Creative Ways to Use HoneyBook as a Coach or Consultant
A few fresh ideas to pump up our HoneyBook
HoneyBook is an excellent tool to boost coaching and consulting businesses. It helps optimize daily operations with end-to-end project tracking and automation features.
Besides, it offers a lot more. If you are an inventive type, you can use HoneyBook creatively to streamline many of your business processes, engage with your coaching clients more closely, and make the best out of each interaction with them.
Let’s explore some practical ways in which coaches and consultants can use HoneyBook to boost every aspect of their businesses.
1. Charge for your meetings
Your time is valuable. That’s why not all of your meetings and calls should be free. There are, of course, calls that are included in the project, or discovery calls, that you use for attracting new clients to your business. But calls take your energy, and time, and require your knowledge and skills. You shouldn’t be consulting, coaching, giving feedback, and helping out for free. Reclaim some of your time by starting charging for calls.
There are two immediate improvements you will notice. Firstly, you will have fewer meetings, because some people wanted your time for free. Having fewer meetings equals more productive or rest time on your schedule. Secondly, the rest of the calls won’t feel like a burden, because you get paid to do them.
HoneyBook offers tools that allow users to streamline their scheduling process and avoid a lot of back and forth with customers and prospects.
The platform allows you to create session types according to your business needs (discovery calls, feedback calls, coaching calls, and so on). You can also set a specific duration, add your weekly or monthly availability, and create instructions for each type of session.
If you want a client to book a meeting with you, you just need to share the relevant session link, making the scheduling process much easier.
And since you can create several session types, you can also make invoice templates for each. Then, you can set up an automated workflow that sends customers an invoice right after they schedule a meeting with you.
This is what the process looks like once you’ve created your session types and invoice templates:
Pick a document type (in this case, invoice) from the Actions menu and choose your session’s template invoice.
Select the email template you want to send along with the invoice.
Choose the appropriate trigger and delay (for instance, 1 hour after the customer books a meeting with you on the platform).
Determine whether the email and the document require your approval before sending.
Save.
And there you go! You now have an automated process for sending invoices to clients who book a meeting with you.
2. Engage your audience with a 5-day challenge
Keeping your audience engaged is a crucial aspect of business success, and a 5-day challenge is a perfect way to do just that.
A 5-day challenge is an online coaching experience that allows you to share your expertise and help your audience solve a specific problem. It’s easy to launch, involves minimum risks, and can quickly turn prospects and leads into clients.
What’s more, it offers your audience the chance to get to know you better, learn from you, and most importantly, interact with you, helping you promote your image of an expert in the field.
If you’re a health coach, for instance, you can challenge your audience to take a couple of minutes a day to look into their habits and change them with small actions. Motivate them to incorporate more fruit and vegetables into their meals or avoid using their phones one hour before bed for better sleep.
The first step to creating a successful 5-day challenge is building an audience for it — that is, growing a list of people interested in the challenge. To do that, you’ll need to set up a form on your website for visitors to fill out.
Here’s how you can set up a website form with HoneyBooks:
Click the Tools menu on your HoneyBook home page.
Select Contact Form.
Use the HoneyBook default form or create your own by clicking the form icon in the sidebar.
Select Add Contact Form and name your contact form.
At this point, you can remove any prepopulated questions, edit them, or add your own. You can also customize the form and adjust its settings.
Then you’ll need to distribute the form so that it’s accessible to your potential audience. You can do that by:
Embedding the form directly onto your website so that data funnels right into HoneyBook; or
Copying a link to the form and sharing it, with no embedding necessary.
Now that your form is ready, you need to set up the relevant automation on HoneyBook so that it’ll trigger every time someone fills out the form. The automation will send the 5 challenge emails to your audience over a week.
It’s pretty easy to set up automated emails on HoneyBook:
Select Send Email as your action.
Choose the email template you'd like to send. You can add attachments to your template if you need to.
Click Preview & Edit to make sure the email looks good. If you need to make changes, click Edit This Email at the bottom, make your changes, and click Use This Email when you’re done.
Select your delay and trigger (for instance, X number of days after the relevant workflow is activated).
Select whether this email requires your approval before sending it.
Add as many steps as necessary to complete the entire challenge by clicking the plus (+) button.
Click Save if you’re finished editing your Automation.
3. Run a simple online course
As a consultant or coach, you can leverage HoneyBook’s features to design and offer a simple but engaging online course through Brochures and Questionnaires.
Brochures in HoneyBook were initially designed to allow entrepreneurs and businesses to promote their brands and showcase their services in a file that fits the company's aesthetic and style.
However, you can repurpose this feature and turn brochures into the different modules or lessons of a simple and fully automated online course or training program.
You can easily set up a form on your website for visitors can fill out to sign up for your course. Once they do, this will trigger the relevant automation on HoneyBook, which will result in your client receiving an email in their inbox with the first lesson of your course.
After a couple of days, you can automate a questionnaire to test their newly gained knowledge and keep the ball rolling with more lessons and quizzes.
Follow these steps to create Questionnaires and Brochures on HoneyBook:
Go to the Project's workspace and click Create New.
Select Brochure or Questionnaire from the file menu.
You can start with a blank Brochure or Questionnaire, a recently used one, or a template.
Customize it and save it as a template for future occasions.
Then, follow these steps to automate them so that the customer receives the first lesson right after they fill out the sign-up form on your website:
Pick a document type (brochure or questionnaire) from the Actions menu and choose your template.
Select the email template you want to send along with the document.
Choose the appropriate trigger and delay (for instance, 1 day after the client signs up for the course).
Determine whether the email and the document require your approval before sending.
Save.
And that’s it! No need for complicated course platforms. HoneyBook’s got you covered.
4. Deliver a free PDF or a welcome guide
Sending out a freebie can help you nurture your relationship with current and potential clients. Freebies are fantastic tools for building a more personal relationship with them.
With HoneyBook, you can automate emails with attached documents to be sent out when people perform a given action, like when visitors sign up on your website to receive news.
The process is quite similar to what we did in the previous section:
Pick a document type (brochure or questionnaire) from the Actions menu and choose your template.
Select the email template you want to send along with the document.
Choose the appropriate trigger and delay (for instance, 1 minute after the person signs up on your website to get news or a freebie).
Determine whether the email and the document require your approval before sending.
Save.
By following these simple steps, you can treat your website visitors to free ebooks with valuable information or a friendly welcome guide to tell them more about you and your services as a coach.
5. Set up a payment plan option for your courses or coaching packages
Setting up payment plans for your courses and coaching packages can help you drive in customers who are unable to pay large lump sums for your services.
Of course, you can organize a payment schedule with clients and have them pay manually on a timeline. But that’s time-consuming, and it can even backfire and force you to chase customers around for payment.
With HoneyBook, you can save time and effort and streamline your collection process. The recurring payments feature on the platform will automatically bill your client on your selected date each month, so you don’t have to send out invoices regularly.
Here’s what you should do to create recurring payment plans:
Create your Invoice.
Scroll down to the Payment Plan / Scheduled Payment section. The default payment plan will be a Scheduled Payment unless you have picked a template that already had a recurring payment set.
Click Recurring to switch the payment schedule to recurring payments and adjust when you'd like the billing to begin by clicking Date. Then, set an end date for the payments if necessary.
The recurring payments process is very clear and intuitive on the client side. Customers need to accept the recurring payments before entering their desired payment method, and the charge will process within one business day following each payment due date. They also get reminders every month, one day before payment is due.
Recurring payments are great to welcome more customers into your business, especially when it comes to high-ticket packages and courses. Give it a try!
Talk about saving time, right? When your business starts growing and you find yourself swamped with things to do, a little bit of automation here and there can be a lifesaver. Go ahead and give it a try! Moreover, Honeybook is only $1 per month for 6 months now with code ONLY1.