As an experienced business coach, you provide high performers with an “edge” in their chosen field. You’ll likely use fundamental “tried and tested” coaching principles in an attempt to achieve results, but are these results “exceptional” for both yourself and your clients? Or, are your coaching methods missing that little something to give your clients the edge they seek?
To ensure client success, make sure you’re covering these following keys to exceptional coaching results.
- Focus on the Fundamentals
When a business owner seeks out your coaching services, they’ve often read books, attended seminars and done a lot of research on successful business principles, but the one piece they’re often missing is the basic fundamentals of a successful business.
For a business to be a success, your client needs to understand the elements that form a traditional business: financial statements and credentials, business plans, taxation and accounting basics, success metrics, marketing and promotion, and investing. Then, outside of the financials, your client needs coaching to understand their ideal client – demographics, desires, needs, wants, and other important profiling fundamentals. To provide exceptional business coaching, your first session needs to start here.
- Allow Your Client to “Figure It Out”
Although, as a business coach, you’re getting paid to provide valuable insights and suggestions, don’t be too quick to offer your knowledge. Remember back to your pre-coaching days, and you’ll appreciate that, like your former self, most business owners have spent a lifetime taking pride in figuring things out on their own. If you – the calm, confident, and cocky “coach” – come flying in at top-speed to give them all the answers, you can imagine it’s probably not going to go down all that well.
Your job as a successful business coach is to teach your client, and guide them to a solution that has (likely) been staring them straight in the face. Through their limiting beliefs, their lack of understanding of values, and misconstrued assumptions, they may have been missing the bigger picture all along. But with your guidance, accountability, and gentle persuasion, you’re there to help them figure it out on their own.
- Understand Why They Are in Business
Not all entrepreneurs pursue business for the same reasons. Some do it for the money, some do it for the fame and recognition, and others do it because they’re tired of having a traditional boss. As an exceptional business coach, the key is to find out their “WHY”, and remind them of it every chance you get. Some reasons may be painful, and you may need to use your coaching skills in an effort to build rapport and trust with your client, so you can get to the root cause of their desire to do business for themselves. Take your time and delve deep to determine real motivating reasons and the effort will be well worth it, for both your success and the success of your client.
- Understand Their Business
Once you understand their personal motivation, you need to understand the purpose of their chosen business, and the model it mimics. Develop a questionnaire that has you spend time learning and understanding the type of business that your clients are in, and the service they currently offer – or can potentially offer – their clients. This is where you as the business coach, can offer huge value to your client, since they will likely never have heard a unique perspective like yours. See how their desires for being in business match their offering, and see how you can provide input based on your wealth of business experience from your past. Remember, in the end, your client will want to make money. Keep this at the forefront of your brainstorming and coaching efforts to achieve mutual success.
- Set Goals with Business Coaching Clients
One of the biggest shortcomings with the newly “self-employed”, is the drive, direction, and accountability that a boss provides. Think about it, would there be any deadlines in a traditional job if you didn’t have a boss screaming down a telephone demanding deadlines be met?
Your job as a business coach is to, temporarily, fill the no-boss void in the successful business dynamic. Work with them to set goals, deadlines, and milestones that ensure their success, and create a system that will remind them of those goals and hold them accountable. In the beginning, you will be the main port-of-call for your client. As an exceptional coach, it’s up to you to coach self-reliance, so that one day they can hold themselves accountable, understanding the crucial nature of this skill for business success.
Unlock Your Coaching Success
Exceptional business coaching starts with fundamentals, and through a thorough understanding of their needs, their business aspirations, and with some careful questioning, you can lead them to the business greatness they dream of.