How do you know if a coaching client is falling behind?

Give every milestone a time it should take and compare. A client past the time is overdue, and the board shows it without anyone having to guess. Most coaches only know when a client started. Without a time per stage there is no way to say who is behind until they stop replying.

What do you do with an overdue client?

Check in the same day, by DM or voice message, from the client success manager. Find out what is going on, help, and get them to the next milestone. Tell them they are late. Clients who know the timing and hear about it when they slip get things done, and the success rate goes up.

How long should each stage of a coaching program take?

It depends on the offer and the result. The first stage should end in a small win inside one to two weeks, 30 days at the latest. Later than that, the client starts thinking the program is bad. After that, set each stage time from what the actions take, write it in the training, and adjust where clients pile up.

On-track rate: how to see which stage of your program is broken.

Q: What is on-track rate in a coaching program?

The share of clients who are on time against the milestone they are on. Every stage has a time it should take, set in the video training so the client knows it. A client past that time is overdue. Counted per stage, the overdue clients show which part of the program is not working.

On-track rate is the share of clients on time against their milestone. Counted per stage, it shows where clients get stuck and what to fix first.

In a six-month coaching offer, every milestone gets a time it should take. Miss it and the client is overdue.

On-track rate is the share of clients who are inside that time on the milestone they are on. Almost no coaching offer has it until we run it. Counted stage by stage, it tells you which part of the program is broken.

What is on-track rate in a coaching program?

How many clients are on track versus off track, based on the time set per stage. That is the line on our audit sheet, word for word. Say a stage is set at four weeks. A client in week three of it is on track; the same client in week five is overdue.

It is time-based on purpose. Results arrive at different speeds, but the actions that lead to them can be timed. When the promised result is hard to measure, you can still track the doing: modules finished, the work done, the technique practised.

How does a client become overdue?

By running past a time they already knew. The video training frames every stage: you have this much time for this. Miss the time and the client success manager checks in immediately. They find out what is going on, help, and get the client to the next milestone.

Then you tell them they are late. People then know they need to get things done. Every client sits on the Monday.com board as on track or overdue. Working the overdue list is part of the client success manager's day: a DM, a voice message, help.

Every client in a coaching offer should be visible as on track or overdue. Almost no offer has that unless I run it. Two things make it work: the client knows the timing in advance, and when they are late you tell them. People then know they need to get things done, and that is why the client success rate is higher.

Diego Miescher

Founder

How does on-track rate show which stage is broken?

Count the overdue clients per stage, not for the whole program. The client board is an overview of every client, where they are and what is next. Read that way, it shows friction zones: always after stage X, people get stuck and need more support.

One number for the whole program hides that. Overdue clients spread across every stage point at the check-ins. Overdue clients piled up on one level point at that level, and more check-ins will not fix it.

Where the overdue clients sit	What it usually means	What we fix
The first stage	No first win inside one to two weeks	A 15-minute onboarding call fast; five to seven steps; a setup task as the first win
One stage in the middle	The training for that stage is too complicated, or things are missing	Simpler videos, clear action steps, the missing piece added
Spread across every stage	Check-ins are too rare	Up to three a week in the first 30 days; overdue gets a message the same day
On track to the end, then gone	Nothing waiting after the goal	The next offer, started at least 60 days before the end

How we read overdue clients per stage in the offers we run. The pattern points at the stage; the stage points at the fix. · Source: Results Tracking, the system

What do you fix once you find the stage?

Usually the training for that stage. In a coaching offer we ran ourselves, the client success rate doubled once the video training was simplified. Most people had not acted on it because it was too complicated and things were missing.

Client success is like a car. When it runs out of fuel, clients give up. Regular results, simple steps, clear action steps and how often you check in keep fuel in. So a broken stage gets shorter, simpler or closer to a small result, and its overdue count is the number to watch afterwards.

Where does on-track rate sit with the other numbers?

Third. Data comes first: a table of every client and the milestone they are on. Then the client success rate, because the result has to be defined before it can be counted. Then on-track rate, so the team knows who to call today. Proof and upgrades come after.

Track it over time as well as live. A founder who only sees this month never sees whether a stage got better or worse three months ago. The team then loops in the same place. On the live dashboard it sits next to client success rate, time to value, lifetime value and lifetime duration.

Watch out. A stage time the client never heard about is not a deadline. If the video training does not say how long a stage should take, the overdue check-in lands as a surprise. Put the time in the training first, then start counting.

Further reading: The seven back-end KPIs of a coaching business · How to spot an at-risk client before they cancel

This week. Write a time next to every milestone in your program. Mark each active client on track or overdue against it, then count the overdue clients per stage. Rebuild the stage with the most first.