Ever wondered why some coaches can charge high fees for their services and still have an endless flow of clients who want to work with them?

The trick lies in creating your own signature coaching program.

And to do that, you need to specialize. The more niched down you are as a coach, the more you’ll attract the exact clientele your business needs.

Here’s how you can create your own unique, signature coaching program.

What is a Signature Coaching Program?

A signature program is a reusable system or framework that you can use to coach clients with over and over again, to attain a specific goal.

In a signature coaching program, there is no need to plan your clients’ journeys from scratch, since that work has already been done during the design of the program itself. Your clients choose to purchase your program because they want the end result you’re promising, not because they have a vague idea of how you can help them.

A signature program can stem from several places. Maybe you have decades of experience in coaching and have discovered something that all your clients have in common, that you believe could be mapped into a framework.

Or maybe you’ve experienced something specific in your own life that gives you particular expertise, and that you think your clients could benefit from following in your footsteps.

Another way to define a signature coaching program is your unique way of solving a specific problem. 

Why Should You Have a Signature Coaching Program?

The best part about creating and launching your own signature coaching program? There is no competition out there for this particular framework.

Other coaches may have their own signature programs, but they are designed in different ways and don’t solve the same problems using the same method.

The most unique thing about your signature program is you. Even if other coaches try to copy what you do (which probably means you’re doing something right), they’ll never be you, and they’ll never have the life experience and professional journey it took you to develop your program.

Signature programs are also perfect for attracting your dream clients. You define what type of problem you want to solve – and how you want to solve that problem – so potential clients who hear about your program will know exactly what they’re getting into.

If your framework resonates with them, its specificity will help them make a clearer decision. If it doesn’t, then they weren’t your dream client to begin with.

As a result, you’ll avoid working with clients who don’t know what they want or clients whom you don’t enjoy working with.

Plus, signature programs help you organize the way you coach and deliver results much faster, which can not only allow you the time to help your clients on a deeper level but also generate more income as you’re able to take on more clients in the same amount of time.

Since a signature coaching program is a process in itself, it allows you to organize your business better and run it more smoothly. Hello, productivity!

Finally, a coaching program can help you establish credibility as a leader. As the creator of a Signature Program, you show that you’re serious about getting your clients where they need to be.

9 Steps for Creating Your Signature Program

Here’s the good news: you don’t need to take years to develop a signature program, as long as you have something unique to offer and you’re dedicated to helping your clients succeed. Let’s look at how it’s built up.

1. Survey Your Ideal Clients

Do you want to design a signature program that attracts the right clients? Then it’s time to dig into their psyche and understand:

• How they think,
• What they’re going through,
• What obstacles they’re struggling with,
• And what they ultimately want to achieve.

The best way to do this is to survey real people. Interview volunteers who match your target audience profile one-on-one. This allows you to ask follow-up questions and dive deeper into certain topics to uncover insights.

The people you survey don’t have to be your past or existing clients. They can be anyone as long as they’re the type of people you see yourself working with in the future.

You can ask your personal network to refer people to you who match your ideal client profile. You can also post a shout-out on social media to find volunteers for your interview.

To incentivize people for their time, you can offer one of your courses or coaching materials for free. If you really want to invest time in this process, you can also offer a short coaching session in exchange. Who knows, if they enjoy your coaching style, they may become your first signature program clients.

2. Define the Results for Your Ideal Clients

Once you understand what your ideal clients are struggling with and what they want, you’ll be able to nail down the specific outcome they’re looking for.

Not everyone you survey will necessarily want the exact same results, but you can still narrow it down enough to define a clear trajectory for your coaching program.

Starting with your dream clients and their desired outcome in mind is key to designing a signature coaching program that creates big results. This way, you’ll be able to reverse-engineer your framework from the core problems and desires they come to you with.

3. Design a Framework That Gives Your Clients Result

This is where the reverse engineering starts. Look at the common themes in your survey answers and identify the coaching strategies that would be most effective to get your clients to their desired objectives.

List the techniques, exercises, tools, or approaches in your arsenal that align with your clients’ preferences and learning styles. If you feel that there are gaps in your coaching toolkit, you can consider taking specialized coaching training to bring new methodologies into your practice.

If your signature program is inspired by your personal journey, you can also consider asking yourself:

• What did I have to learn to get where I am now? How did I learn it?
• What was the most difficult thing to get through, that didn’t seem obvious to you back then? What helped me overcome it?
• What tools were the most powerful in my growth journey?

Expand your research beyond the coaching tools you’re already using to pack even more value into your new signature package.

4. Test Your Process

The next step is to see how your framework plays out in practice. You can offer free coaching sessions to no more than a few people (ideally from the study group you surveyed) to see how your process performs.

This doesn’t mean you have to conduct an entire coaching program for free, but you can test certain aspects of your program and gather feedback.

Would your potential clients pay to go through your process? If the answer is no, you either need to:

• Revise the framework to make it more aligned with your clients needs,
• Clarify the way you present the program itself,
• Add in new coaching tools that support your clients,
• Or remove certain steps in your process to make it more optimized to your key outcomes.

Once your revisions are done (if at all necessary), you should have a complete step-by-step plan to take your dream clients from where they are to where they want to be.

5. Decide on the Duration of the Coaching Program

If your coaching program is too short, your client won’t have enough time to go through the growth process. If it’s too long, they may lose momentum, and you may spread yourself too thin as their coach.

Find the ideal length and duration that supports the framework you came up with. This will also be key to selling your package and tell your potential clients what it includes. For example:

• A certain number of one-on-one or group coaching sessions
• Additional courses or materials
• Chat support or other forms of accountability and check-ins

If you know other coaches with signature programs that resemble yours, you can model the duration they’re working with — or use one of our free templates to build a strong package. 

You can modify this later once your first few clients or cohorts have gone through your framework and given you feedback.

6. Give it a Cathy Name

The name of your signature coaching program is key because it will influence your new clients’ decision on whether or not they want to go through it with you.

The name should be specific and descriptive while still remaining as concise as possible. Here are few signature program name ideas as examples:

• Empowerment Mastery for Women Leaders
• Mindful Momentum: Stress Management and Resilience Coaching for CEOs
• Peak Performance Blueprint for High-Achievers
• Soulful Balance for Urban Moms
• Radiant Relationships Intensive
• Holistic Wellness for Retirees
• The Financial Freedom Formula for Wealth Building
• Creative Confidence Catalyst for Artists
• Family Dynamics 101 for New Parents

If you’re stuck with this, consider getting help from a copywriter to come up with name variations for your specific program.

7. Create a Sales Page

Now you know what you want to help your ideal clients achieve and how you’ll get them there. It’s time to write a sales page that reflects that.

Here are a few topics you can cover on your page:

• Capture the main promise of your program in a short tagline
• Paint the picture of what your ideal clients are struggling with
• Explain how they may have been disappointed in the past by other solutions
• Introduce your program and how it’s different from other similar coaching programs
• Break down how your program works and the outcomes it leads to
• Tackle objections by providing an FAQ section
• Illustrate how their lives could be, with your program compared to without it

You don’t have to make your sales page perfect for the first time. You can refine it along the way, especially once you test out your signature program and get feedback.

8. Create Content

It’s time to lay out the written and recorded materials you want to use as a part of your signature program.

This may include:

• Workbooks with a set of exercises
• Guided meditation recordings
• Case studies or success stories
• Recommended reading and additional resources
• Assessments
• Pre-recorded video lectures
• The slides and notes you want to present in your videos — or send over for self-study

The goal is to be fully prepared once you hop on a video call with your first client. Going through it might require more energy from you than usual, so it’s best to have everything at hand before you launch.

9. Market Your Signature Program

It’s finally time to share your signature coaching program with the world! Marketing your program is just as important as designing the framework for it.

There are various approaches you can take to market your signature program. Here are a few examples:

• Run a launch period, during which you offer extra bonuses or a beta pricing model
• Create an email sequence to send out to your subscribers
• Use social media to educate your audience about your process and direct them to book a call with you or check out your sales page
• Run ads once you’ve proven a level of interest in your program
• Book podcast interviews where you can discuss your framework

You should aim for both long-term (podcast interviews, for instance) and short-term (sales email sequences) marketing strategies to ensure the longevity of your program.

Help Your Clients Succeed While You Grow Your Coaching Business

With your own signature coaching program, you’ll know exactly how you can help your ideal clients succeed – and you’ll have a repeatable process you can use over and over again.

Establishing core processes like signature programs and a streamlined booking system can help you build a sustainable business that serves you instead of draining you.

Try Paperbell, the all-in-one client management platform that handles your contracts, schedule, payments, and so on in one neat place.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2023 and has since been updated for accuracy.