by Eric Dombach | How to Become a Business Coach
Today, I want to share with you what I think was the smartest thing I did when I started my own business.
No doubt you’ve heard lots of stories on the web from people telling you how they were down to their last penny, but splashed out on an expensive training program on their credit card and it was the making of them.
Now if that’s something you’ve done, then all power to you. And taking that kind of risk is fine if it’s just you. But when you have a husband or wife and kids, I don’t think going into debt to finance your dream is a smart move.
I think it puts too much pressure on you and it’s unfair to your loved ones.
(It’s also funny how the people telling you this magical story about them going into debt and it working out great for them always happens to have an expensive course they want you to buy on your credit card, isn’t it?)
While there are definitely people who’ve successfully been through this “debt to success” scenario, what we don’t hear from is the many people who did the exact same thing but didn’t make it and ended up in big financial trouble.
I followed a different path.
I decided I wanted to set up my own business in early 2007. But I didn’t just quit my job, load up my credit cards and start trying to make a go of it. I had a big mortgage to pay and my family to look after.
Instead, I made the decision, but knuckled down and kept going with my job for another nine months.
Three Key Ways to Prepare to Start Up
During those nine months I did three things.
First, I started putting money aside to make sure we had a safety net for when I did start up on my own.
Second, I started going to networking events and seminars where I met people who were already running their own businesses. In essence, I built my network and became part of the entrepreneurial community before becoming an entrepreneur.
And finally, I did a *lot* of reading.
I bought books on small business finance, law, bookkeeping, and of course marketing and sales.
I was working away from home during the week (one of the big reasons I wanted to quit and do my own thing) so I spent 3 or 4 hours almost every night with my head in a book learning what I needed to do to succeed with my own business.
Of course, you can’t learn everything from books: some things you’ve got to experience.
But it meant that when I did pull the trigger in November 2007, I didn’t have to waste time getting up to speed and learning the basics of business. Nor did I have to start from scratch with a business plan or the fundamentals of marketing and selling. I’d worked it all through in my evenings while still earning a salary.
Today, if anyone asks for my advice on quitting their job and starting a business I suggest they take this “less macho” route. Get everything sorted out in advance. Work extra shifts if necessary to make sure you have safety money for when you go it alone.
The “take a big risk” route looks great for the few who succeed with it and tell their exciting roller-coaster story later. But for a much more sure-fire route to success, follow my more conservative three-point plan.
You won’t come out of it with an exciting rags-to-riches story you can tell at conferences. But you will come out of it much more likely to succeed.
Ian Brodie helps consultants, coaches, and other professionals to attract and win more clients. He’s the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller Email Persuasion and has been named as one of the Top 50 Global Thought Leaders in Marketing and Sales and one of the “resources of the decade” for professional services marketing. You can get more of his in-depth tips on starting and growing your business at www.ianbrodie.com
by Eric Dombach | Business Coach Training
“What does the Brexit vote mean and how should business coaches respond to Brexit?”
This is the question I found myself asking on the morning after the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. I’m sure that many other coaches here in the UK and across the world were also considering the same question.
As I reflected on the question, the answer came instantly: look for the opportunities.
In the period leading up to the critical vote, the mood was one of uncertainty for both clients and coaches. Business owners were concerned about the order book, imports and exports, and access to capital. Coaches were worried about another recession, particularly when most of their clients were still weak and recovering from the last eight years!
Even now that the Brexit vote is confirmed, the media still insist on whipping up hysteria related to “destructive” uncertainty. But Brexit or no, the one thing we can all guarantee, without exception, is that change is the only constant.
And that’s the opportunity for business coaches.
Helping Clients Cope with Change
As coaches, the most significant thing we do is help our clients cope with change. We do this all the time. We’re already skilled at helping them deal with changes in team, money, and time. Well, now we can help them deal with the fallout of Brexit. Brexit gives us a massive opportunity to show our clients and prospects how to keep their heads and soldier on while the media spin a narrative of chaos and hopelessness.
It’s time to review our sales messages and Silver Bullets. Most importantly, it’s time to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes and show that we understand their concerns about Brexit—and what to do about it. We need to keep on top of the markets and other business trends and news. We must consider the impacts on our existing clients and suggest additional planning sessions to confront the new reality.
How Business Coaches Should Respond to Brexit
As a coach in the UK, I’m excited to help businesses respond to Brexit. Let’s make it a point to spread hope instead of fear. Let’s demonstrate to our clients that we can adapt to any situation, wherever in the world they work. Let’s lead and be seen as a steady resource of certainty in extremely uncertain times. Let’s grasp the opportunity ahead of us and shout from the rooftops that we are here to guide businesses through these troubled waters.
Every coach has an opportunity to quickly set themselves ahead of the competition by delivering a powerful sales message of hope, competence, and that with their coaching businesses can also make the most of the opportunities ahead.
What will your message be and how will you make an outstanding impact on businesses in the wake of Brexit?
Simon Meadows is the founder and owner of Sterling Business Coaching and a Certified Coaches’ Coach. He has more than 22 years of experience in business coaching, team performance management, and mentoring business coaches. He delivers impressive results when helping new business coaches get started using the Coaches’ Coach system, helping his business coach clients generate $100,000-$240,000 per year. Request a FREE Cash and Clients Strategy Session with Simon today.
by Eric Dombach | Business Coaching Tools
Here’s a business coaching question that comes up regularly. Many of your SME clients are looking to better leverage the “human cloud”–the pool of extremely talented subcontractors you can find online, from anywhere in the world, at a very reasonable price through services like Upwork.
The human cloud comes in handy when your clients need specialized services, such as digital marketing expertise, but don’t have the demand for a full-time position. Clients might also want to turn to the human cloud when they’re ready to hire administrative help. At the Coaches’ Coach, we’ve used virtual assistants for years to manage most of the day-to-day administrative tasks of running our business, such as processing payroll and creating weekly KPI reports.
How can you help clients successfully leverage the human cloud so that their contractors are integrated quickly, effectively, and successfully into their business practices?
Here are three principles to share with your business coaching clients.
Principle #1: Inspire
Most workers want to be a part of an enterprise that matters. Research suggests that the millennial generation, specifically, has a preference for social enterprises. Teach your clients the importance of the “triple bottom line“–a concern for making a profit while also caring for the needs of employees and the environment.
Your clients’ cloud workers are asking these questions: How is this company changing the world in a meaningful way? How are people’s lives improving because of what I’m doing? How are we caring for the environment in the choices we make?
To meet this challenge, encourage your clients to practice a very simple principle: INSPIRE. Here’s an easy way to do it. End each team meeting with an inspiring story, quote, or reflection that elaborates the social mission of the company. As the team disperses on a high note, triple bottom line aspirations will become deeply ingrained in the company culture.
Principle #2: Integrate
Bringing on new team members is challenging under the best of circumstances, but onboarding cloud workers requires an exceptional ability to INTEGRATE.
Here’s how to get it done:
Help clients create an environment that makes it socially and emotionally safe to take risks–and even make mistakes. Treat new cloud workers like bonafide team members. Invest the time to explain the vision, mission, and values of the company. Educate them on the annual and quarterly goals of the enterprise, and include them in team meetings. Encourage your clients to consider sharing their strategic and financial KPIs with cloud workers so the workers can see how they fit into the big picture.
Principle #3: Improve
Everyone wants to perform well and grow professionally. The opportunity to IMPROVE skills has always been one of the most desired traits by job seekers. Cloud workers are no different. Teach your clients to coach and invest in the development of their external experts.
Here’s a recent example. I onboarded a freelance writer to contribute to our content development efforts. In our first one-hour orientation meeting, I taught her how to source open-license photos online, rather than buying them from image warehouses such as Getty. She was delighted by this discovery, and I was thrilled to share this knowledge. I improved her career as a cloud worker by teaching her a money-saving technique. While I’m certainly not her only customer, and I’m probably not even the one who pays her the most, I do want to be on the top of the pile in her heart and mind. How can I do that? By helping her improve, even as she helps our business achieve its mission.
Help your clients develop the skills required to lead a globally distributed workforce by teaching them to inspire their cloud workforce to join a mission that’s worth their best effort; fully integrate them with the rest of the team so that they sense how critical they are to your clients’ success; and seize each interaction as an opportunity to improve their lives and careers.
Looking for answers to more of your most pressing business coaching questions? What about additional strategies that will keep your clients coming back again and again? Request a free, 30-day trial of our membership portal. Inside, you’ll gain access to our entire coaching framework and the proven strategies we teach that help coaches get results for their clients.
by Eric Dombach | How to Become a Business Coach
If you’re like many of the prospective coaches I talk to, there’s one thing that makes you hesitate to become a business coach: a real aversion to selling.
More than anything, you wish you wouldn’t have to sell your business coaching services at all, or continue to sell your clients on working with you once the ink on the contract has dried. You’re reluctant to spend time with business coaching prospects or at networking events. You long for business to just flow to you, naturally, without the hard work and effort sales requires.
But here’s the thing: In business, nothing good happens until something gets sold. And if you find you’ve got this kind of aversion to sales, not only will your practice struggle, but your clients’ businesses will struggle, too!
After all, every business you ever work with will need to improve their sales. It’s just a fundamental part of growing an enterprise. And if you’re not a sales master yourself, how can you ever expect to help your clients implement effective sales systems that will take them to the next level?
Adjust the Way You Think about Sales
So if you find yourself reacting to the world “sell” like you would locker-room language, it’s time to make some adjustments to the way you think of sales. Here are the three biggest…
1. Sales is about Service, NOT Manipulation. Perhaps the #1 complaint I hear from folks who want to become a business coach, but who struggle with sales, is that they don’t want to be manipulative or pushy. But this is only a problem if you’re not confident in your ability as a business coach. If the coaching you provide really does help people grow their businesses, then you are doing them a massive favor by offering them your business coaching services, one that will have a lasting impact on their business and quality of life! Remember: sales is NOT about getting people to do things that are bad for them against their will; sales is about motivating and encouraging people make positive improvements in their lives.
2. Rejection Doesn’t Have to Hurt. Nobody likes it when a prospect says “no,” but if you’re a service professional like a business coach, it can feel especially personal. Here’s the mental shift that will help you overcome this barrier: remember, sales is a numbers game. It’s NOT personal. It’s about math. Regardless of whether you sell 1 in every 5 or 1 in every 50 prospects, every “no” you hear is a step toward the next “yes.” Internalize this perspective, and you will reduce the sting you feel when you lose a sale, and replace it with something positive and motivating.
3. Sales is a Skill, NOT a Natural-Born Ability. Some prospective business coaches are convinced that they’re not naturally “good” at sales–and that there’s nothing they can do about it. But here’s a secret: no one is naturally good at sales! Sure, some have inherent personality traits that make them more comfortable, faster, in sales situations…but sales is a skill that virtually anyone can learn with the right blend of motivation and practice. Stop telling yourself you’re “bad” at sales and replace it with a positive reminder that you can master it, just like you would any other form of professional expertise or skill! It will change your outlook.
Looking for more help if you’re considering getting into the business coaching game? Download our free ebook, How to Become a Business Coach, and learn the skills and strategies you need to be successful in the industry!
by Eric Dombach | Business Coaching Tools
Looking for a business coaching tip to make your sales cycle shorter and help prospects see your value so clearly that they cut you checks on the spot? Here’s one of the biggest breakthroughs I had in increasing my sales conversion rates…
For my first few years as a business coach, I struggled with getting prospects to really understand that I could help them.
I had gotten fairly good at building rapport, sniffing out the problems in their businesses, and uncovering their emotional hot buttons. My remaining challenge was figuring out how to demonstrate my problem-solving value in such as way that they’d immediately know they had to hire me.
Then, one Saturday morning, as I was waking up, it dawned on me: most of what I did as a business coach was solving the same problems over and over in each of the businesses I coached. If I could assign compelling names to the solutions I helped them implement as a business coach, it would completely revolutionize my sales process! I jumped out of my bed and ran to my computer.
Two hours later, I had 21 “Silver Bullets” that addressed pretty much every small business problem I had ever encountered.
I organized all the solutions and training that business coaches provide into three “buckets:” time, team, and money.
Here they are…
Time Bullets
- Apprenticeship Plan
- Operations and Training Manual
- Time Management Plan
- Comprehensive Exit Strategy
Team Bullets
- Employee Acquisition Plan
- Psychometric Profiling Process
- KPI Measurement System
- Lean Manufacturing Program
- Performance Incentive Plan
- Strategic Plan
- Leadership Development Plan
- Team Meeting Rhythm
- Organizational Plan
- Team Building System
Money Bullets
- Current Business Plan
- Break-even Plan
- Revenue and Profit Plan
- Cash Gap Plan
- USP and Guarantee
- Sales Management System
- Tactical Marketing Plan
Why This Worked So Well
The beauty of this was that it turned business coaching into a tangible, describable set of processes that I could easily explain and–most importantly–sell!
For example, if I was in a conversation with a business owner who felt he was too busy to attend to the strategic matters that really create success, I would suggest to him that what he really needed was a Time Management Plan and Apprenticeship Plan and briefly explain how that would help him find the time to get the work done.
Or if a business owner shared that she had a higher employee attrition rate than she’d like, I’d explain that we would implement an Employee Acquisition Plan to be sure she hired the right people in the first place, and a Performance Incentive Plan to keep staff engaged and motivated.
It worked. As soon as I had specific, memorable descriptions for the work we’d do together, my sales conversion rate skyrocketed. Prospects could easily understand, and therefore visualize, how my coaching would revolutionize their businesses.
You can do the exact same thing. When you’re in a sales call or Complimentary Coaching Session with your prospects, first, ask a few open-ended questions to uncover pain in one of the three areas of time, team, and money. Then, discuss the Silver Bullets you’d implement to dramatically improve their situation. Make sure you shoot at least three Silver Bullets to demonstrate that you have solutions for their most pressing problems.
You can get our entire Silver Bullets Cheat Sheet–NO opt-in required–over on the downloads page. Have it handy when you’re on the phone with prospects or spend some time learning the information on the cheat sheet so that you can use them during face-to-face consultations. And then, if you want more in-depth training in the Silver Bullets, get a free 30-day trial to our membership portal and explore all 21 of them in detail. I think it will do for your conversion rates what it did for mine–so enjoy!
