Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an important goal for all types of coaches. As your practice grows, however, managing an increasing number of client relationships can take significant amounts of time away from your main value offer—coaching.
We’ve reviewed 5 top software options available right now to help you find the best CRM for coaches.
Do You Need A CRM?
Coaching involves a lot more than just working with clients during sessions. The more your client base grows, the more work you need to put into staying organized and maintaining strong relationships with those you help.
A coaching CRM can help you safely store and manage all the important information you have on coaching clients.
A coaching CRM can help you safely store and manage all the important information you have on coaching clients. It can also help you streamline the following functions:
- Client tracking
- Creating and storing coaching notes
- Communicating with clients between sessions
- Monitoring and boosting their engagement with your coaching services.
Whether you work solo or in a team, a CRM can be a great way to work more efficiently and effectively while creating more time for the work that matters most: coaching.
We’ve reviewed three of the best options right here.
5 Best CRM For Coaches
The following CRM platforms include web- and smartphone app-based solutions—take a look and see which best suits your needs.
Quenza
Quenza was designed by coaches for coaches and includes a suite of useful tools that make it easy to manage your client relationships online.
Professionals can bulk import, manually invite, or send email invites to individual clients or groups through the platform, which automatically keeps track of their latest actions and coaching statistics alongside a comprehensive client profile.
While the CRM supports client session notes, HIPAA-compliant instant messaging, and file-sharing, Quenza’s main advantage is its easy-to-use coaching session planner templates and tools. Coaches can use the platform’s Activity Builder to quickly design personalized exercises, worksheets, and interventions for clients, then organize them into automatically delivered Pathways to offer coaching programs, packages, and e-courses.
Features include:
- HIPAA-compliant client data storage, including comprehensive individual profiles, session notes, and file-sharing for each client
- Customizable notifications to help you keep track of client progress, such as updates for in-progress, overdue, and completed Activities
- Drag-and-drop tools for creating client Activities such as life coaching worksheets, exercises, and other interventions, as well as programs, packages, and other Pathways
CoachAccountable
CoachAccountable is a HIPAA-compliant CRM for life coaches, business coaches, and more with a diverse array of practice management tools for scheduling, billing, and note-taking. Practitioners can use the app’s client relationship management tools to import new clients and conveniently store all their important information in a private, secure database.
Each client’s profile gives you an overview of their Activities, such as key coaching metrics, journal updates, sent and completed worksheets, and upcoming sessions. CoachAccountable is purely a browser-based platform, meaning that it does not come with iOS or Android apps for users
Features include:
- Client relationship management functions for tracking coaching hours, statistics, invoices, actions, and follow-through
- Practice management tools, e.g., note-taking and document management capabilities, reporting, billing, invoicing, and payment processing integrations
- Custom worksheets and course design tools for creating individual assessments and exercises
Paperbell
Paperbell offers all the usual CRM features for coaches—billing, invoicing, appointment scheduling—but it also packs in some additional marketing tools which are great for increasing visibility and clients. Along with its clean, intuitive interface, this makes it a good choice for practitioners new to client management software.
Regarding session planning and content creation, the app allows coaches to create structured or self-paced coaching packages made up of multiple sessions and uploaded links, files, or videos. Paperbell’s landing page capability also allows users to create landing pages or “shops” through which they can sell their packages.
Features include:
- 24/7 web portal for clients to schedule, view, or change coaching sessions, access a complete history of appointments and purchases, provide feedback, and download contracts or content
- Comprehensive client profiles for coaches to stay organized, with an overview of appointments, purchased packages and amount spent, surveys, email logs, file-sharing, contracts, and notes
- Syncs with third-party calendars such as Google Calendar, Zoom, and MS 365 to help you stay organized
How To Use A CRM For Your Coaching Business: Example
Features such as client profiles, file-sharing, and engagement statistics can help you stay organized and grow your business, but only if you know what you want to achieve.
To choose the right coaching CRM and get the most value from it, therefore, you need to get clear on your goals.
To use your chosen CRM more strategically, consider the following questions:[reference item=”Hubspot. (2022). How to use a CRM: The ultimate guide. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-use-crm”]
- How do you want to enhance the way you manage your client relationships? This will determine the features you need and how you use your software.
- Why are these benefits important to your business? How will it help you improve the quality of your coaching or grow your practice?
- What does your client journey look like? Think about the steps they go through to get from an initial conversation or intake session to their final evaluation.
With these answers in mind, and using Quenza as an example, here are some ways to use a coaching CRM.
1. Maintain your client relationships between sessions
A CRM such as Quenza enables you to create homework, exercises, and other coaching activities, which can keep your clients engaged between sessions and improve their chances of success.
Customizable templates make this even easier; a few examples include value-mining exercises, meditation exercises, and simple check-ins.
Since most clients’ email inboxes are overflowing, you can push Activity notifications via the coaching app.
How to Create an Activity on Quenza:
2. Keep clients accountable for their coaching commitments
Building your clients’ accountability is another way to facilitate progress and increase their chances of success. Specific CRM features enable them to access your coaching content on their mobile devices and apply learnings to real-life situations, which takes learning and development to the next level.
With Quenza, as shown below, To-Dos and check-ins can help keep client motivation at a high even outside of sessions.
When clients are aware that the coach can see their progress on the homework assignments, there will be an added level of accountability to complete them.
The Quenza client progress dashboard also indicates if a client’s Activity is overdue, in progress, completed, or canceled. As a coach, you can get an idea of how all your clients are progressing using this view.
3. Give clients access to all your content in a single location
Instead of using multiple systems and tools are used for different coaching assessments, professionals can use CRMs to store and access all coaching-related documents in one location.
Clients can also access their exercises and Activities when they want to reflect on their journey, which makes their experience more convenient and engaging.
4. Streamline and automate client journeys
If you sell coaching programs or packages, an app that automates their delivery is often the best CRM for your coaching business.
Quenza Pathways allow you to curate coaching content and create self-paced or scheduled programs, as shown below. This automates your customer relationship management, saving you time for more important tasks.
How to Create a Pathway on Quenza:
4. Tailor your sessions to your clients’ needs
A good coaching CRM will come with customizable Expansions, meaning you can personalize coaching intake form templates, digital exercises, and other resources rather than designing them from zero.
One big advantage of this is that you also have an easy way to gather feedback, allowing you to refine and enhance your offers.
5. Easily manage group coaching
Group coaching features simplify the process of organizing and engaging clients in one-to-many coaching programs. The easier it is to deliver classes and packages to a larger audience, the more scalable your practice becomes.
If you’re planning to offer group coaching, functions like group chat, multi-user file sharing, and collective statistics can all be very useful.
6. Get an overview of all your aggregate client data
The best CRM for your coaching business will give you an overview of all recent client updates for a “bigger picture” look at your practice as a whole.
A few examples of key Dashboard statistics from Quenza include your total number of active clients, Activities and Pathways in progress, and the latest templates (Expansions) that have been released.
Final Thoughts
A CRM system can be a powerful tool for your business. Automating repetitive but important client management tasks in your workflow frees up serious amounts of time while allowing you to scale, and the good news is that there are a few great apps out there for you to choose from.
If you’re ready to get started, find out how you can take your client relationship management to the next level with a $1 trial of Quenza.
Frequently Asked Questions
A good CRM should include tools to manage leads, track interactions, automate communications, and generate reports. It should also be customizable to fit the unique needs of your coaching business. Look for a CRM that integrates with other tools you use, such as scheduling software or email marketing platforms.
Coaches find clients through a variety of channels, including referrals, networking, social media, and advertising. Many coaches also have a website or blog to showcase their expertise and offer valuable content to potential clients. To learn more about how to acquire new clients, click here for additional information.
Most CRM software options are highly customizable in terms of fields and data types. You can typically create your own custom fields to track specific information about your clients, such as their goals, preferences, or health status. This customization can help you to provide more personalized coaching to your clients and to track the information that is most important to your business.
Quenza Team, Excited about the direction you are taking this platform. It is refreshing to see a platform built by coaches for coaches. Even better you have the science to support and enhance my coaching. Well-done!!
Thank you so much for saying that Craig! 🙂