Make Your Clients Sell for You
Make Your Clients Sell for You
When you think about growing your coaching business, what comes to mind first? For most people, it is marketing. More ads. More funnels. More leads. It is easy to believe that more marketing is the only way forward. But here is the truth: if you focus only on bringing in new people, you will miss the most powerful growth engine you already have. The clients you are serving right now.
In a recent conversation with referral and retention strategist Olena Vertepa, we explored how retention and referrals create growth that feels natural and sustainable. Instead of burning out by chasing strangers online, Olena shows coaches how to serve their clients so well that they stay longer, renew, and bring others with them.
Why Retention Matters
Olena shared a powerful insight that too many coaches overlook. A small improvement in retention can create huge results. Just a 5 percent increase in retention can lead to 25 to 90 percent revenue growth. That number alone should make every coach pay attention.
Why does this work? Because keeping a client is far less expensive than finding a new one. And the longer they stay with you, the more value they receive. When clients stick with you, you are not waking up each day worried about where the next sale will come from. Instead, you are focused on delivering results and deepening your programs. Retention gives you stability. Stability gives you freedom.
Why Referrals Outperform Ads
Referrals are another overlooked source of growth. Think about the last time you had a great meal at a restaurant. When someone asked for a recommendation, you probably mentioned it without hesitation. Coaching is the same. When clients feel supported and excited, they naturally want to share their experience.
Olena explained that your happiest clients are your best salespeople. They are most likely to refer when they are in moments of high energy. That could be right after they join your program, during onboarding, or when they hit a major milestone. The mistake many coaches make is waiting until the very end to ask. By then, the energy is gone.
Now imagine if every client you served brought one more client to your business. That is not just steady growth. That is momentum.
Start Early
Many coaches think retention and referrals are strategies to focus on later, once their business is bigger. Olena disagrees. You can start building this mindset from day one.
Even if you are just starting out, ask yourself:
What happens when my client finishes this program?
Is there a way to create a natural renewal or continuation?
When is my client most excited, and how can I capture that energy?
This does not mean creating a complicated funnel or building ten new offers. Sometimes it is as simple as setting a new goal with your client. For example, if you are a fitness coach and your client reached their 90-day weight target, the next step could be building strength or running a race. If you are a business coach, it could mean helping a client scale after hitting their first revenue milestone.
The Marketing Trap
Marketing will always matter. You need visibility to reach new people. But if you only rely on marketing, you end up running on what Olena calls the treadmill. Clients come in, but just as many leave. You feel like you are working harder without moving forward.
The truth is, marketing brings people in. Retention and referrals keep them with you and bring their friends along. That is what creates a business that grows without draining you.
A Business That Feels Aligned
One of my favorite parts of this conversation with Olena was the reminder that business can feel good. You do not have to chase sales every day. You do not have to pressure yourself into constant launches. Growth can come from simply doing your best work with the clients you already have.
When you focus on serving deeply, your business grows naturally. Your clients become your community, your advocates, and yes, your best sales team.
How to Start Today
Here are three simple ways to put this into practice right now:
Look for renewal opportunities. Review your current clients. What is the next step in their journey? Can you invite them into that step?
Ask for referrals at the right time. When clients are excited, celebrating, or making progress, ask them who else they know who might want the same results.
Simplify your delivery. Focus on what creates the biggest results. Streamline your process so your clients get maximum value without overwhelm.
As Olena so wisely said, “Your current clients become your next clients, or your current clients become your salespeople.” That is the real growth strategy.
If you want your coaching business to grow with ease, stop chasing new clients as your only path forward. Start building retention and referrals into your strategy. When you do, you will see just how powerful your current clients can be in creating the future you want.
Chapters List
00:00 Introduction to Referrals and Client Relationships
04:17 The Importance of Retention and Referrals
07:41 Strategies for New Coaches
11:21 Streamlining for Success
13:50 Conclusion and Call to Action
Full Transcript
Olena Vertepa (00:00)
If you just rely on your marketing and you serve your clients only once, you are basically running on a treadmill and you always need to add more people and the exact amount
of people just get out of the funnel.
Amanda Kaufman (00:31)
Well, hey, hey, welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And I am joined today with Elena Verteppa. And we met just by total coincidence through Facebook. We had mutual connections and friends and we hit it up in the DMs and got to know each other. And I'm going to tell you guys like a little secret. I totally stalked her profile page.
And I loved what she had to say because Elena is an expert in referral making through basically doing an amazing job with serving your clients and building more of a business that's based in those longer term relationships and connections. So Elena, welcome to the show.
Olena Vertepa (01:14)
Thank you, Amanda, so much for such a warm welcome. And yes, I am absolutely excited to be on the show. And also, I'm thrilled that we met on Facebook. So pretty random. But the best things sometimes happen by random accidents. So I'm really excited to be here.
Amanda Kaufman (01:31)
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. so, Elena, what got you so interested in this question of focusing on referrals specifically? Because you don't see that every day. That's what inspired me to want to invite you over onto the show. Why this?
Olena Vertepa (01:48)
Yeah, yes, well, I'm interested in referrals and retention specifically because they are driven by the product and in, I was always focusing on clients and client results and.
basically by focusing on client results, you make it almost inevitable not to generate referrals or retention. So in my previous life, I used to be a teacher and I was managing a department and my focus was always on the students, right? So what kind of, on the clients, you could say. And yeah, this is just.
such a fulfilling thing to be able to see how they transform, how they learn and how they change a little bit because what you talked about had an impact on them. And also for me personally, I feel like I had to walk a really long road, so I had to change a lot myself. And when I'm looking back,
I feel like I did not see as many opportunities and just my worldview was more limited. So this is my attempt to help others to see how far they can go by transforming themselves.
Amanda Kaufman (03:05)
I love that. That's so good. you know, I think a lot of people, when they hear about coaching and they hear about the possibility of being really successful with a coaching business, they often learn about it from one of two sources. One is going to be the certification program maybe. So if you Google how to become a coach, you're just going to see pages and pages of
certification programs promising you the sun, and stars that you'll be able to finally become a coach. And then the second way is often through really big mega marketers, know, people who have major proficiency in being able to market and razzle dazzle and sell. But I think it leaves a lot of coaches really confused because the truth is, is that you don't, you don't just need the certification.
and you don't just need the marketing and sales. So can you talk to us a little bit about how does one shift their focus to what really and truly matters? Because why focus on the lifetime value? Why focus on referrals if somebody is maybe a relative secret or maybe they are new out of a certification?
Olena Vertepa (04:17)
Yeah, absolutely. And actually, there is so much to unpack in this question. I want to start by saying that I think when we think about any business, it basically consists of two parts. One is marketing and the other is product. And to grow your business at any given time, you can focus on one or the other.
So all the business basically operations and things that you are doing will go into one of these two buckets. And I know a lot of coaches become coaches because they are so great at what they do. They are experts in their area. They want to create their impact and they get into these courses and a lot of them are basically digital marketing courses. And this is true. need to market yourself.
But they very soon see that they reach a certain point where if they do not streamline their program, they will not be able to serve more people and they will drain their energy, which can impact their program. going back to why retention and why referrals. So.
By improving your product or coaching, it would be streamlining it, making it better and making your clients happier, you create a very sustainable growth because you don't need to go and look for new people. Your current clients become your next clients or your current clients become your salespeople basically. Because if you think about last time you went to a restaurant that you liked,
and then one of your friends asked you, oh do you know a good restaurant? You would probably talk about it because you liked it. So the same thing in coaching with referrals. it just, referrals and retention can create big growth. Just 5 % increase in retention can create 25 to 90 % growth in revenue, which is amazing basically.
Yeah, so.
Amanda Kaufman (06:21)
Yeah, that is amazing.
mean, and I know like I was certainly taught early on too, that it was just almost this churn and burn model of, you know, enroll as fast as you can, get as much as you can kind of running through the system. And it never, it never really sat well or felt good. And there's I've been in business long enough to have like my expansion seasons, contraction seasons and kind of like gone through a lot.
But what I will echo and just say is that the more money I made, was really just by doing a very, very good job with the clients that I had. then, you know, when I went through an expansion and then back into a contraction in the size of the business, like the size of the team, the amount of advertising we were doing, just all the things. And the thing that we brought to the forefront was like,
What is that client experience? Are they feeling like, and when I think about it, that actually translates all the way into the marketing, right? Because if you know what's good for your client and you know what beliefs they're running into, you know what challenges they're running into, you can actually take that forward into the marketing and give people an authentic taste of what it is like to be with you. And then the people that continue to move through the system.
It's like this really coherent experience. What would you say to somebody who's maybe starting and they're earlier on in their business, they're not necessarily in this wild expansion and like feeling like the wheels are going to roll off. Maybe they're just starting out and they want to do a really good job to begin with. What would you say are the first three things that they should really focus on?
Olena Vertepa (07:53)
there.
yeah, absolutely. And I think retention and referrals is something you can think early on. And a lot of coaches did grow in the beginning also through referrals. So yeah, I just want to add also to what you said earlier. If you just rely on your marketing and you serve your clients only once, this you, you, you are basically running on a treadmill and you always need to add more people and the exact amount
of people just get out of the funnel.
And for some coaches, this could be as simple as just sitting down for 30 minutes and thinking, okay, my, client is going to graduate in one month. What can I offer them to solve their next problem? It doesn't have to be another offer. Sometimes it can just be a renewal. Maybe, let's say you're a fitness coach and they hit
the weight goal they had for 90 days, well now they can set a new goal. So this would be a renewal. Yeah, so I would say this, so thinking about what's next for your clients. This is about retention. In terms of referrals,
Amanda Kaufman (09:02)
Yeah.
Olena Vertepa (09:11)
A lot of coaches do not ask for referrals. So this happens a lot. And the best time to ask for referrals is whenever they are at their peak. So whenever they are the happiest, this would be at the time when, they just bought your program.
This can be during the onboarding phase when you meet with them one on one and you talk about your program and what's waiting for them. They're excited. So this is also a good time to ask for a referral. And also when they hit their goal. So let's say you're a fitness coach. They hit their weight goal. You could say, well, do you know, who do you know who?
can get who'd like to get the same result. Or if you're a sales coach, they hit a certain number they were working towards.
Amanda Kaufman (10:02)
I love that. Yeah. And it's great wisdom because I know when I first started, always held myself to a really high standard of like, well, I want everyone that I work with to 100 % complete their goal. Maybe like it would be better if they 150 % hit their goal. And what ended up happening is I was always like waiting for that really like almost crazy standard of what that goal is. And I wasn't doing a good job in the beginning of just listening.
to where they were. And you know, that whole idea that's gold there of just asking right at the very beginning when they're in a really high, you know, happy and heightened state. It's such a great idea because a lot of times they will want to be going through this journey. Maybe even if you're doing private coaching, it doesn't matter. Like people knowing that they're going together through something or that they're going to get to experience something together.
is a really, powerful thing. So that's a golden strategy. Alaina, what would you say to somebody who maybe has done a lot of work? They woke up one day and they were like, I don't know what happened. I ended up on that darn hamster wheel of doom, you know? And I just, I keep on churning and I keep on like every day or every week I'm waking up freaking out because I've got to make another sale.
What would you tell that person is really important to focus on right now?
Olena Vertepa (11:26)
Yeah, would say, so there also has to be time, if they need to make more sales, there also has to be time to focus on this. I would say it would also help to think about the program and think about what are the 20 % of actions or things that you do that generate 80 % of results. So basically streamlining your program and making sure that
you basically resolve the biggest issues for your clients and either creating content around those or just making sure, by the way, this is something not all the coaches do, but I think it's super important, because a lot of coaches get a lot of DMs, so directing all of them to your Q &A call, because this is also going to be super valuable for them.
by streamlining your program and directing your questions to a Q &A call, you will create more time and basically space and mental space for you to perhaps work on your marketing or sales, but also messaging your current clients or those clients who are about to graduate. I like this strategy.
two message strategy I guess you can call that.
So I would, I would text the client asking something like, Hey, did you do this thing we talked about? How did it work? How did it work for you? And they would say something and then you could ask, you could ask to tell you a little bit more about this. This turns into like a testimonial that you can take a screenshot of. And because they're talking about this positive experience, they are also experiencing these positive emotions.
and if they're happy with the results, they probably like you, they probably would want to refer, so I would also ask them for a referral. Or if they're going to graduate soon, ask them to renew. Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (13:23)
so
good. So, Elena, if somebody wanted to follow you to learn more and find out more, what's the best way to do that?
Olena Vertepa (13:33)
So you can find me on Facebook. I'm Olena Vartapa. And if you want to see if your program is retention proof, I can send you our retention scorecard. If you message me scorecard, I will get back to you with that scorecard.
Amanda Kaufman (13:50)
That is so generous. Thank you so much. And hey, listener, if you need her link directly to her Facebook profile, just check the show notes below. We'll make sure that you have access to that and all of her other details. Alaina, thank you so much for joining us today.
Olena Vertepa (14:04)
Yeah, thank you so much. This was very fun. Thank you.
Amanda Kaufman (14:07)
Yeah, likewise. I felt the same way. It was really fun, very informative, lots of golden nuggets. And hey, listener, if you love this, make sure that you take a beat and you hit that subscribe button and grab the link and share it with three of your friends. Yes, we are asking for referrals to the podcast. So yes, if you could do that. And hey, if you're feeling super, super generous, taking a moment to leave a testimonial in the form of a review would be
Olena Vertepa (14:23)
Yes.
Amanda Kaufman (14:35)
greatly appreciated because it helps people to decide whether they want to spend time with us on the show. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for that dear listener. And until next time, we will see you on another episode of the Amanda Kaufman show. And until then, do what matters.
Olena Vertepa (14:51)
Thank you.
