The Five Secrets To Breaking Into Corporate Wellness

By Jeannine Moran

 
Are you having trouble bringing in the kind of income you’d like (or need) as a health coach?

Are you tired of always having to hustle for the next client?

Are you frustrated by hearing “I can’t afford it” from potential clients?

Ever wonder if there’s an easier way to help more people AND make more money in this field?

Well, there is…

The life-blood of any health coaching business is its clients. And corporate clients can afford to pay top dollar for your services, and expand your reach to hundreds or potentially thousands of company employees. This puts your business in a position of strength.

That’s the beauty of expanding your personal health coaching practice into the world of Corporate Wellness.

Working with corporate clients is extremely lucrative.

Hosting even a single lunch and learn workshop can bring in anywhere from $350 to $750.

A more comprehensive wellness program could easily land you a $10,000 contract. And depending on the size of the company, it could extend up into the six figures. This is why working with corporate clients can be a complete game-changer for your business.

That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news is that it’s not always easy to get your foot in the door with the companies.

Here’s something else that you need to know – the same strategies that work in the world of online marketing and programs do not work in the corporate space because working with companies is an entirely different ballgame.

So, here are five strategies to help you find greater success breaking into the lucrative world of corporate wellness.

Get into ACTION with your Marketing Plan

One of the first steps in creating a marketing plan is to identify the ‘who’ you want to target in the Corporate space. There are literally hundreds and thousands of companies just here in the US alone. As a Wellpreneur Health Coach, approaching a market of this massive size would be extremely inefficient, not to mention time consuming.

Identify the companies you want to approach, and prepare a marketing campaign to reach out to them. In your marketing campaign, you’ll want to reach out to the companies on your list in different ways.

Be consistent because follow up is key. Remember, “the fortune is always in the follow up.” In fact, it’s common not to receive a response the first 5+ times you reach out to a corporate contact. Be persistent and stay the course!

The most important thing is to actually get yourself into consistent action. Planning without action achieves nothing. Imperfect action trumps perfect planning every time! So even if your marketing campaign isn’t perfect, get yourself into action and start reaching out to your prospective clients early!

Know Your Ideal Corporate Client!

As you are coming up with your list of ideal corporate clients you’d like to work with, you may wish to start small. For example, you may want to work with companies of a certain size, perhaps between 100 & 1,000 employees. Smaller companies are generally easier to approach than the larger, more complex organizations.

Another consideration is Industry. Perhaps you have some prior industry experience you can draw upon to create your ideal list of corporate clients. We often discount our prior experience before becoming a Wellness Expert, however, if you know some of the industry related problems and challenges, you can leverage that knowledge when marketing to these companies.

Think local. Positioning yourself as a local expert is a differentiator. Renowned success coach Tony Robbins says it best … “proximity is power”. As a local resource it is so much easier for you to meet face-to-face with your prospective client. It’s much easier for you to set up an introductory coffee meeting as a local resource, than it is if you have to travel. You are also far more likely to meet a local corporate decision maker at a local networking event.

And my favorite factor to consider is if you already have contacts in your network who can help introduce you to key corporate decision makers, this can really help to shortcut the cycle-time. When you have a contact who can give you a warm introduction to the corporate decision maker, you become a warm contact by association.

Know The Wellness Business Case

Today, companies are focusing more and more on employee wellness programs because of the increasing cost of health care, the increase in chronic conditions that are preventable and the rise in health care consumerism.

One of the biggest company expenses (outside of employee salary) is employee medical costs and medical insurance. Did you know that health insurance premiums have increased by over 200% since 1999? That increase is staggering and can be devastating to some organizations.

Make sure you really understand and can articulate the value that Corporate Wellness brings. There is a strong case that you can make about the long term benefits companies will experience by investing in Corporate Wellness.

While it can take years before they see direct cost savings for medical expenses, they will yield a much quicker return on their investment in areas such as:

• Increased employee morale
• Increased retention
• Increased productivity
• Reduced absenteeism
• An overall ‘happier’ and ‘healthier’ work environment

Market research shows more than 75% of all company-sponsored health care costs are due to preventable, chronic illnesses. The statistics about employee health are very powerful:

• 13% of employees are at risk for developing diabetes
• 40% of cancer is preventable
• 66% of American employees are overweight
• 80% of heart disease and stroke are preventable

Preparing a value-based approach that explains how a Corporate Wellness program will benefit the Company, is a great way to add value in your marketing campaign.

Think Beyond HR

As a health coach looking to get into Corporate Wellness, who at the company would you contact?

You might be thinking the Human Resources department. And typically they are the ones who own Corporate Wellness initiatives. However, many other functions and departments are also interested in improving the wellbeing of their team.

To help you think beyond Human Resources, think about who HR provides services for. When I was a corporate decision maker sitting on the other side of the desk, it was the VP of Safety who initially raised wellness, because of the direct association between Health and Safety. Healthier employees have less safety related incidents. The Safety department is always looking for ways to improve their safety statistics. It’s really hard for HR to turn away an internal client group who is advocating for improving the health and wellbeing of the employees!

Typically each department head has a budget to spend on their team, and bringing in a stress management expert to help the Finance Team through the busiest time of their year, year-end, can be a great investment.

Or perhaps the CIO is running a large technology project, with an aggressive timeline and the IT team are burned out and people are leaving. This is another great situation where bringing in an outside expert can go along way to help improve morale, and improve employee retention.

Decision-makers exist all throughout an organization and you can often find other ways in, that extend beyond Human Resources.

Tailor your offering

Once the door has been opened for you to step inside and meet with your corporate contact, don’t jump into sales mode.

It’s time to listen.

Don’t assume that you know what’s best for them.

I call this meeting the ‘magical needs discovery meeting’. It’s when you get to know and understand the company. What are their pain points? What do they want to achieve?

It’s only once you know what the company wants and needs that you can propose a wellness offering that will meet their requirements.

I’m often asked what should be included in a wellness program. And the answer is… it all depends. You’ll base your offering on the outcome of the client needs discovery meeting.

Some of the most common components of wellness programs include:

• Lunch & Learn Workshops
• Digital Newsletters
• Coaching programs (1:1 and group)
• Support Programs (smoking cessation, weight-loss,
  stress management etc)
• Health Fairs
• Biometric Screenings

There are many different health and wellness services that you can include in a client wellness offering. The length of the program and the material you include is all dependent upon the outcome of your needs discovery meeting.

Waiting to present your wellness program until after you have a needs discovery meeting will ensure that you are proposing a plan that will be attractive to the company.

 
Just a quick word of advice. If your focus is working with corporate clients, I highly encourage you to get support this year from someone with real-world experience in closing deals with corporate clients — because working with companies is an entirely different ballgame.

Jeannine Moran is the CEO and Founder of The Corporate Wellness Agent. Harnessing her 20 years of Corporate HR and Consulting experience working with FORTUNE 500 companies and other leading organizations, she helps companies to transform their workforce.

Jeannine also helps health coaches and other wellness experts transition from personal coaching to winning lucrative corporate clients.