Definitions**
A client is the customer who receives your invoice and pays for your services. Your coachee is the person you coach. Your clients may be individuals for one-to-one coaching/mentoring or may be organizations enlisting your services for coaching, consulting, and/or mentoring individual employees and groups. In one-to-one coaching (sometimes referred to as one-on-one coaching) the client and the coachee are generally the same person.
A lead is a contact who sets you on a path of finding a prospective client, whether that client is an individual or an organization. That path may be short– your lead may turn out to be a potential client. The path might be a direct line– your lead may be the conduit to someone who is specifically and currently looking to hire someone exactly like you. Or the path may be circuitous– with the lead simply giving you a valuable starting point in building a road map to a client.
When referring to organizations, I include small and large businesses, either privately or publically owned; institutions such as hospitals, schools, and universities; associations, civic entities and other not-for-profit groups; and ad hoc groups such as councils and commissions. Note that government agencies require that coaches be International Coach Federation (ICF) certified.
When referring to the key decision-makers within organizations, I am pointing to the people with the ability to either make a hire (become the customer) or recommend a hire. Most often these decision-makers are human resource personnel, Principals, Chief Executive Officers (CEO), Executive Directors (ED), Chief Operations Officers (COO), or the business owner.
The Lead Hunt
The lead hunt is based on a fundamental premise that you have a fine-tuned specialty or niche service and can envision your target client population. The value of knowing your niche cannot be understated. For example, a coach who says, “I help raise the confidence level of people who breathe so they can lead fulfilling active lives” has a target population of essentially everyone on the planet. In contrast, a coach who says, “I help raise the confidence of people who have breathing issues such as asthma so they can lead fulfilling, active lives” has a clearly delineated customer for tailored coaching expertise.
Similarly, an executive coach/consulting coach whose practice “provides 360 degree and other assessments and brings forth the best technical and communication skills of each employee” has a target population of every business on any given street in the country. However, an executive coach/consultant whose niche is “serving mid-range size organizations who rely on the team-
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