The Only Two Paths to Becoming a Business Coach

by | Mar 19, 2016 | How to Become a Business Coach

Here’s a simple truth: there are only two paths to becoming a business coach. Over the past 15 years working with business coaches, I’ve seen this over and over again.

Those two paths? The LUMP-SUM path and the INSTALLMENT path.

Allow me to explain just what I mean by that…

On your journey to becoming a business coach, you will have to pay the price of prospecting and building relationships with business owners in your target area or niche. Regardless of how you generate leads–online, direct response marketing, networking events, or good old fashioned cold calls–following up and continuing to build relationships takes effort, energy, and time on the phone.

The question is: how will you pay the price?

Will you discipline yourself to spend as much time as required, creating a pipeline and following up with leads to develop two qualified sales opportunities per day? This is what I call the Installment Path.

Or, will you take the Lump Sum Path? This is the plan where you procrastinate doing the work of building relationships in favor of less important, but perhaps less intimidating, busywork tasks. Finally, your desperation FORCES you to either build relationships and make sales–or go broke.

There’s no way to be successful as a business coach without a relentless commitment to one-on-one relationship building and prospecting.

Why Prospecting Is a Necessary Part of Becoming a Business Coach

The fact is, becoming a business coach isn’t like buying a McDonald’s franchise. It’s a lot more fun and adds a lot more value to the world, but people don’t take your call or come running to your seminars with credit card in hand ready to buy business coaching just because you’ve suddenly started a coaching business.

We’ve got a long way to go before business coaching becomes as familiar as the golden arches! It takes time to build up local brand recognition in your market to the point where referrals just flow in from raving-fan-clients and strategic alliance partners, and you can sit back, fat and happy. But if you put the time in now, you’ll get there. And faster than you think possible.

Two Excellent Resources to Help You Master Your Prospecting Skills

Because prospecting is such an important part of becoming a business coach who earns in the six figures, we’re always on the lookout for resources that will help you become more successful. Here are two that can help:

  1. Even in our day and age, the telephone is still one of your most powerful prospecting tools. But there have been exciting technological developments over the last few years that allow you to avoid the tedium of dialing 25-30 times only to have 1-2 conversations. Now there’s a way to side-step answering machines and gatekeepers in order to have live conversations with real business owners. One of our Coaches’ Coach clients, Jonathan Goldhill, introduced us to this system because it’s been a game-changer for him. He averages 11 conversations a day with 38% positive outcomes, working 1.5-2 hours per day. Check it out! 
  2. If you need help developing your prospecting skills so you can be as effective and efficient as possible, request a free Cash and Clients Strategy Session with me or one of my Certified Coaches’ Coaches and let us know that this is a growth area for you. We’ll provide coaching to you in that session to help you grow your prospecting skills, whether or not you work with us further.

Remember, prospecting and building relationships are powerful skills to master on the path to becoming a business coach. The question for you is: will you take the Installment Path or the Lump-Sum Path? When you make a consistent practice of building relationships day in and day out, you set yourself above the competition and place yourself on the path to success.

More About Business Coaching

RESULTS