Discover Your Coaching Niche

Archive for February, 2007

But how should coaches reach their clients?

Some coaches are finding that their current ways of finding clients are not as successful as they had hoped. Often this is due to coaches not spending enough time where their clients actually are.

Many coaches, for example, attend evening meetings attended solely by other coaches. While this may be a good way to acquire coaching knowledge, coaches are very unlikely to pick up new business at these events.

Coaches could, on the other hand, ask themselves:

• “Where do my target market congregate?”
• “Where do they meet up both offline and online?”
• “Which online forums and lists do they patronise?”

Each target market has shared interests, values and preferred ways of doing things. Each tend to be attracted to the same concepts and philosophies. They usually have shared development needs, based on common requirements for skills and knowledge.

This is especially true for those groups and associations that stipulate continuous professional development for their members. This all leads to particular target markets favouring specific online and offline meeting places.

Coaches need to be aware of these places, and make themselves visible in those locations. If you are close to the market, which you should be, these places will be easy to discover. Just ask three members of your target market where they go.

The bare minimum would be to sign up for the online forums and to join the relevant offline associations. A proactive coach would take it a step further by volunteering to help the administration of the relevant associations and being active and visible online.

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This marketing issue was mentioned sufficiently frequently to deserve its own section.

Coaches have a number of concerns with having a niche. Many coaches – more than two thirds according to research – do not have a niche, and many of these claim not to want one.

Some just do not know how to go about discovering their niche. As they are not clear on the first steps to take, they do not take action. The issue gets put on the back burner. And they continue without a niche and without focus for their coaching practice.

Others believe that if they specialise in one area, they will be excluding many potential clients. In fact, the reverse is true. Having a clear niche and target market makes you like a magnet – clients are drawn to you. And the message gets around a tightly defined market very quickly.

Even prospects who are not in your target market may either refer others to you, or may ask “I know you deal with clients in financial services, but do you deal with others?”

The key to discovering your niche is to look at two areas – you and your strengths and what potential market will value them. I spend time on my free Discover Your Coaching Niche Mini-Course helping coaches through this process. You can sign up for this mini-course free via http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

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If you ask a group of coaches, they will consistently cite getting new clients as the biggest problem in their practices. 

But why exactly do coaches have so much difficulty in this area?

BrandingYou! undertook research by asking practicing coaches what stops them getting new clients.  The coaches told us of seven main issues that come up again and again.  This article, spread over several posts, outlines those seven problems, together with suggestions for their resolution.

1. Problems with Marketing

Coaches tell us they have a number of different problems with marketing.

While no coaches believe that clients will just fall in their laps, many coaches starting out do not realise quite how much time they need to spend on marketing activities. 

A rule of thumb from experienced coaches is to take all the time you are not actually coaching, then spend 100% of that time on marketing.

Other coaches are unsure which marketing strategies are most effective for coaches, and expend energy and money on ineffective strategies.  Knowing which strategies are effective for the promotion of professional services is vital to the success of your practice. 

The kinds of promotion that work well in the mass market, like advertising in the media do not serve coaches well.  The good news is that other forms of promotion like networking, giving presentations or talks and writing articles do work well.

Some coaches have stated they dislike marketing activities to the point that they avoid them.  This may stem in part from the perception that they shouldn’t boast about their services.  Or that being seen as ’sales-y’ is a bad thing. 

But the fact is that no matter how good a coach you are, you won’t get any business if people don’t know about you.  And people will not know about you if you do not engage in effective promotion.

The key thing is to find the marketing activities that are compatible with the professional services you are offering, and that you enjoy doing.  That way you’ll be motivated to carry them out, and they are more likely to be successful.

The next post will focus on coaches not having a niche, and what you can do about it.

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