The Market Gap Finder: A Skill to Spot Underserved Coaching Demand

Most coaches choose their next offer by gut feel, then wonder why it lands in a crowded pool with three competitors already swimming in it. The expensive mistake isn’t a bad idea, it’s building for a problem that’s either too small to pay for or already solved by someone cheaper.

This skill turns that guesswork into a repeatable process. You give an AI your niche, your real competitors, and the actual phrases your clients use, and it returns a scored map of coaching market gaps: specific, painful, underserved problems you can credibly own. By the end of this page you’ll have the skill installed and you’ll understand the prompting principles that make it reliable, so you can adapt it instead of just copying it.

When to use this

• You’re planning a new program or signature offer and don’t want to compete on price.
• Your current offer sells, but slowly, and you suspect you’re aimed at a crowded problem.
• A competitor just launched something similar and you need to re-stake your claim.
• You’re niching down and want to pick the corner of the market with the most underserved demand.
• You have a pile of sales-call notes or a churn survey and want to mine it for what people actually want.

The skill

Paste this whole block into a ChatGPT Custom GPT’s Instructions field or a Claude Project’s custom instructions:

ROLE
You are a coaching market strategist. You help independent coaches find underserved demand: specific, painful problems a defined audience already has and is willing to pay to solve, that current offers in the market do not address well. You are sceptical, evidence-driven, and allergic to vague positioning. You never invent statistics or cite fake sources.

INPUTS
The coach will give you:
- Niche: {{NICHE}}
- Ideal client: {{IDEAL_CLIENT}}
- Current offers: {{CURRENT_OFFERS}}
- Competitors and alternatives: {{COMPETITORS}}
- Real client language: {{CLIENT_LANGUAGE}}
- Goal: {{GOAL}}

BEFORE YOU START
Ask me up to 3 clarifying questions, and only the ones that would most change your analysis (for example: budget range clients can spend, where they currently look for help, or which outcome they care about most). If the inputs are already clear enough, skip the questions and proceed.

PROCESS
Work through these steps in order. Show your reasoning briefly under each heading.
1. AUDIENCE PAINS. List 6-8 specific problems this ideal client faces, phrased in their own words. Pull from the client language I gave you; do not invent quotes.
2. EXISTING SUPPLY. For each main competitor or alternative (including 'do nothing' and 'free options'), note what it solves well and where it leaves the client unsatisfied.
3. GAP MAP. Cross the pains against the supply. A gap is a pain that is (a) real, (b) painful enough to pay for, and (c) poorly served by current options. Name 3-5 candidate gaps.
4. SCORE EACH GAP. Rate each candidate 1-5 on: Demand (how many clients feel it), Pain (how urgent), Willingness to pay, and Fit (how credibly I can serve it given my niche and current offers). Show the four scores and a total.
5. RECOMMEND. Pick the single best gap for my stated goal. Explain why it beats the others in 2-3 sentences.
6. OFFER SKETCH. For the winning gap, sketch one concrete offer: a working name, the transformation it promises, format and rough price band, and the one sentence of positioning that names the gap out loud.
7. VALIDATION CHECK. Give me 3 cheap, fast ways to test demand for this gap in the next 2 weeks before I build anything (e.g. a specific post, a 5-question survey, 5 conversations).

OUTPUT FORMAT
- Use the seven headings above, in order.
- Step 4 must be a markdown table with columns: Gap | Demand | Pain | Willingness to Pay | Fit | Total.
- Keep prose tight; use bullets over paragraphs.
- End with a one-line 'Honest caveat' naming the biggest assumption your analysis depends on.

RULES
- Never fabricate market-size numbers, survey data, or competitor revenue. If you don't know, say so and mark it as an assumption to validate.
- Anchor every gap to a pain from my real client language, not a generic industry trend.
- Prefer one sharp, ownable gap over a list of safe, crowded ones.
- No buzzwords. Be concrete enough that I could act on this tomorrow.

How to set it up

This is a skill, not a one-shot prompt, so you install it once and reuse it forever:

1. ChatGPT (Custom GPT): Click your name, choose My GPTs, then Create a GPT. In the Configure tab, name it Market Gap Finder and paste the full skill text into Instructions.
2. Claude.ai (Project): Create a new Project called Market Gap Finder, open Set custom instructions, and paste the full skill text there. Every chat in the project will use it.
3. Feed it evidence (optional but powerful): If you have sales-call notes, a churn survey, or DMs from prospects, add them to the Custom GPT’s Knowledge files or the Claude Project’s files. The skill will mine real client language instead of guessing.
4. Run it: Start a new chat, paste your six inputs, answer any clarifying questions, and let it work through all seven steps.
5. Keep it current: Re-run it each quarter or whenever a competitor launches something new, feeding in fresh client quotes each time.

Replace these tokens with your real details when you give it your inputs:

See it in action (full example)

Here is the exact set of inputs a career coach pastes after installing the skill. This is the whole input, nothing hidden:

- Niche: career coaching for mid-career women in tech
- Ideal client: women aged 35-50 who are stuck below director level, several of them after returning from parental leave
- Current offers: a 12-week 1:1 program at $4,500 and a self-paced course at $400
- Competitors and alternatives: two big-name career courses (generic, $1,000-ish), a free women-in-tech Slack community, and most clients just toughing it out alone
- Real client language: "I'm invisible in promotion rounds", "I don't know how to self-advocate without seeming pushy", "my manager likes me but never sponsors me", "I came back from leave and got quietly sidelined"
- Goal: one new signature offer I can launch in 90 days that doesn't compete on price

After one clarifying question (“What’s the realistic budget range these clients can spend out of pocket, versus what they’d need their employer to fund?”), the coach answers: “$500-$1,500 out of pocket; anything above that usually needs employer sponsorship.” Here is the complete output the skill returns:

1. AUDIENCE PAINS – “I’m invisible in promotion rounds” — they do the work but aren’t seen by decision-makers. – “I don’t know how to self-advocate without seeming pushy” — a confidence and scripting gap. – “My manager likes me but never sponsors me” — they have advocates but no sponsors with real pull. – “I came back from leave and got quietly sidelined” — re-entry after parental leave resets their visibility to zero. – They lack a documented record of impact when review season arrives. – They don’t know who the real decision-makers in calibration meetings are. – They feel time-poor: any solution has to fit around a demanding job and a family. – They distrust generic “lean in” advice that ignores the tech promo process.

2. EXISTING SUPPLY – Two big-name courses (~$1,000): Solve general confidence and interview skills well. Leave the client unsatisfied on the specific mechanics of the tech promotion/calibration process and on the post-parental-leave re-entry problem. – Free women-in-tech Slack: Great for solidarity and quick answers. No structure, no accountability, no tailored plan; advice is scattered. – Going it alone: Costs nothing up front. Leaves the client repeating the same missed promotion cycle for another 6-18 months. – Your 1:1 at $4,500: Excellent fit but priced above the out-of-pocket budget; effectively employer-funded only. – Your $400 course: Affordable but self-paced, so it has the same “no accountability” weakness as the Slack.

3. GAP MAP – Gap A: The promotion-packet system — nobody teaches the specific mechanics of building an impact record and navigating calibration in tech. – Gap B: Return-from-leave re-entry — the sidelining-after-leave pain is acute, time-bound, and addressed by no one. – Gap C: Sponsorship (not mentorship) — turning a friendly manager into an active sponsor. – Gap D: A mid-priced, accountable middle option — between the $400 self-paced course and the $4,500 1:1.

4. SCORE EACH GAP

Gap	Demand	Pain	Willingness to Pay	Fit	Total
A: Promotion-packet system	5	4	4	5	18
B: Return-from-leave re-entry	3	5	4	5	17
C: Sponsorship engineering	4	4	3	4	15
D: Mid-priced accountable option	5	3	4	5	17

5. RECOMMEND Gap A, delivered as a mid-priced group program, is the winner. It scores highest because nearly every client feels the promotion-visibility pain (high demand), you can credibly teach the exact tech calibration mechanics (high fit), and packaging it as a cohort solves your pricing gap (D) at the same time. Gap B is more acute but affects a smaller slice at any given moment; keep it as a bonus module.

6. OFFER SKETCH – Working name: The Promotion Packet — a 6-week cohort for women in tech aiming for their next level. – Transformation: Walk in with a documented impact record and a calibration-room strategy, so you’re discussed by name in the next promotion round instead of overlooked. – Format and price band: Live small-group cohort (8-12 women), weekly sessions plus a packet template and peer accountability. $1,200-$1,400 — inside the out-of-pocket budget, well clear of your 1:1. – Positioning sentence: “Most career advice tells you to be more confident. We build the promotion packet that gets you discussed by name in the calibration room.”

7. VALIDATION CHECK – Post your client’s exact words — “I’m invisible in promotion rounds” — as a LinkedIn hook this week and watch comments and saves. – Run a 5-question survey to your list: biggest promotion blocker, last promo cycle outcome, budget they’d spend out of pocket, preferred format, interest in a cohort. – Have 5 conversations with past 1:1 clients and ask: “If this had been a $1,300 group instead of $4,500 1:1, would you have started sooner?”

Honest caveat: This ranking assumes the out-of-pocket budget you gave ($500-$1,500) holds across your list; if most of your audience actually expects employer funding, Gap D’s pricing advantage shrinks and you should validate budget first.

That is a quarter’s worth of strategy work, and the table makes the trade-offs defensible instead of a hunch.

Why this works

Four prompting principles do the heavy lifting. Learn them and you can build skills like this for any decision:

1. Role priming sets the standard. “You are a coaching market strategist… sceptical, evidence-driven, and allergic to vague positioning” tells the model which mode to operate in. A sceptical strategist pushes back and ranks; a generic assistant cheerleads. The personality you assign in line one shapes every line after it.
2. Specificity in, specificity out. The output is only as sharp as the inputs. Feeding it real client phrases (“I’m invisible in promotion rounds”) instead of “my clients want growth” is what produces a nameable offer instead of mush. The skill enforces this by demanding you supply real client language and then forbidding invented quotes.
3. Constraints are quality control. The seven-step process, the scoring table, and the “never fabricate market-size numbers” rule each remove a specific failure mode. AI loves to confidently hallucinate a “$4.2B market”; the rule that it must mark unknowns as assumptions to validate is what keeps the analysis honest and usable.
4. A clarifying question beats a confident guess. The “ask up to 3 clarifying questions first” step is the single biggest upgrade. In the example, one question about budget completely changed which gap won. Without it, the model would have guessed, and you’d have built the wrong offer.

Do this now

1. Install the skill as a ChatGPT Custom GPT or a Claude Project using the steps above.
2. Before you run it, spend ten minutes collecting 4-6 real phrases your clients have actually said. This is the input that matters most.
3. Paste your six inputs, answer the clarifying questions honestly, and read the scored table.
4. Pick the top gap and do just one validation step from Step 7 this week before building anything.

Pro tips

• Feed it raw evidence, not summaries. Paste actual sales-call notes or churn-survey answers into the Knowledge/Project files. The closer to the client’s real words, the sharper the gaps.
• Re-run it for each competitor. Add a new competitor to the inputs and watch how the gap scores shift. It’s a fast way to pressure-test your positioning when the market moves.
• Challenge the winner. After it recommends a gap, ask “What would have to be true for this to fail?” The same sceptical role that found the gap will stress-test it.
• Keep the honest caveat. That final line names the assumption your whole plan rests on. Validate that one thing first and you de-risk the entire offer.

Related

• Run a Rapid Competitor Teardown of Three Rival Coaches
• Find Your Coaching Content Gaps: Competitor Topic Analyzer
• Validate a Coaching Niche Before You Commit Your Whole Brand
• Choose a Profitable Coaching Niche You Won’t Outgrow