Coaching success is skills plus marketing plus conviction
Ted was so excited after finishing his coaching programme. He was on top of the world, delighted that he was now a professional coach.
He could now do what he could not do before. He even left his full-time job and was looking forward to the "world of coaching opportunities" awaiting him. He was anxious to recover the money he had invested in becoming a coach.
So he went around for the first two months telling his friends and colleagues about what he had done and asking them to recommend clients to him. Except for a little free coaching he did for some curious people who wanted to know what he had done, nothing much really happened. The two-month business drought became six months and then a year. Finally reality set in that his fortunes were much the same as before.
There are many people like Ted who have all the qualities and skills of a good coach, yet face huge problems getting into a good coaching business. So what actually goes wrong?
I have coached many of them, and what I draw from all these sad cases is a combination of factors: the lack of an appropriate pitch, weak marketing and the lack of mental strength to push through when the going gets tough. Let me explain this in a little more detail.
Going around telling people that we are coaches is not good enough. First, many still do not know what a coach is and, more importantly, what exactly they do. So to start with, having a more defined niche will communicate better; for instance, the title "career success coach" will communicate better than just "coach".
The next important question is whether there really is a demand for such a coaching service. If there is, then the next important consideration is whether it is sufficient to pay all our bills with decent profits to take home at the end of the month. It is always prudent to do sufficient research to find out whether a compelling demand exists for this coaching service and whether the right type of market exists for it.
Often coaches get more excited about what they have to offer than the people they want to reach out to. When this happens, they usually end up at the same point where they were at the beginning. Remember, it is about us fulfilling customers' needs rather than fulfilling our dreams (of what we think customers want) that makes the difference between success and failure.
Then there is always the very important factor of how the coaching service is being marketed. Just telling our friends, knocking at doors, blindly sending out e-mails and giving our service for free are not going to do the job either. Creativity and smartness have to be embedded into our communication of its features and benefits to not just any audience, but the right audience.
In a world of information overload, using conventional methods is likely to fail, as they will bore and even irritate many people who have already been fed the many common tactics used by most vendors. So if we cannot make a difference here, then it is likely that our hard work will end up in ashes.
Finally, even with doing all the right things, there will still be many challenges along the way that will test our conviction and self-belief about our actions. Here is where both our persistence and perseverance are needed.
For the bold-hearted, there will be a prize waiting for you at the end of the journey. If not, quitting the scene is a natural thing to do.
Aren't all these tips the same when we support our clients? Isn't this good for us to have a taste of our own medicine before we give it to others?
Corporate Coach Academy is a school in Asia that certifies leaders of all backgrounds to become manager-coaches or professional coaches. Log in to www.corporate-coachacademy.com or e-mail contact@corporate-coachacademy.com for details.