Specific Feedback Is the New Differentiator (And Your AI Advantage)

Fifty coaches showed up to the live kickoff call of my Sell It Like You Mean It challenge. Every one of them could have asked ChatGPT to build a selling plan in nine seconds, for free. Most of them probably did. They came anyway.

That tells you what clients are actually buying now, and it is not information. Information is free. What nobody can get from a chatbot is specific feedback about their exact situation, in real time, from a coach who has been paying attention across three sessions in a row.

So today I am breaking down the gap between generic and specific feedback, why the generic version quietly costs coaches their renewals, and four low-lift ways to build specificity into every session. Our Best Damn Coach community holds an 82% renewal rate, and this skill is a big reason why.

Information used to be the product

You could buy the online course and get the steps. That was the whole value exchange. Now those steps sit in ChatGPT, YouTube, and a hundred free PDFs.

Some of the biggest names in this industry are walking away from digital course launches and repositioning themselves as coaches. My reaction was, well, of course. Did we not see this coming? If you already coach, you already have what everyone else is scrambling to build.

On top of that, we are in a trust recession. So the bar moved. Giving feedback is no longer enough. The feedback has to be unmistakably about that one client.

What generic feedback sounds like

Generic feedback is what AI hands you by default, because AI can only work with what you feed it. If you want specificity out of a machine, you have to do a mountain of input work first. Otherwise, it pulls from everyone else feeding the machine, and none of them is your client.

Templated programs produce it too. So do burnt-out coaches. I call it the filing cabinet teacher: twenty years in, same folder, same line every time. She is not listening anymore.

In practice, it sounds like this. Great job. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’d focus on mindset. Get more consistent. You’re almost there.

Both of my kids are deep in competitive sports seasons. When a coach tells them to work harder, their brain registers one thing: I am falling short. What they never get is what to change at Tuesday’s practice.

Vague feedback traces back to three things. Not understanding the client, not caring enough. Above all, not listening.

What specific feedback is

Specific feedback references your client’s own language back to her and names patterns across multiple sessions. Once you have worked with someone for a while, the same thing keeps surfacing. Naming it out loud is the job.

It gets built from four habits: taking real notes every session, remembering what happened last time, actually listening, and refusing to accept mediocrity in what you hand back.

Think about the doctor who glances at a chart, names a medication, and sends you home. Compare that to the one who reads the whole chart and says, “I noticed these three things; here is what I want you to do about each, and here is what we are preventing.” Same appointment length. Different experience entirely.

There is no certification for this and no magic sauce. It is reps.

Questions are the bridge to specificity

On day one of the challenge, a coach told me she helps women figure out what is keeping them stuck so they can move past it. I asked her to tell me more. Stuck at what, exactly? That one question moves her ten times further than me saying “Great, keep trying.”

Your nutrition client meal preps every Sunday and still is not losing weight. Instead of praising the behaviour and moving on, dig. Send me photos of your plates. Let’s track macros for two weeks. Then the feedback gets real: your portions are too large, your fat ratio is high, I want more protein at breakfast.

Or a client launches a freebie and reports that it is not working. Ask how many people landed on the page, then how many booked calls. If half of them booked, that is an average conversion rate, so the offer is fine and the traffic is the problem. Now the feedback becomes go add calls to action.

Specificity is the real difference between group and one-to-one coaching. It is why I build multiple touchpoints into the BDC every month.

Four ways to give specific feedback in every session

1. Mirror their words back

Say your money client cannot stop buying things on Amazon when she is sad. “I hear you” is not feedback. “What I am hearing is that shopping on Amazon when you’re sad is the thing that keeps getting you” is feedback. Use her words, not yours.

2. Name the pattern

Once you have heard it twice, say so out loud. I have noticed this keeps coming up. When you get sad, you buy things. Naming it turns a one-off confession into something you can both work on.

3. Say the uncomfortable thing

We are not our clients’ friends, and sanding down friction is not our job. So instead of “keep going, you got this,” ask what she thinks the underlying reason is, and why stopping feels hard. Then build the plan together. Not just close the laptop, but a journaling prompt every time the urge shows up.

Same move on the business side. When a client says her lead magnet is dead, ask when she last gave it a call to action. Watching someone realize she has not mentioned her freebie in thirty days is uncomfortable, and it is also the entire breakthrough. Then get specific: one email newsletter, two stories, one invitation in a Facebook group, this week.

4. Log the outcomes

Record what you assign and what happens next. A running note, a shared doc, whatever you will actually maintain. Your client needs to watch the wins stack up, and you need the data to keep naming patterns accurately.

Every session should end with your client knowing her exact next action. “Keep doing what you’re doing” is fine if the goal is staying the same. Nobody hires a coach to stay the same.

Make specificity part of your marketing

This skill doubles as proof. Write case studies naming the problem your client walked in with, the questions you asked, and the change you handed back. Post about it. Say it on sales calls.

Then push one layer deeper by teaching clients to do it themselves. Ask what they think would help them execute, and add the word specifically to the end of the question. That single word forces an actionable answer instead of a vague one, in any niche.

Inside the BDC, the coaches showing up consistently and asking for feedback are getting ten times the results of the ones who stay quiet. This is why so many ask to add a monthly one-to-one session. Specific feedback is what your clients crave from you, and it is the fastest route to their results.

Connect with Me

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If this episode shifted something for you, send it to another coach who needs it. Until next week, go coach em up.