Discover Your Coaching Niche

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In the first part of this article, we looked at the first three mistakes coaches make when networking.

These were:
1. Not taking your business card
2. Not having a concise answer to “so what do you do?” and
3. Networking with coaches

Let’s continue with the next most common mistakes…

4. Not Being Clear on Who Your Target Market Are

This will kill you quicker than anything else. If you’re not clear on your target market – your niche – you will attract no-one. You’ll end up attending random “networking” events where the likelihood of finding a match with your services is remote.

So before you start planning your networking, get clear on your coaching niche. Then ensure you go to events attended by your target market!

5. Premature Selling

Let’s be clear about what networking is all about. It’s not about you delivering your sales pitch. It’s not even about getting a client at that event. Really. It’s about understanding the needs of the person in front of you and building a relationship.

It may turn out you have nothing relevant to offer them. That’s OK. You may know other resources you can recommend to them – and if you do, be sure to share.

6. Not Making Notes

When you meet a likely prospect, take their business card. Let’s assume you’re getting on well, and there seems to be a match with what they want and your services.

Ask if you can call them in a few days to outline your services in more detail. Write on the card when they’re happy for you to call them. Then make sure you call them then.

This article will continue in the next post.

Technorati Tags: coaching marketing, discover your coaching niche, promotion

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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In the last two posts we have been outlining the seven reasons why, as a coach, you must niche.  This post continues with reasons 6 and 7.

Reason 6. Your positioning and pitch are easier

Your pitch for what you do is easier when you’re a specialist in a niche. As you have focus, and you know what the issues in your client’s niche are, you can readily articulate both the common problems and your solutions.

Your pitch is more relevant to your market as you give exactly what is needed, no more, no less. And as a result, you’re more likely to get excellent client satisfaction ratings, which help with testimonials and referrals.

Reason 7. Coaches who niche simply make more money

If the previous points have not been persuasive enough, here’s the kicker. Coaches who have a clear niche make more money, have fuller practices and find it easier to get new clients.  One of the highest paid coaches in the world is Chris Barrow, who focuses on teaching dentists how to make more money in their dental practice.

He has one focus, and that’s where all his effort is expended.  And his clients reward him as a result.

Bonus Reason

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You may have noticed that when you niche, all the above reasons work synergistically in your favour.

When you know your clients’ biggest problems a number of things happen. You appear intuitive and well organised. When you can reel off the top five problems your client is likely to experience, you immediately increase your authority and standing.

When you know your clients’ problems you can more easily create products and services to help them. Having these products and services available makes promotion and PR easier still.

And more PR opportunities result in more exposure for you, further increasing your credibility. Introductions are easier if your clients have already heard about you.

All of this supports your getting more coaching business. And that’s why we’re here, is it not?

Summary

The last few postings have described the seven reasons that you must have a coaching niche.

The question is, are you going to make the most of these benefits by identifying a coaching niche and making your own? What actions are you going to take over the next thirty days to bring this about?

About this article

This article is now featured in the EzineArticles.com directory, where I am proud to say I have Expert Author status.

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

In the last post we began outlining the seven reasons why you must niche.  This post will continue with reasons 3-5.

Reason 3. You will get credibility fast

You get more credibility when clients feel you understand where they are coming from.  When you can show you understand their problems, you are part way to helping them resolve them.  And when you have solutions to their typical problems, you will also get known for your approach and solutions. 

Then people will refer other potential clients to you.  People talk – especially satisfied ones.  When you provide an excellent service to someone they will pass on your name.  When you couple these facts with a small, focused community, your reputation will spread rapidly amongst your target market.

Reason 4. You will get a name as a specialist

As a coach, you want to be the first person your clients think of engaging.  Getting a name as a specialist or expert within a community is an excellent way to accomplish this. 

After all, everyone wants to work with a specialist, not a generalist and people like recommending specialists.  Think – would you want your local GP or a heart specialist to perform open-heart surgery on you? 

Reason 5. Promotion is easier

Promotion is much easier when you have a niche.  Both word of mouth promotion and PR are more likely as there is an angle.  The press, as well as clients, like to label people and companies.  If they can label you in relation to your niche they will remember you – and so will their readers.

This article will continue in the next post.

So you’re a coach, and while you probably don’t have as much business as you’d like, why on earth should you have a niche?

We already know that vast majority of coaches do not have a specific market niche. We can speculate that there are a number of reasons for this. One could be due to coaches’ desire for variety and options – having a niche might seem to restrict our options.

As coaches we also don’t like the thought of closing down possibilities – and selecting a niche seems to do just that.

But the truth is very different.

There are seven clear reasons for having a specific, defined niche. Read on to discover what these are – I’ll cover the first two below.

Reason 1. You will get known fast

When you have a niche, as you’re not serving a mass market, you will get known by the smaller community faster.

Smaller, specialist communities are tightly-knit – they typically have a rich networks of communication links. So when you’re a coach with a niche, members of that niche get to know about you rapidly.

Reason 2. You’ll know what your clients’ problems are

In a diversified mass market, clients have many different problems. Mass market coaches are therefore unlikely to be able to predict the type of problem a potential new client may have.

As niches are homogeneous and focused, you can quickly identify the biggest problems faced by that niche. So you can spot what your clients need faster, and be able to clearly articulate these needs.

This is an extract from an article of mine that will be published in the ECI Newsletter, which is distributed to members of The European Life Coaching Institute. You can subscribe to the newsletter via this webpage:

http://www.europeancoachinginstitute.org/subscribe.php

 

 

The benefits of having a coaching niche are significant and act to leverage your marketing efforts across the board. Your positioning is clearer, your services are more targeted, PR is easier, referrals are more common, word of mouth marketing and testimonials are more likely – in a word, all of your marketing efforts have a more clearly defined focus.

And they all point in the direction of getting more business.

So, if you could have the benefits I list in this podcast, wouldn’t you want to have your own coaching niche?

Have a listen to this list and ask yourself – “Given these benefits, what would having a coaching niche do for me, personally?”.

Nicheing Workbook

And if you’re still struggling to find your niche, perhaps you’d benefit from my instantly downloadable workbook – The Branding You Workbook – which is available here:

Branding You Workbook

Niche Benefits Podcast

This is a podcast from my recent teleclass – Discover & Reach Your Coaching Niche, focusing on the benefits of having a coaching niche.

I’m currently sharing the four secrets of Discovering Your Coaching Niche with you.

The first two secrets come from within you; the second two come from the market.

In the last post we talked about the fourth secret to Discovering Your Coaching Niche. That was to discover where you can make money.

So are you ready to put it all together?

Putting it all together

In order for our coaching practices to succeed, we need to understand and overcome the most fundamental coaching marketing problems. We need a clearly defined coaching niche and target market.

To achieve this, we as coaches need to leverage all four secrets revealed in this blog. We need passion, knowledge, skills and experience, a market for our services and clients prepared to pay us. If we fail to exploit all four secrets, we will not be as successful as we could be. And we may not realise our true potential as coaches.

These blog articles have described the four secrets to discovering your coaching niche – which ones can you start to work on today?

Discover Your Coaching Niche Teleclass – Replay

To really get a helping hand to Discover Your Coaching Niche, why not listen to me, Alun Richards, in my recording of my recent teleclass.  Access to the replay is here: http://www.askalunrichards.com . 

Just leave me a question about Discovering Your Coaching Niche and you’ll be taken straight to the replay page.

I’m currently sharing the four secrets of Discovering Your Coaching Niche with you.

The first two secrets come from within you; the second two come from the market.  The second two represent the pull from the market, the first two are the push from your business.  These two forces need to be in balance.  We’ll talk about that more in the next post.

In the last post we talked about the third secret to Discovering Your Coaching Niche. That was to discover where there is a market. That way your coaching practice is viable.

So are you ready for the fourth secret?

Secret 4 – Discover where you can make money

In order for our coaching practices to succeed, we must be able to make money. Clients must be prepared to pay for our services. We coaches do the world no favours by under pricing our services for clients who do not really value them.

So, have you established whether your target market has the money, and is prepared to spend it? If not, could you take your services elsewhere – where they are valued?

If your target market has problems that are costing them significant amounts of time or money, then it’s likely that they will be happy to pay to resolve them.  So it’s your  job to discover those problems and provide solutions to them. 

Coaching Niche Teleclass

To really get a helping hand, why not check out the recordings of my teleclass - Discover and Reach Your Coaching Niche. You can access the recordings here: http://www.askalunrichards.com .

Last night I hosted a Discover Your Coaching Niche Teleclass. Coaches joined me to uncover the secrets of discovering your niche, and to have their questions about finding your niche answered.

I’m finding that a benefit of teleclasses are that they are an interactive medium that facilitates dialogue and the answering of questions. This allows a teleclass to be tailored to the needs of the specific participants – and this makes it a valuable training and education tool – given that attendees don’t even have to leave their homes.

I recorded the session, and the complete audio will be published on my webpage http://www.askalunrichards.com in the next few days. In the meantime, here is a taster of the session for my blog readers – the introduction to the session. I’ll be adding more extracts here in the near future.

I’m currently sharing the four secrets of Discovering Your Coaching Niche with you.

The first two secrets come from within you; the second two come from the market.

In the last post we talked about the second secret to Discovering Your Coaching Niche. That was to have a niche that is relevant to your knowledge, skills and experience. That way you get credibility.

So are you ready for the third secret?

Secret 3 – Discover where there is a market

It’s no use fishing where there are no fish – you won’t catch anything. Likewise, it’s no use coaching where there is no ready market. Many coaches select a market that is too small to support their services, or a market that is not really interested in their services.

If you select a market that’s too small, your coaching practice will not be viable. Is there a really a market for your services? Are there enough potential clients in that market? How do you know?

Also, if you’re offering services that the market is not interested in, you will get no take-up. There’s another fishing analogy here – ask yourself what bait am I using? The bait I like, or the bait my market likes? What will your market go after – what services do they want and need?

Discover Your Coaching Niche Teleclass

To really get a helping hand to Discover Your Coaching Niche, why not join me, Alun Richards, on 21^st November, 2006 at 8pm GMT (12pm Pacific, 3pm Eastern) for a free teleclass. Sign-up details are here: http://www.askalunrichards.com .