How to Build a Successful Sales Funnel for Coaches: 5 Steps

A sales funnel for coaches is your system for turning strangers into paying clients, largely on autopilot.

When it's set up right, your funnel works around the clock, warming people up and guiding them to buy from you. But when the pieces aren't working together, your sales funnel can turn into a big and frustrating headache.

In this post, I'm breaking down the 5 steps to building a high-converting sales funnel, and digging deep into the tools that make a good sales funnel WORK!

What Is a Sales Funnel For Coaches?

A sales funnel is the journey someone takes from first discovering you to becoming a paying client. It's a series of intentional steps that guide potential clients through getting to know you, trusting you, and eventually buying from you.

For coaches, this usually looks like someone finding your content or landing page, signing up for something free (like a webinar or PDF guide), receiving a series of emails that build trust and showcase your expertise, and then being presented with an offer to work with you.

A well-built funnel does a few important things for your coaching business:

• It brings in leads consistently without you having to chase people down on social media every day
• It nurtures relationships with potential clients while you focus on your existing clients
• It pre-qualifies people so that by the time someone books a call with you, they already understand what you do and how you can help
• It gives you predictable revenue instead of the feast-or-famine cycle most coaches know too well

The coaching industry is booming right now.

The 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study found that coach practitioners expect to be busier despite increased competition in every region of the world. Even with more coaches entering the space, 59% expect to earn more money next year.

There is a MASSIVE amount of opportunity out there, but to capture it, you need a system that moves people from "interested" to "invested," and that's what a funnel does!

And your funnel needs to be good, because client expectations are getting higher every year. A McKinsey study found that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions from companies, and 76% get frustrated when that doesn't happen.

People don't want to feel like they're being funneled through a generic, one-size-fits-all sales machine. They want to feel seen. The best sales funnel for coaches strikes that balance.

It's automated and scalable, but still feels personal and relevant at every stage.

Without a funnel, you're often relying on word-of-mouth and sporadic social media posts. With the right one, you have a repeatable system that fills your client roster month after month!

5 Steps to Build a Successful Sales Funnel For Coaches

1. Define Your Target Audience

Before you build anything, you need to know who you're building it for. Who are your ideal clients?

Defining your target audience goes way beyond basic demographics like age, location, and income level. Those details matter, but they're surface-level.

What matters more is understanding your ideal client emotionally.

For example, what have they already tried that didn't work? What do they secretly want but feel embarrassed to say out loud?

You also want to understand where they are in their awareness journey:

• Unaware: They don't even realize they have a problem yet, they just know something feels off.
• Problem-aware: They know they have a problem but haven't started looking for solutions.
• Solution-aware: They know solutions exist and are starting to explore their options.
• Product-aware: They've come across your offer and are evaluating whether it's right for them.
• Most aware: They're ready to buy and just need a final push to take action.

Your funnel needs to meet people where they are, because someone who just realized they're stuck needs a very different message than someone who's already decided they want a coach and is choosing between you and three other people.

Spend time in the places your ideal clients hang out, such as Reddit threads, Instagram comments, or other social media platforms. Pay attention to how they use to describe their struggles and goals, and come up with ways to integrate that into your sales funnel and messaging.

2. Design Your Offer

Your offer is what you're selling, and how you're packaging it matters a lot.

One of the biggest mistakes coaches make is creating too many offers too soon. You don't need a group program, a self-paced course, a VIP day, a membership, and a digital download all at once.

A lot of the time, it makes more sense to pick ONE core offer and build your funnel around it.

When you describe your offer, lead with benefits over features.

Your potential clients don't care that your program includes twelve modules and a 47-page workbook. They care about the transformation they'll experience after going through it. AKA, will they lose the weight? Will they finally get consistent clients?

That said, features still have their place. Once someone is emotionally interested, they want to know the specifics, such as how long the program is, what's included, how the sessions are structured, and what kind of support they'll get.

Put benefits front and center in your headlines and sales copy, and let features fill in the details further down the page.

3. Create a Compelling Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free resource you offer in exchange for someone's email address. It's how you start a relationship with qualified leads before they're ready to invest in your coaching services or products.

Most people won't purchase from you the first time they come across your content. They need to trust you first. A lead magnet gives them a taste of your expertise and pulls them into your email list, where you can continue building that trust over time.

The best lead magnets solve a small but specific problem for your ideal client.

They should be easy to consume, deliver a quick win, and naturally connect to your paid offer. For example, if your coaching program helps people land their dream job, your lead magnet could help them fix their resume in 20 minutes.

4. Design a High-Converting Sales Page

Your sales page is a dedicated page that gets potential clients to buy your coaching program or service (or take another action you want them to take, such as booking a sales call with you).

A strong coaching sales page typically includes:

• Headline that speaks to your ideal client's biggest desire or pain point
• Clear explanation of what your offer is and who it's for
• Benefits and transformation your clients can expect
• Testimonials or client success stories
• Details on what's included and how it works
• Pricing information
• Clear call-to-action button

You want to hook people emotionally first with the headline and opening section, build credibility in the middle with proof and details, and then make the ask at the end when they're fully warmed up.

That said, there's no ONE winning sales page template or structure, so it's important to do your market research to figure out what kind of flow would resonate with your ideal clients.

5. Take Control of Your Email Marketing

Without email marketing, you're collecting leads and then doing nothing with them.

Once someone downloads your lead magnet and joins your email list, they enter what's called a nurture sequence, or a series of automated emails that go out over days or weeks. 

These emails build trust, share valuable content, address common objections, and eventually guide the reader toward your offer.

Beyond your nurture sequence, email is also how you stay connected with your audience long-term. Regular newsletters keep you top of mind so that when someone is finally ready to invest in coaching, you're the first person they think of.

Ok, But How Do You Actually BUILD a Sales Funnel for Coaches?!

All of that ^^^ sounds great on paper.

But then you sit down at your computer, and the reality hits.

You try to design a sales page and stare at a blank screen with no idea where to start. You create a lead magnet PDF, but then what? How do you set it up so people can actually download it? What emails should they get after they sign up? 

How do you even AUTOMATE any of this?

If you're piecing things together across multiple platforms (AKA, you have different platforms for your website, email marketing, payments, course hosting, etc.), you often end up duct-taping everything together with Zapier integrations or other tech.

Everything becomes complicated, and now, instead of coaching clients, you're troubleshooting fifteen different apps. 

The 5 steps I outlined above are a great strategy, but a strategy without the right tools to execute it is just a nice idea collecting dust.

To bring your sales funnel to life, you need a platform that makes the tech side clean, simple, and manageable. Ideally, one where you can handle everything from a single place.

Finding the Platform for Your Coaching Business

If your tech setup is clunky, scattered, or unreliable, it doesn't matter how good your offer is. Your funnel won't convert the way it should.

To build a smooth, high-converting sales funnel, you need a platform that lets you:

• Build your website, sales pages, and landing pages
• Set up automated email sequences
• Collect payments and manage checkout
• Host your course content or coaching program materials
• Track your funnel performance with built-in analytics

That's where Kajabi comes in.

It's an all-in-one platform for creators, coaches, and online educators. You get everything you need to run your coaching business, and your sales funnel lives in one place.

Learn more about what Kajabi is used for.

Why Use Kajabi for Your Coaching Funnel

Kajabi gives you every tool you need to build, launch, and manage your coaching sales funnel without cobbling together a bunch of separate software.

Once you subscribe to the platform, you get:

• A drag-and-drop website builder where you can create your sales pages, landing pages, and entire site.
• Built-in email marketing with automated sequences, segmentation, and broadcast newsletters.
• Payment processing so clients can purchase your coaching packages from your site.
• Course and content hosting for any digital products or program materials you want to deliver.
• A built-in community feature so your clients can connect and engage without leaving your platform.
• Analytics and tracking so you can see what's working in your funnel and what isn't.

Kajabi is more expensive than some other platforms, but it allows you to log in once and do everything you need to do.

That's a HUGE pro, and it lets you stop paying for many different subscriptions at once.

Ready to See What Kajabi Can Do for You? Try It Free for 30 Days!

Kajabi usually offers a 14-day trial, but if you use my exclusive link below, you’ll get 30 days completely free to test-drive the platform.

 

Should I Hire a Kajabi Strategist + Designer?

Being completely honest, YES.

Kajabi is user-friendly, and some coaches start out doing their own setup. But there's a huge difference between having access to the tools and knowing how to use them strategically to get results, especially when it comes to your sales funnel.

DIY-ers often spend weeks figuring out how to set everything up, and then the whole thing technically works, but it doesn't convert, and they have no idea why.

Meanwhile, they're losing high-paying clients because both the front end and the back end of their funnel aren't up to standard. For example, potential clients opt in for a lead magnet, get a messy email sequence, and immediately lose trust.

More often than not, if you add up all the hours you spend on building your sales funnel yourself and multiply that by your hourly coaching rate, that number is probably equal to, or more than, what it would cost to hire a professional to do it right the first time.

In other words, the value of the time you're pouring into a DIY funnel doesn't match the value of what you end up with.

DIY-ing often costs you money, even though it can be hard to see that upfront.

Get a Full Kajabi Coaching Sales Funnel Build

If you want a coaching website and sales funnel that are clean and high-converting, I can help! I design and implement full Kajabi buildouts for coaches so you can start turning more leads into paying customers.

Get in touch to talk about your project or learn more about the Launch Lab!