16 skills for filling a coaching practice, built on the Prosp MCP.
Coaching has a problem no other service business has: the buyer usually cannot name the thing they want fixed. They know something is not working. That is why generic outreach fails here harder than anywhere else.
Inside: the setup that makes Claude write in your voice rather than a generic coaching one, 16 skills in full, the content-to-conversation loop that actually fills a practice, and the four ethical lines that are not optional in this category.
Plus what to do when the objection is price, because in coaching it usually is not.
AI Driven, Personalized Outreach on LinkedIn: Prosp 💜
Setup: Why Coaching Outreach Fails, and the Four Lines
The buyer usually cannot name what they want fixed. That is the whole difficulty and it shapes every skill here.
They know the quarter went badly, or the team feels heavy, or they dread Sunday evening. They do not know they want a coach.
Why coaching outreach fails
Three reasons, and they are all fixable.
1. The category has no agreed meaning. "Executive coach" covers a Gallup-certified performance specialist and someone who did a weekend course. A prospect reading your headline has no way to tell which, so they discount it.
The fix is not a better adjective. It is naming the specific situation you work with.
2. Everyone leads with transformation. "Unlock your potential" is the default and it is indistinguishable across ten thousand profiles. The prospect cannot tell you apart, so they choose on referral or not at all.
3. The pitch arrives before the problem is named. A coaching DM that offers help implies the recipient needs fixing, which is the one message a senior person will not respond well to from a stranger.
The sequence has to go: they name something, then you respond to it. Never the reverse.
What works instead. Content that names a specific situation precisely enough that someone in it recognises themselves. Then a conversation with the people who engage, because the engagement is the signal that the situation landed.
Install the MCP
The Prosp MCP is what turns the people engaging with your content into a contactable list.
claude mcp add prosp -- uvx prosp-mcp-server@latest
export PROSP_API_KEY=your_key_here
uvx prosp-mcp-server@latest --check
For a solo coach, set the budget low and leave it there:
PROSP_DAILY_CONNECTION_BUDGET=10
Ten a day is 200 a month, which is more than a solo practice can convert. Running at 20 fills a pipeline you cannot serve, and the second half of it goes cold while you deliver to the first.
The tool that matters most here is import_from_post. It pulls commenters and likers from any post URL, including reactions arriving days later. For a coach, the people who engage with a post about a specific situation are the list, and there is no better source.
Repo: github.com/JackJProsp/prosp-mcp-server
The three context files
context/
├── practice.md who you work with and what actually changes
├── voice.md three of your real posts, pasted in full
└── proof.md outcomes, with permission, anonymised by default
practice.md
## Who I work with
The exact situation, not the job title:
Example: "founders 18 months post-raise whose team has doubled
and who are now managing managers for the first time"
not "ambitious leaders"
What brings them to a first conversation:
What they have already tried:
Who I am not for:
## What actually changes
The observable difference after three months:
After six:
What does NOT change, that people expect to:
## The engagement
Format, frequency, length:
Price, and what it does not cover:
Minimum commitment, and why:
## My qualification
Certifications, supervision, hours logged:
What I am not qualified to work with:
## Banned
<never_use_these>
Outcome claims I cannot evidence:
Anything implying a clinical or therapeutic outcome:
Anything that diagnoses:
</never_use_these>
"What does not change" is the most useful field in the file. Naming it early is the single strongest trust signal available in a category built on overpromising, and almost nobody does it.
"What I am not qualified to work with" is a safety line, not marketing. It is what the referral skill reads.
The four lines that are not optional
Coaching sits next to territory where getting it wrong causes real harm. These are enforcement rules, not preferences, and every skill in this guide inherits them.
1. Never diagnose, and never imply one. Not in a post, not in a DM, not in a discovery call. "That sounds like burnout" is a clinical framing from someone not qualified to make it.
2. Refer out, and know your line in advance. Write down in practice.md what you do not work with. When it appears, refer, and do it warmly rather than abruptly. The skill for this is skill 16 and it is the most important one here.
3. Never manufacture urgency around a personal difficulty. Scarcity tactics are ordinary in most marketing. Applied to someone struggling at work they are exploitative, and in this category they are the fastest way to lose a reputation.
4. Every outcome claim needs a real person behind it, with permission. Anonymised by default. "A client doubled their revenue" with no row in proof.md is the claim that gets a coaching practice discounted entirely.
These are in every skill's rules section rather than stated once here, because a rule that lives only in an intro gets skipped.
The 16 Skills, In Full
16 skills. Positioning, content, conversation, delivery.
The order matters more than usual here, because a coaching practice fills through content rather than through volume.
Positioning, 4 skills
---
name: 01 situation-namer
description: Replace the job title with the situation. The first
skill, and everything else reads its output.
---
MOST COACHES TARGET A TITLE. "Founders", "senior leaders",
"ambitious professionals". Those describe thousands of people
with nothing in common except a rung on a ladder.
NAME THE SITUATION INSTEAD. Four components:
The role, roughly
The specific moment they are in
What just changed for them
What that has broken
WEAK founders and business leaders
BETTER founders 18 months post-raise whose team doubled and who
are managing managers for the first time
THE TEST: could someone in that situation read it and think
"that is exactly where I am"? If the answer is "sort of", it is
still a title.
OUTPUT one situation, not three. A practice can hold one clearly.
NAME WHO THIS REPELS. A positioning that repels nobody converts
nobody.
---
name: 02 profile-rewriter
description: The profile audit and rewrite. Before any content.
---
NINE CHECKS, each PASS, WEAK or FAIL with evidence: proof, empty
adjectives, clarity, gaps, call to action, visual consistency,
mobile readability, searchability, contact hygiene.
THE HEADLINE truncates around 60 characters on mobile, which is
where most profile visits happen. Write for that.
LEAD WITH THE SITUATION from 01, not with the word "coach".
"Coach" tells them the category. The situation tells them whether
it is for them.
THE ABOUT, four movements, first person:
The situation, in their words not yours
What you have seen work
Proof, from proof.md, anonymised
One CTA
NEVER open the About with your certification. It is a credential,
not a reason to read on. It belongs further down where it does
reassurance work.
NEVER invent a metric. Ask or leave the gap.
---
name: 03 offer-definer
description: Define the engagement specifically enough to be
understood without a call.
---
OUTPUT:
What they receive, as OBJECTS. Sessions, a document, a
check-in cadence, access between sessions.
What happens in week 1, month 1, month 3.
What is explicitly NOT included.
The price, and what it does not cover.
The minimum commitment, and why it exists.
RULES
- No "bespoke" or "tailored". Those words mean the offer is not
defined, and every coach uses them.
- The price appears somewhere. An offer with no number is a
conversation, and conversations are your scarcest resource.
- Objects, not transformations.
THE MINIMUM COMMITMENT needs an honest reason. "Because nothing
observable changes in under three months" is a reason. "Because
that is my package" is not.
---
name: 04 proof-builder
description: Build the outcome library. Anonymised by default.
---
ONE ROW PER OUTCOME:
client | permission (YES / ANONYMISED / NO) | their situation |
what changed | over what period | their words if you have them
DEFAULT TO ANONYMISED. Coaching clients are frequently more
sensitive about being named than any other kind of client,
because the engagement implies they had a problem.
ASK SEPARATELY for permission to quote and permission to name.
They are different questions and people answer them differently.
WHAT CHANGED needs to be observable. "Felt more confident" is not
a row. "Stopped attending three recurring meetings and delegated
two hiring decisions" is.
TWELVE SOLID ROWS beat forty thin ones.
Content, 5 skills
This is how a coaching practice actually fills. Not volume outreach.
---
name: 05 situation-post-writer
description: Write the post that makes someone in the situation
recognise themselves.
---
THE SHAPE:
Describe the situation precisely. No advice yet.
Name the thing about it nobody says out loud.
One observation about why it happens.
Stop.
DO NOT SOLVE IT IN THE POST. A post that resolves the tension
gets a like. One that names it accurately and stops gets a
comment, and the comment is the conversation.
WRITE FROM THE SPECIFIC. "The first time you have to performance
manage someone you hired yourself" beats "leadership is hard".
RULES
- Hook is lines 1 to 2 and earns the See More alone
- One idea per line, three lines maximum per paragraph
- No em dashes, no hashtags in the body
- Never diagnose. Never imply a clinical framing.
- Every claim traces to proof.md
---
name: 06 client-language-miner
description: Capture how clients describe the problem, in their
words.
---
SOURCES, in order:
Your own session notes, with consent and anonymised
Discovery call recordings
What people write in the comments of your posts
Relevant communities
OUTPUT twelve verbatim phrases, quoted exactly.
NEVER paraphrase into coaching language. If they said "I feel
like I'm managing a company I don't recognise", record that, not
"scaling challenges".
COACHING LANGUAGE IS THE PROBLEM. "Limiting beliefs",
"stepping into your power", "holding space". Clients do not use
those words and content written in them sounds like the category
rather than like you.
ANONYMISE EVERYTHING before it enters the file.
---
name: 07 humanizer
description: Strip the tells. The final pass on everything.
---
- Numbers not all round
- No perfect parallelism in lists
- One genuine break in the flow of thought
- Stories carry one vague detail beside one specific one
- Not every post resolves. One a week ends open.
- No em dashes
AND THE COACHING-SPECIFIC ONES:
- Cut every sentence that could appear on any coach's profile
- Cut "journey", "unlock", "empower", "transformation" unless
a client said it first
- If it reads like a LinkedIn coaching post, it is one, and it
will be scrolled past
---
name: 08 engagement-session
description: 25 minutes a day. This does more for a coaching
practice than any outreach.
---
Target: 8 to 10 likes, 5 comments.
SIX RULES
1. At most 2 of 5 mention your own work.
2. No two comments share a structure.
3. At least 1 outside your niche.
4. At most 1 promotional phrase across the session.
5. If you simply agree, like it. Do not comment.
6. At least 1 on a post with 200+ reactions.
FOR COACHES SPECIFICALLY: never comment advice on a post where
someone is describing a personal difficulty. It reads as
prospecting on someone's bad day, and other people are watching.
Score each comment before posting. Below 7, rewrite.
---
name: 09 lead-magnet-post
description: The resource post, for building a list.
---
NEVER before you have all five: the resource and what is
literally inside it, the situation it serves, three keywords in
the same family, real proof or none, and the offer for the PS.
DEFINE BY CONTENTS. "A 12-question audit and a one-page
decision framework" not "clarity on your next step".
THE CTA depends on connection state:
Mostly connected: Comment "[WORD]" and I'll send it over.
Mostly not: Comment "[WORD]" and connect so I can send
it. PS. Already connected, just comment.
PLAN DELIVERY FIRST. 200 comments at 10 requests a day is four
weeks.
Conversation, 4 skills
---
name: 10 engager-router
description: Decide who to talk to from the people who engaged.
---
SCORE depth times fit, each 1 to 3.
DEPTH 1 reaction only
2 short comment
3 substantive comment, or engaged more than once
FIT 1 adjacent to the situation
2 close
3 exactly the situation in practice.md
6 to 9 worth a conversation this week
3 to 5 keep writing, no message
1 to 2 no outreach
SOMEONE WHO COMMENTED TWICE ON SITUATION POSTS is the warmest
lead a coaching practice gets. They have recognised themselves
twice and nobody has acknowledged it.
AT 10 SENDS A DAY, this order is the whole month.
---
name: 11 conversation-opener
description: The first message. Not a pitch.
---
STRUCTURE
Line 1 The specific thing they said, quoted or closely
referenced.
Line 2 One observation that adds to it. Not advice.
Line 3 One question about their situation.
RULES
- Under 300 characters.
- NEVER offer help in message one. Offering help implies they
need fixing, which is the one thing a senior person will not
accept from a stranger.
- Never mention coaching, your offer, or a call.
- Never diagnose.
- No em dashes.
BANNED, burnt in this category:
"I help leaders unlock"
"Sounds like you could use some support"
"I'd love to help you with this"
"Have you considered working with a coach"
"Book a free discovery call"
THE SECOND ONE is the worst. It tells a stranger they are
struggling, in writing, on a platform their colleagues read.
---
name: 12 discovery-prep
description: Prepare the first conversation. It is not a sales
call.
---
PULL: what they engaged with, what they said, their role and
tenure, anything public about their situation.
ONE PAGE:
What I think is happening, held loosely
The five questions, open, none leading
What would make this NOT a fit
What I am not qualified to work with here
THE FOURTH SECTION IS THE POINT. A discovery call where you
cannot articulate what would make it a no is a pitch.
NEVER prepare a close. Prepare questions.
---
name: 13 objection-handler
description: The objections coaches actually hear.
---
"It's expensive"
-> Usually not about price. Ask what they would need to see to
know it worked. If they cannot answer, the offer is unclear,
not overpriced.
"I don't have time"
-> Frequently true and frequently the reason they need it. Ask
what their week looks like. Do not argue.
"I should be able to figure this out myself"
-> The real objection, most often, and rarely said this plainly.
Answer it directly and without reassurance.
"I tried a coach before"
-> Ask what the sessions actually looked like. It is almost
always that.
"Let me think about it"
-> Ask what they are weighing. Then stop. Do not follow up more
than once.
NEVER manufacture urgency around a personal difficulty. Never
discount to close. A discount says the first number was invented.
Delivery and referral, 3 skills
---
name: 14 session-notes
description: Structure notes after a session. Consent required
before any of this exists.
---
CONFIRM the client has agreed to notes being kept, and where.
Without that, this skill does not run.
PER SESSION: what they said they wanted to look at, what they
actually talked about, the commitment they made, and one thing
to return to.
THE GAP between the first two is usually the useful part.
NEVER record anything that would embarrass them if seen.
NEVER store identifying details alongside sensitive content.
NEVER use session content in marketing, in any form, without
separate written permission.
---
name: 15 renewal-reader
description: Work out whether an engagement should continue.
Honestly.
---
AT THE END OF A BLOCK, assess:
What changed that is observable
What they said they wanted, and whether it happened
Whether the remaining work is coaching work
Whether they are getting value or getting comfortable
RETURN one of: CONTINUE, PAUSE, or COMPLETE.
COMPLETE IS A SUCCESS. An engagement that ends because the work
is done is the best outcome available and the one most likely to
produce a referral.
NEVER extend an engagement that has stopped producing change.
The client usually knows before you say it, and saying it first
is what earns the recommendation.
---
name: 16 referral-router
description: Refer out, warmly and early. The most important skill
here.
---
READ "what I am not qualified to work with" in practice.md.
REFER OUT when you see: anything clinical or suggesting it,
substance issues, active crisis, grief, anything where the
person needs a therapist rather than a coach, or a specialism
outside your practice.
HOW:
Say plainly that this is outside what you work with.
Do not explain why in a way that diagnoses.
Name a specific route, not "you should see someone".
Offer to stay in touch without conditioning it on anything.
NEVER take an engagement you are not qualified for because the
person asked. Wanting to help is not qualification.
BUILD THE REFERRAL LIST BEFORE YOU NEED IT. Two or three
practitioners you would send someone to, contacted in advance.
Searching for one mid-conversation is too late.
Skill 16 is the one to install first, before any of the marketing ones. It is the only skill here whose absence can cause harm rather than just cost a client.
The weekly loop
MON 05 situation-post-writer, then 07. Publish.
MON 08 engagement-session, 25 minutes.
TUE 10 engager-router across last week's posts.
TUE 11 on the 6+ scores only. Ten sends, not twenty.
WED Second post. 08 again.
THU 12 discovery-prep for anything booked.
THU 06 client-language-miner on the week's comments.
FRI 15 renewal-reader on anything reaching a block end.
FRI Third post if the week has earned it.
MONTHLY Which situation post produced conversations?
That answer is next month's content.
The monthly question is the whole flywheel. A coaching practice fills from the one or two posts where people recognised themselves. Finding out which those were, and writing more of them, beats any volume increase.
The content starts it. Prosp turns engagers into conversations 💜
