Archive for September, 2008
ICF Helps with Business Development
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a fairly new development in the International Coach Federation (ICF) where there is finally recognition of the need to support coaches more in the development of their coaching businesses. One evidence of this understanding is the formation of a Special Interest Group (SIG) for business development. The group formed in July and has a monthly call on the first Wednesday of each month at 4:00pm eastern time. All calls are open to all members of the ICF.
This month’s featured speaker is Laura Howard West, PCC who is calling her presentation “Creating Your Business Attraction Success Plan”. The subject matter will combine using the principles of the law of attraction with the tools of smart business practice. This I want to hear! My hope is that there is more than a passing nod to the business practice part – we’ll see.
In order to register for the call and get the phone number and pin, you will need to go to the ICF website. Click the Current Members section, then click Find a Special Interest Group, finally click the Business Development group. If you are not an ICF member, there is a public site where links are being posted to recordings of past calls. Click here to hear Robert Middleton, Elinor Stutz or the very first SIG call explaining the purposes of the group. The Robert Middleton call was especially filled with good, basic information.
Informal Marketing at Presentations
Posted by: | CommentsWhenever you have the opportunity to be a presenter to a group of people, you can use the event as a business development tool. You can very informally help your audience know what you do and what your business is about.
The first and most obvious way to do that is with some marketing materials about your business. Have fliers that describe your work and place them in each seat before the presentation; if folks leave them behind, just gather them up to reuse them. Make sure to have plenty of business cards with you and even write about your free offer and where to get it on the back. Always make sure that all your contact information is on every page of every handout that you give related to the presentation.
If you are introduced at the event by someone else, find out if you can write the introduction. Make sure to include info about your coaching business in the written material or if you tell about yourself. At some point during the presentation, make sure to talk about coaching. People love anecdotes and if you can tell a few clients stories – carefully made confidential – then you will get people interested in your work.
Consider having an evaluation form for your presentation to get feedback on what other information people would have liked to hear, what helped them most and other pertinent questions. You can ask on this form whether people are interested in further information, would like an initial coaching session or would like to be placed on your mailing list. Sometimes I even use this form to have a little drawing for a door prize and only the people who evaluate the session get into the drawing. This can directly bring you clients and indirectly helps you know what the problems and needs are in your niche.
Finally, if you are trying to grow your business, every presentation that is over 90 minutes in length should include a coaching demonstration. There is no better way to get people to want to work with you than to see you in action. No matter what your subject matter, the audience members are struggling with it or they wouldn’t be in attendance. There will almost always be an eager volunteer. This situation lends itself to a 10-15 minute demo with a few minutes of processing with the group. Many coaches are anxious about demonstrating in front of a group, but you will be more critical of your skills than the audience will be. It is too valuable a marketing and learning tool to be avoided because of your nervousness.
Go ahead and find yourself some presentations to do. Make careful plans on how you will maximize your exposure from that event. Make each event be a tool for developing your business another step.
100 Days of Business Development
Posted by: | CommentsToday is an important day on the calendar because there are just 100 days left in the year. Did you hear about the widely publicized 100 day countdown to the Beijing Olympics? Same idea, but with a coaching twist. Many coaches talk about this as a great day to target a new project and get it started. The 100 day interval is manageable, track-able and long enough to see some substantial results. I am issuing you a coaching challenge in honor of the 100 days remaining of 2008. Do one business development task each day for each of the 100 days left in the year. Just one. By the end of the year, you will have made important progress in developing your coaching business.
Now, I realize this can be a tough challenge. For many coaches, discouragement comes when an action doesn’t bring quick rewards. You try something earnestly, putting lots of effort into it and realize after a few weeks that it doesn’t seem to have made a difference. So you move on to try another new thing that you heard works really well. If this is your pattern for the next 100 days, you will be no further ahead at the start of 2009 than you are now.
What I would like you to do for the first week of the challenge is to make your business development tasks about planning. Make sure your business vision and mission are solid, tweak your niche definition if necessary, review your business plan for 2008 and your marketing plan. Only then should you decide what you will be doing over the course of the remaining days. Instead of thinking about the new clients you want to get in the next 100 days, I strongly suggest you look at how to lay the foundation now for a business boom in 2009. What do you need to put in place to make that happen? Do you need new products? Your first product? A great free product? How will you take people on your list and continue to meet their needs? How will you know what their needs are?
You can make the changes in your coaching business over the next 100 days that will make 2009 your best year yet. Let’s get to work and keep plugging at it every day. Please leave a comment here if you decide to take the challenge – we all will be cheering you on!
Last Word on Business Planning and Development Call
Posted by: | CommentsThere was a recent call on business development for coaches by Candia Dye and Patrick Williams of the Institute for Life Coach Training. I wrote about this previously (here and here) but wanted to provide you with the link to the recording of the call. Please go here to listen in.
The Gift of Coaching
Posted by: | CommentsThere was a major announcement in the world of coaching this week. On the anniversary of the September 11th attack and in relation to Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s joint initiative called Service Nation, there was an announcement for a new program, still under development, called the Gift of Coaching. Developed by the Harnish Foundation and others actively involved in serving others, the purpose of the Gift of Coaching is to ”unite coaches, to ask them to look beyond their coaching affiliations and come together to celebrate the gifts that we bring to others through pro-bono coaching. ”
The Gift of Coaching will be a clearinghouse to connect coaches who offer their services of pro-bono work to clients who might otherwise not be able to access coaching. In addition, The Gift of Coaching will be a forum to “show the world the magnitude of the gifts that coaches are giving”. To both of these ends, I strongly encourage you to register with the Gift of Coaching whether you already are providing pro-bono coaching or would like to do so in the future.
Please visit http://www.gift-of-coaching.com/ to read more and to register. Although there is not a lot of information now on the site, there is a link to a long video which explains more. Please pass the word along to the coaches in your network about this new initiative. I challenge all my fellow entrepreneurs – even those just starting to develop your coaching business – to include pro-bono work in your business plan and to do it through the Gift of Coaching. Help us make a difference and show people the difference coaching makes.
Keeping Your Email out of the Junk Folder
Posted by: | CommentsToday’s tip is thanks to Kathy Mallory who sent out a link to the MAPS guidelines. MAPS is a major anti-spam blacklist service and this site will give you lots of information on how to insure the emails from your coaching business are being delivered to their intended recipients.
The mailing list of a coaching business is one of the most valuable assets and you want to make sure you manage yours correctly. The purpose of the MAPS site is to give you guidelines for managing your mailing list to avoid the common traps that can get you into trouble. One of their first reminders is that all traffic on the internet flows by mutual agreement. The site goes on to list ways to ensure that you meet regulations concerning email and even several ways to determine that you have valid addresses on your list. Every coaching entrepreneur would do well to spend a few minutes learning some of the information MAPS is providing on this site.
FaceBook Marketing for Coaches
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a lot to be learned in the world of FaceBook. I started weeks ago and am just feeling like I understand what to do there. I have attended several teleseminars on using FaceBook effectively in the past month and thought I should report in on some of what I have discovered to help you as you grow your coaching business.
The first thing to remember about social networking sites in general and FaceBook in particular is that they are first and foremost social sites. The site was built and flourishes on the idea that people are looking for relationships and interaction with others. Gen Y members, the originators of social networking, do not react well to overt sales campaigns and so these are not appropriate on FaceBook. Success for your coaching business on FaceBook seems to be about walking a fine line. You do want to present yourself as professional and on target with the brand and message that you want. However, you must put yourself into the mix – your personality, style, sense of humor, hobbies, etc. You are connecting in this medium by developing real relationships.
You can also do promotion in FaceBook if you stay on the fine line. It seems the best way to do this is to start either a group or a page. Profiles are the way an individual is listed on Facebook; pages are intended for the description of a business or product. Once you have your page, then you can notify your friends to check it out. If they join the page, they become “fans”. What you do not want to do is spend lots of your time posting messages about your business. It is fine if it fits a conversation within a particular group and if you are sure to include helpful ideas in addition to the promotion.
Another safe way to promote on FaceBook is through the events function. For example, if you have an upcoming teleclass, you can announce it as an event. Everyone that agrees that they will go to your event will be sending a notice automatically to their friends about the event. This will help spread the word quickly. FaceBook marketing always occurs this way – through relationship.
I have learned a great deal about FaceBook and am excited about the possibilities there. I have discovered the learning curve is steep though and it is best to proceed carefully. One great resource is Jason Alba who may be the King of Facebook and in particular his blog, FaceBook Advice.
Please post here any great FaceBook tips you have or just your experience as we move into the age of social networking.
One Page Business Plans and the Institute for Life Coach Training
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Coaching Support Groups
Posted by: | CommentsCoaching support groups provide the budding entrepreneur with ideas, accountability, support and increased chances for success. If you are in the growing stages of developing your coaching business and finding yourself struggling, you may be the perfect fit for a coaching support group. These groups are a proven way for coaches to achieve increased success. Held virtually, the group helps you to increase your accountability in business matters, explore business ideas in depth, have a safe place to increase your confidence as an entrepreneur and develop relationships with other supportive coaches.
Here are some comments from support group members in groups that I run -
“Participating in the support group has definitely kept me in action and helps me to feel a sense of accomplishment as I build my coaching business.”
“The group has been a safe place to experiment with ideas and learn how to grow my coaching business.”
“Whenever I have a question in my coaching work, it is comforting to know that I have a forum of supportive colleagues where I can discuss it and get good, always helpful feedback.”
“It is inspiring and encouraging to hear what others accomplish. I learn from their breaking what they do down into steps and from the solutions they find for the problems they encounter. I find myself prepared when I get to a similar point.”
“Our support group rocks.”
Currently, I have openings in a support group which meets every other Wednesday afternoon at 1:00-2:00pm eastern time. A low monthly fee covers the cost of the group. If you are ready to get the support you need for your coaching business to grow and can make a commitment to this group, please send me an email at janet@lifeadventurecoaching.com.
This may be just what your coaching business needs.
Strategic Thinking for Coaches
Posted by: | CommentsRegular readers know that I have been studying and learning about social networking for coaches in the past month (read previous post here). The more I learn about the subject, the more it reminds me of the need for strategic thinking before plunging into a new marketing avenue. So today’s post is about strategic thinking – what it is, why it matters and how to do it.
Strategic thinking is all about mindset and how you approach the running of your coaching business. It is the idea that you have a vision as an entrepreneur and take the time to develop a plan on how you will get there. First, this means you focus on the long term and not just short term issues. This requires you to think about your business as a system. Each decision is impacting other decisions and so to be effective you must have a handle on the big picture. When you think strategically, you carefully assess resources, weaknesses and opportunities for your business and base your plan on this analysis. If your plan is developed strategically, it also includes the concept of leveraging – how to use what you have for maximum effectiveness.
This type of thinking utilizes the best of both sides of your brain. You must be able to be creative and intuitive in deciding where you want to go and how to get there. At the same time, it is important to be able to analyze the path, make regular reviews and take stock of true progress of your coaching business so you can make appropriate course corrections.
Strategic thinking is about finding the best possible answers for the actual conditions you find yourself in. It is vital to be able to bounce ideas off others, both trusted advisors and members of your target market, in order to succeed. Strategic thinking involves the careful application of your best hypotheses about success. You must be able to examine your assumptions, question your belief systems and be open minded to new and different ideas in order to do this. The growth of your business will be more rapid if you make input from informed others a large piece of the process.
Strategic thinking requires time and effort and so it is often a neglected area for the busy professional. It is easy to overlook planning or let it get put on the back burner because of urgent matters. Instead, put your strategic planning time into your calendar in pen – don’t allow anything else to get in the way. No matter who that successful person is that you admire in your field, I can guarantee you that they have achieved success because they had a goal and a game plan on how to achieve it. Success does not come from shots in the dark; success comes from having a blueprint and the wisdom to adjust it when needed.
