At the end of the day, WordPress clients come to you for the purposes of goal attainment. You are the expert and so they reach out to you in order to get the best results on their path to success. But have you ever considered what is the best way to provide WordPress consulting services to these clients?
You have three options to consider:
- Do-It-Yourself
- One-on-One Consulting
- Group Coaching
Spoiler alert: I’m going to explain why group coaching (or the “done-with-you” method) is the smartest choice of the three.
An Argument in Favour of Group Coaching
Before we dig in, I just want to clarify that I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with giving customers a DIY option or in providing one-on-one consulting. Both are valid and profitable business models and, in fact, would lend themselves well to upsell and cross-sell opportunities for group coaching.
What I want to focus on today, however, is why group coaching is the best option for everyone–not just for you, but for your clients. To do this, I’m going to paint a brief picture of each consulting method to give some context for this verdict.
DIY
The do-it-yourself method refers to the end user doing the work themselves.
To provide this type of indirect coaching, you must first use your skills to create something of value: a theme, plugin, ebook, video tutorial, etc. Customers then buy the product and use it as a guide as they build and maintain their WordPress website.
The benefits of DIY?
- It’s a one-and-done approach.
- It’s a good way to reach a large volume of customers at once.
- It’s low-touch, so aside from initial work spent building the product, there isn’t much of a time investment aside from marketing it.
- You can use this as supplemental income for any WordPress business model.
The drawbacks?
- Price points tend to be low, so you have to sell a lot to be profitable.
- No matter how clear your guidance is, leaving customers to guide themselves through your product can lead to serious issues in WordPress.
- There’s a limit on what you can teach them.
- It's not a good way to build relationships.
One-on-One Consulting
One-on-consulting, or the done-for-you approach, is when you build a website on the client’s behalf.
There are, of course, times when you will interact with the client. This is especially the case at first when you spend time learning about the client’s business and get everything else you need from them to handle the project. However, most of this is done on your own.
The benefits of done-for-you consulting?
- You are fully ingrained in every piece of the project, which means having a greater control over the outcome.
- You can ensure that clients have a top-of-the-line website.
- You can charge a lot more for this kind of consulting.
- The client gets your undivided attention and focus.
The drawbacks?
- The client doesn’t learn anything and will always have to rely on your help to do anything with their site.
- Client accountability is low as they know you can take care of whatever they need.
- This requires a huge time commitment on your part, which can detract from other clients.
- While you can charge a large sum for consulting, the profit margin might be slimmer than expected.
- This model isn’t scalable as it limits how many other clients you can work with.
Group Coaching
Group coaching, or the done-with-you approach, is what I like to refer to as the “sweet spot” of WordPress consulting.
When offering group coaching, both you and your clients get the most out of this partnership as it’s collaborative, educational, supportive, and aimed at helping everyone improve and hit their goals.
The benefits of done-with-you?
- You and your clients work together to achieve their goals. In so doing, they learn a lot more.
- By coaching more than one client simultaneously, everyone has a chance to contribute, ask questions, and address concerns that others might not have considered or were too afraid to broach on their own.
- You can retain more clients and for longer with group coaching as there’s always something new to teach.
- There is a greater degree of accountability as each participating client keeps each other in check.
- You become a valuable resource for clients; not just someone to offload work to or get self-guided material from.
- With a strong framework, you can increase efficiency and productivity on your end.
- This is the easiest type of consulting to scale as you’re not restricted by hours in the day or manpower to grow your business.
- Group coaching is an incredibly lucrative business model.
The drawbacks?
- There aren't any!
Wrap-Up
Obviously, I’m not going to talk about any drawbacks to group coaching. It leads to higher success rates in terms of hitting goals and equipping clients with the tools and knowledge needed to do so now and in the future. And it’s also incredibly rewarding for you as the coach as well as for your clients.
By increasing your own efficiency and keeping clients accountable, you can offer a much better quality of service to each of your WordPress clients.
