach and find the Bobs in the world.
Shana: Yeah, I know that exercise has been very helpful for me because one of the things I realized is that working with coaches who have memberships, those are always my best clients because they get the importance of human connection, they get the importance of helping people progress and they’re always willing to do those extra touches and put an emphasis on the community which that community aspect of like, cause, culture, communication, connection. My framework around that is so important to the retention piece. And coaches just seem to have a different mindset around community and personal touches.
And so when I can work with them to really make sure we have the systems in place, that they’re more than willing to do those extra touches, which a lot of people are, you know, they’re trying to just build a membership or build a business that they can be as uninvolved in as possible. They just want to create content and be done. Coaches really care about the people that they’re serving. And so just going back to the importance of retention, if somebody really wants to make sure that they’re helping people get the best result, when we invest in these systems, we set people up for the best opportunity for success.
We are doing our clients a disservice when we don’t make sure we spend just as much time on that client journey or that member journey as we do on that marketing journey or customer journey in the very beginning, to get them in, we need to give just as much attention to making sure we’ve created this really great progress program for them, if you will, so that they can get the best result.
Melinda: We’ve talked about this word a lot, connection. This was at the top of my notes. I wanted to make sure that we dove in today. It feels like in these years following the pandemic, each year we go, connection is more and more important. Like I find myself using the word. It’s vital having that connection. It seems like today that connection is more important. Can you talk to the evolution of the role of connection as it relates to our businesses and the programs, packages, offers that we’re providing our clients?
Shana: You know, if it’s one gift that the pandemic gave us, it was that realization that we need people human to human connection. That need for belonging in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is. It’s foundational for us. But I think we’re also entering another era where that human to human connection is going to become even more important because of AI. I think there’s going to be a lot of good things that come from that. But I think one of the opportunities that we’re going to have is as businesses start to use AI in so many different aspects, when we actually show up for people and we are authentic and we have integrity in how we show up, we’re going to create a safety that blooms beautiful connection.
And when I think about what connection makes possible, it really touches on all of the elements of my retention framework, the recognition, the results and the relationships. So we can build that connection with them just by seeing and recognizing their progress. We can build that connection with them by connecting them with others who are on a similar journey as well, or even members of our team. That reciprocal relationship with our team members can be really important and also just making sure that we are creating a personalized journey for them. So that’s where something like AI can really help us.
I don’t want to dog it completely because I think we have to ask ourselves the question of what is the opportunity it’s creating for me and the opportunity it’s creating for us is to have better systems to operationalize so much of what we do so that we can really create personalized experiences for our clients and customers and have a deeper connection with them by being more present, by recognizing their progress more, by understanding them better, and by doing a better job of helping them build relationships with other people who are on a similar journey.
Melinda: Now let’s talk about retention. What are the expectations that somebody should have about retention rates? There are some folks that you can listen to and they’re like, you should have a hundred percent completion rate of all your programs, courses, offers, everything. Like everybody should be completing it all. There are some that, you know, they say, like, well, you know, it just depends on if they show up or not. Or there’s this wide spectrum. What’s a good expectation to have around retention rates?
Shana: Yeah, I always encourage people not to look at benchmarks because your clientele can be very different from somebody else’s. And the purpose of your program or the structure of your program may be very different as well. If you have a busy executive or if you have a, a working mom who’s doing this on the side, your retention rate, your completion rate is going to look very different than if you’re focused on people who are already full time entrepreneurs who have a lot of skin in the game to make sure that they’re seeing success.
So that’s why tracking your own data is so important, because you’re benchmarking against yourself. If you’re at 80% retention right now, you’re, you’re probably going to really struggle to grow. You’re going to hit what’s called, called a growth ceiling. It’s a basic math term that basically means for the amount of people you’re getting in and the amount of people you’re losing, you’re just gonna maintain and you can’t grow past it. Right, Basic math. So what we can discover with a growth ceiling is that you have to do one of two things. You either have to acquire a lot more people faster or you have to stop losing as many people, or the beautiful combination of both.
So when we know our own numbers, we can, can see when we have plateaued. Now I need to get my retention rate up to let’s say 90% or you know, 95%, which would be a really amazing retention rate. So a lot of that is in the data. Just looking at your own data, making incremental improvements, identifying with that red, yellow, green system, you’re going to be able to identify where people are falling off, where your biggest opportunity is for improvement inside of your program, which is going to help with that incremental increase of retention. So that’s really what I am looking for, is for you to understand your own numbers enough to know what your retention rate needs to be based on, you know, how many members you can get on a monthly basis or during your launches or whatever. It might be. Or how long it takes you to get new clients.
Melinda: I love that. Now if we have some listeners and they’re like, oh my gosh, she just said 80% and they just ran their numbers and they’re sitting at like 60% or 50%, whatever their numbers are, and they’re like, oh my goodness, where’s the first place they need to look to help boost that?
Shana: Yeah. So the first thing you want to look at is onboarding, 100%. We’ve talked about this a lot, so I won’t go into detail. But look at your onboarding. Making sure that you’re doing a good job of getting members activated and then going back to finding am I attracting the right person? When I see a really, you know, low retention rate, I start to question whether the marketing and the delivery are in alignment. A lot of times you find people who are really, really good at marketing, they’re really good at selling people on a program, but they can over promise and under deliver. And over promising and under delivering is the curse of any program. It’s going to crash your retention, increase your turn significantly.
So we want to make sure that our marketing and our delivery is really balanced so that we are under promising and over delivering. We’re promising enough to get people to understand the purpose of the program and convert into clients and customers, but we’re not promising the moon so that we can’t deliver. We’re leaving room for surprise and delight. Because otherwise you’re, you’re toeing that line of over promising and under delivering, which is going to lead to a high churn rate. So those are the two things that I really focus on.
And then just making sure that, you know, if you are noticing a big churn problem, that you’re doing exit interviews, if you’re working one on one with people, that you’re making sure that you’re having a conversation with every person who’s leaving to figure out how you could better serve them. And if you have a larger scale membership, then you want to make sure that in that exit process, not after they’ve canceled and disappeared, but actually in the process of canceling, you’re asking them why it is that they’re leaving. Because you can get so much insight from that to help you improve your program.
Melinda: I love that. That might be my favorite thing so far. Promise enough to get the conversion. Leave room for surprise and delight. Making sure your marketing and delivery are in alignment. So many people, they look at each of those things in this vacuum. Okay, let me figure out my ,arketing, let me go get the clients now. Let me figure out how to make this happen. The two have got to be working together. I absolutely love that. How do you keep clients engaged and excited past that initial enthusiasm period? How do you keep them engaged and excited for the long haul?
Shana: I love this question because I always tell people the reason onboarding is so important is because you’re capitalizing on motivation while you have it. And I love studying motivation theory and totally nerd out on those sorts of things. So I teach something called the progress wheel, which is essentially just making sure that we are spotlighting people’s progress along the way, but also that we’re always pointing them back to their cause, to their purpose, why are they here? And to me, a lot of people go to extrinsic motivation, giving them some type of gamification or reward to take action or to stay engaged.
But every study shows that over time, if you continually try to get people to take action or stay motivated with an extrinsic motivation, the internal motivation ultimately wanes and they stop showing up just to show up. So I would much rather leverage the skills that you use to get them in in the beginning. That marketing sales copy is so good about identifying the problem, helping them see what’s possible for them, connecting to that purpose, to that result that they want to achieve. But for some reason, we always let that go out the window once we get somebody on board in our program. But when you have the mindset of I need to always be marketing, then you start asking yourself the question of how can I use the same language, the same motivation, the same, you know, dream that I cast in my marketing? How can I use that throughout their journey to keep them motivated, to keep them connected to that pulse point of whatever that promise is, whatever that hope is that they have for themselves, calling out the challenges, making the COVID over of these are the things you’re going to face.
You’re not a special unicorn for facing them. Normalizing falling off the wagon so that you can normalize getting back on the wagon. That way, when they get that message from you because they’re yellow and they, you know, you kind of haven’t seen them for a little bit or whatever it might be, that message is not a message of shame. It’s not a message of where have you been? It’s a message of everybody falls off at some point. Everybody gets distracted. But what is the difference maker is what you do when you recognize that you’ve fallen off the path or you stop pursuing that dream, or you start stopped working towards health.
And if you want to know what successful people do, it’s this. They do this one thing. They log in and watch one video. They show up to one call. They do this one habit, whatever it might be. So you give them a tiny little baby step towards success. Because that motivation and those actions need to be tied together. I can have the trigger of taking an action, but if I’m not motivated to take it, I’m not going to do it. So we have to be thinking, what are they motivated by? It’s probably the same thing that sold them in, in the beginning. So get that motivating messaging around there. Make sure that you’re giving them that trigger, that email, that reminder to step back in, and then make sure that action is very doable and very simple so that we can get that progress wheel turning again and get them back into motion.
Melinda: Now, let’s talk about community a little bit more. You know, you’ve worked with a lot of businesses that have built these incredible can’t leave, won’t leave, never leave communities. I want to talk about this because when I’m working with coaches and they are creating their first community or building out their course, and like, I’m going to have a community with it. What a lot of them mean is, oh, I’ve created a Facebook group and they’ll ask to join, and now I’ve got a community. And I’m like, no, no, you have a shell. You do not have a community. What does it actually mean to have a community? Like, how can it happen? What’s really involved? If I’m going to say I’m going to have a community that goes along with my program or my package or my membership.
Shana: Well, the platform is typically the last thing I recommend people choose, and usually it is Facebook, because people just default to that, which is totally fine. But it’s the thing that matters the least. What really matters is the strategy behind it. So I have four Cs of community that I teach, and the first one is cause. And that’s really something that should be coming from your program, but making sure we have a clear purpose, a clear path to progress. Right? So why does this community exist? And specifically for the community, how is the community going to support them in getting better results? We’ve got to be really clear on why we’re creating this. Not just to check a box, because somebody said community will make people stay longer. Right?
Then when we look at culture, we’re defining the beliefs, the behaviors, and the boundaries that we Expect within our community and within our client base. And what this does is it sets your environment apart from everybody else’s, but it also creates guardrails to really run on within that community. And it helps create safety. And then when we think about the communication part, it’s beyond just the group. How are we communicating, speaking to hearing from our community, which is so important, and also helping them engage with each other, which does not have to be in a Facebook group or any other platform. It could be Zoom calls.
Zoom has a beautiful feature called Breakout Rooms, which I use with a lot of my clients, where we allow students to go deeper with each other on the topics that they’re working through so that they can build those connections. And that’s really a way to create a lot of stickiness. And then finally, that connection piece, there’s so many spaces where community and connection can happen, but without those key foundations of cause and culture, you’re really going to find yourself with a mess on your hands because you’re not going to be effectively leading the community.
And if you aren’t leading it, somebody else will. A leader will always arise. And then you may have a community, but you don’t want to participate in it. You don’t love the culture of it. You don’t love what’s happening in that community because you just created a shell. And then, you know, let the clients figure it out on their own. So we want to be way more intentional from the beginning about how we design this community to support clients in getting results.
Melinda: Now when we look at bigger groups or programs, maybe, you know, established coaches, they’ve been doing this a while, and they’re bringing in hundreds of people when they enroll in their course or in their membership. And so in these bigger group programs or these bigger communities, it can be kind of hard to make sure everybody feels seen, they feel special. We engage them. How can coaches make their clients or students or members feel seen and valued? No matter what the size is? How does that work?
Shana: I always love this question because one of my longest clients is somebody who has 12,000 members. And because they care about this kind of thing, they have invested in it. And so when we talk about the community piece with them, there’s a couple things that they do that helps people feel seen. I recommend having onboarding calls, live onboarding calls to support people. And in the beginning, those calls need to be large group format, right? But as you grow, your business grows, and maybe even your team of coaches grows, you can make those more smaller group formats so they actually offer within the first 90 days, a small group call with a coach, three of them over a 90 day period so that people can really feel seen and supported.
They can get their best next steps for what to do to get success inside of the program. They invested in a coach that is essentially the member coach whose job is really just to get people onboarded, to support people when they have a question to ask, reach out to those yellow people to identify amazing conversations in the community that they need to step into. So that’s one thing that you can do. Another thing that you can do is to call out those people in the community who, who maybe don’t engage. So we’ll often do a post inside of a Facebook group or whatever platform that says this post is for the lurkers or this post is for those of you in the shadows. We want to hear from you. We know you typically don’t engage in this. We just want a quick one pulse check, how are you doing and what’s one way that we can support you right now?
And then you or your coach or your community manager is in those comments helping people because they will show up, they will share when you call them out and give them a specific space for them to feel heard. The biggest thing I have found is that some people, even though they don’t need it, they need an invitation. They need explicit permission to post in the community, explicit permission to speak on a call. And so if we make sure that in our onboarding process and for our community, we encourage and invite everybody to introduce themselves.
We constantly throughout the weeks have posts that are calling out different people. We get to know our community so we can tag them in the comments. We have other coaches or other community managers who are supporting us in doing this. And we have this mindset of really making sure that people don’t just know the community is there, but that they feel invited to participate in the community, it will change the game and how members who typically don’t show up show up, especially in those larger communities.
Melinda: Love it, love it, love it. Let’s summarize some of the nuggets that we have covered so far in this conversation. I love that you had us begin when we’re focusing on retention. Make sure you’re identifying your best client. Make sure you’re bringing in the right people. Otherwise it’s not going to matter what you do if you got the wrong people in there. And we talked about onboarding and just the importance for that. We talked about some of the systems and I loved how you brought in the thing from unreasonable hospitality systematize 90% of the delivery so you can wow them 5% of the time.
Like leaving that space for surprise and delight is a big important part of them maintaining progress, picking up momentum and getting results. We had a great conversation about the connection and what we can do to help foster and facilitate that connection within the community. Because that is why we have the community. And it’s about that connection piece. We talked about the expected retention rates and how we can’t compare to ourselves to other people. I do that all the time. I’m comparing, but make sure you’re back benchmarking against yourself. I really loved that. And the balance of marketing and delivery, are they in alignment? And you talked about your progress wheel and the four Cs of community. Shana, what haven’t I asked you about that you think would be really valuable for our audience to know about retention?
Shana: I think the biggest thing is for those who are brand new, sitting here hearing all this and they feel so overwhelmed, they’re like, where do I even start? I don’t really know what to do. All I want you to do is talk to your clients. So schedule a call with, you know, the handful of clients that you have, that’s a separate call, not their coaching call. That just says, I just want to check in with you and I just want to see how things are going because I’m always looking to improve the program. Schedule a call, get their permission to record the call and ask them questions.
What are you loving about the program? How are you feeling about the progress you’re making? What do you think is helping you make the most progress? If I could add one thing to this to help you make more progress, what do you think that would be? Have those conversations. Because in the early days, you have the gift of a small community so you can have those conversations. Don’t be focused on systemizing. Don’t go, oh gosh, what’s my posting schedule in my Facebook group? Don’t worry about all of that. Your Facebook group’s gonna be quiet in the early days. But have as many one on one conversations with clients as you have because that insight is absolute gold as you work towards building better retention systems.
Melinda: Beautiful. Thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches. A giant thank you to Shana Lynn for sharing her incredible insights with us. You can find out more about her at shanalynn.com. That’s Shana S H A N A Lynn L Y N N. Also check out her free resources in on her website, specifically Retention Roadmap. You’ll find links to her website, her podcas, Community Creators Podcast, and the resource in the show notes. Shana, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Shana: Thank you for having me.
Melinda: Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM Podcast network, which also features shows like Making it and Neuroscience of Coaching. If today’s episode episode sparked ideas about client retention, leave us a review or share your biggest takeaway on YouTube or your favorite podcast player. We’d love to hear from you. I’m Melinda Cohan. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.