Creating a Group Proposition

Over time you’ll realise that you only have a limited number of hours in each day. This means that you have a limit to how you can grow your practice. Of course, you can always increase the price you charge for seeing clients, but at some point, even this will reach a ceiling.

We need to explore other ways in which you can offer value to clients.

You know you can offer one-on-one sessions, but what about offering your session in groups, or in such a way that you could create the value once and deliver it many times over? This is often referred to as a one-to-many approach which, in contrast to a one-to-one approach, offers you the possibility of exponential growth.

The key to creating a scalable, one-to-many proposition, is to consider the delivery of your expertise in the form of a signature system.

What is a Signature System?

A signature system is a clear, structured, repeatable process by which you can take a client from Point A (their problem or pain point) to Point B (their desired outcome). Once this is clearly articulated, you can take a group of people on this journey together, in the form of a group programme or course – just like this one.

How Do You Create a Signature System?

To create a signature system, we start with the needs of our client and look for commonalities in the type of value that we usually offer in a one-to-one context. Start by asking yourself: what are 5-10 things that all clients ask about, need to know or understand, or should be able to comprehend?

We can begin to craft a signature system to solve this problem, once we understand the problem we’re solving. The signature system will incorporate all the knowledge, tools, practices, theory and principles that are needed to help a client arrive at their desired destination. It is replicable across multiple clients at one time.

How Long Should a Signature System Be?

To craft a programme or course, you’ll want to have clearly mapped out at least six key steps that your client needs to take in order to get from Point A (problem) to Point B (solution). This might become a 6-week course or a 10-12 module programme. It will depend on what you have the capacity to deliver and what your clients actually require.

What Should You Add to Each Step?

At each step in your signature system, you will want to help your client understand why they are experiencing a certain problem, what they need to understand about that problem, and how they can take action to fix it using tools, actions, activities or techniques recommended by you.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you are a Life Coach and you help people to heal from a relationship that has ended, you might identify six steps that every client needs to move through:

1. understanding what heartbreak is
2. mapping out the relationship
3. understanding themselves
4. beginning the healing process
5. moving on
6. finding a sense of contentment.

Across these six steps, there might be lessons, theories, principles, tools, and activities that help the client to work through their breakup. This becomes your unique, signature system, which can translate into a course or a group programme.

Delivery of Your Signature System

Delivery of a course or group programme can take the form of online videos and tutorials, written workbooks, group conversation (online or offline), and reflection exercises that clients complete in their own time.

Give Your Signature System a Name

Give your system a name so that it can be branded in a public forum. You might use your name as part of the method name. Take Pilates, a signature method of movement defined by Joseph Pilates in the 1920s. Or, look at British behaviour change specialist and coach, Shahroo Izadi, who coined The Kindness Method which is her unique signature system for changing habits.

This gives you the means to expand your reach and to impact more people with your knowledge and expertise.

What do you think?

This course is a great example of how a group of people can learn and experience transformation together.

What other experiences have you had where you have been part of group learning, and what were some of the benefits for you?