Discover Your Coaching Niche

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As a coach you may already have been asked if you would coach a group of people together. These requests often come from those who have not been coached before, and who are seeking what they perceive to be a lower-cost option.

People making these requests are not aware that coaching is inherently a 1:1 modality and its success relies upon the:

• Confidentiality of client issues
• Coach focusing their attention on a single client and their issues and
• A deep and trusting relationship built between client and coach.

This means that coaching is badly handicapped in a group setting. In a group setting you can’t possibly do justice to each participant and the quality of your coaching work will suffer as a result.

Don’t Coach Groups – Facilitate Them!
However, if you have a group with a specific shared interest or shared problems, you can use facilitation as a means to explore and resolve their issues.

Beware, though! A number of people together in a room with no inter-relationships, no working relationships, or no shared problems is not a group. Run, don’t walk away from these assemblies.

What is Facilitation?
Facilitation does have some similarities to coaching, but the addition of group dynamics makes different interventions and different styles of working necessary.

“But isn’t facilitation a skilled job” I hear you ask? Yes, but there are some guidelines you can use to facilitate a group effectively. Use the POES structure (Purpose, Outcome, Evidence and Steps) I outline below adding facilitation to your skillset!

Know your Purpose
What is your Purpose in facilitating this group? If the person asking for your services cannot give you a clear, unambiguous purpose, or tell you who can, you’re wasting your time and theirs.

So know the purpose, and get it clear, or do not proceed. Questions to ask include “Why are we meeting today?” “What is the intention behind our session?”. A skilled facilitator I know well consistently refuses to facilitate a workshop unless it has a clear stated purpose.

Know the Outcome
Having established the Purpose, determine the desired Outcome. This is the required end result of the session. Having this specific can considerably shorten and focus workshops. And a clear, unambiguous outcome makes finding the means to reach it that much easier.

In this article, we’ve covered the Purpose and Outcome of the POES process.  In the next blog entry, we’ll cover the next essential steps of the POES structure, and ensure you’re on your way to becoming a top-flight facilitator!

Ever had an initial coaching session - or a discussion – with a hot prospect, yet they did not buy your coaching services from you?  “Why?” you ask yourself on the way home – “Why did they not buy?”

Well, there are many reasons prospects give, but they all boil down to a small number of situations.  Want to know what those are, and how to deal with them?

In order for a client to say yes to your coaching service, a number of things must be true.
The client must:

1. Be aware that your coaching service exists.
2. Be aware of the benefits of your coaching service.
3. Consider the benefits to be greater than their cost.
4. Be motivated to buy now.

Let’s examine these situations one by one.

1. Prospect aware that your coaching service exists

Some coaches get frustrated at prospects seemingly still not knowing exactly what coaches do.  Although it’s useful for prospects to be aware of what coaching in general is, it’s more relevant for them to be aware of YOUR coaching service. 

This means that your chosen communication medium must be capable of reaching your prospects, and that the message must be understandable to them.

Then your message has to be received and understood by your prospect. Ask yourself if you are consistently getting your message out to your target market.

2. Prospect aware of the benefits of your coaching service

Coaches tell us they often find it difficult to explain the value and benefits of coaching sufficiently to cause a prospect to convert to a client.  And when prospects are unclear about the offering, no sale will result.

But to become a client, your prospect must understand exactly what benefits they will see.  Remember WIIFM – what’s in it for the client?  What will they get, specifically, from your coaching services?

This article will continue with points 3 & 4 in the next post.

We found that part-time coaches and those who are starting to build their coaching practice mentioned this issue most frequently.  However, even some experienced coaches have difficulty balancing the time they need to spend marketing and the time they need to deliver their coaching services. 

The issue here is insufficient time to deliver coaching services AND to market those services.  The good news is that this is usually indicative of a growing coaching practice!

While the statement of the issue is straightforward, there are several possible root causes, and a corresponding number of solutions.  The specific solution for you will depend on the root cause of your insufficient time.

Ask yourself the following questions.

1. How am I spending my time currently?

Here, examine how exactly you are spending your coaching week.  Include your coaching time and leisure time.

2. What stops me from undertaking more marketing activities?

And no, it’s not “time”.  Once you identify what you’re doing that’s preventing you from marketing, you can take action on it.

3. Prioritisation – what should I be doing?

Coaches tell us that they benefit from considering the priorities in their lives, and how much time they are able to spend delivering coaching services and marketing.
 
4. Delegation and Outsourcing

Others can benefit from establishing which activities in their coaching, their marketing and their lives have to be performed by them, and which could be outsourced to other providers.

Want more help?

For those coaches wishing to examine this area in more depth, I have an article in www.ezinearticles.com called “Finding Time For Marketing! – How To Have Time To Market As Well As Deliver Your Coaching Services”. 

Summary

In this article I have outlined the seven main problems coaches have in getting clients.  There are solutions for each of these problems, and I have covered several suggestions used by experienced coaches.

Which of these could you implement in your coaching practice this week?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with the free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

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How do coaches find time to market when they are busy delivering their coaching services?  My research indicates that this one of the biggest problems faced by coaches in their practices.  And it’s particularly acute with coaches who are beginning to get clients.

When I asked coaches, they expressed the problem like this:

• “…creating a balance between spending time selling and marketing and actually coaching.”
• “Finding the time to win the business as well as deliver.”
• “…getting the ‘Marketing and doing’ balance right.”
• “Finding the time to do everything myself (produce product, market, deliver).”

You Must Market Your Coaching Services

Of course, unless we’re actively marketing, our flow of work is going to dry up.  So marketing is vital – it’s the lifeblood of our business.  If we are not working on our marketing every waking hour while we’re not actually delivering, what are we doing in business?

To paraphrase Dan Kennedy, from his book No BS Direct Marketing – “Your business is the business of marketing of your coaching practice”.

So we must deliver and we must market.  But how can we do both?  The challenge is to find the time to market while not spending money that start-up coaches simply do not have.

The good news is that this is not a new problem, and is common to consultants, therapists, trainers and solo entrepreneurs of all kinds.
So are there generic solutions out there that we can use?  If so, are these applicable to coaches, and are they affordable?

I’ll begin to reveal some practical, implementable solutions in the next post…