Choose the right coaching clients

As you develop as a business coach you will start to wonder why most business owners grow their business to a certain size and then get stuck whilst a few are able to create scalable businesses that go on to employ many people. Opinions as to the reasons for this will differ from coach to coach but here are my thoughts:

  1. Some business owners do not have growth as an objective. They have no external shareholders to satisfy and are focused on their lifestyle.
  2. Some business owners would like to grow but do not see the return justifying the effort required.
  3. Some business owners have the ambition and drive but do not have the required capabilities, which might include emotional intelligence, self-awareness, credibility in the eyes of their staff, intelligence (or at least the ability to generalise from the specific), creativity, vision, communication, commercial nous, courage – and just being organised.
  4. Some business owners have the capabilities but don’t have the tools, such as understanding strategy, planning, marketing, finance, structure, process, motivation and so on.

As a management consultant and coach working with business owners you need to understand that you can only really help those few business owners who get past level 3 on this scale – let’s call it the Goal-Drive-Capability-Knowledge Scale (TM). It can be demoralising wasting time wrestling with clients who are, and will remain, at lower levels.

If you are a business coach whow works with, or would like to work with, Level 3 and 4 business owners then you might be interested in this system for building your coaching business.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get your clients to let go of the tools

Image
Here is a problem your clients will raise regularly.  They know they need to make the changes you are suggesting - but they can't find the time. They might say they have made little progress on systemising their business because they have spent so much time working on projects/jobs/sales/etc (even though they employ people to do these things). When you challenge them on this you'll get some or all of a) their employees made mistakes, b) your client does a better job than the employees and c) they enjoy doing this technical work. Probably there will be a complaint about the hours they are woring mixed in there as well.. They might talk about sub-contracting and the benefits of using third-parties who work to a fixed-price and "don't need motivating". They may end up saying something lame about wanting to make their business systemised and scalable but needing to "get over this busy period and then I can set some time aside for this."
Read more

Adding business coaching to your service portfolio

Image
If you are an established professional advisor, such as an accountant, HR consultant, life coach or marketing consultant, you are ideally placed to add business coaching and consultancy to your service mix. You already have a client base of business owners who trust you and listen to your advice.  These people already talk to you about some of their problems, and you can see some problems that they are not aware of or don't talk about.  You already have the skills of questioning and listening that are at the heart of any form of coaching. Business owners are seeking more advice in these challenging times and while this offers you an opportunity to step up and provide that advice it also presents a risk to your existing relationship if your clients start to bring in other advisors.  Pre-empting that by starting to broaden out the advice you give to clients is pushing at an open door - and means your clients doenot have to take a risk with someone new. Of course, there are challenges
Read more

AI - there, I've got it into a post title

Image
 You'll have seen the trickle of AI-related business coaching articles turning into a flood. You'll have skimmed through a few lists of professions that are going to be wiped-out by AI to see how business coaches are going to fare. You have probably tested a few business-related questions on ChatGPT and been surprised (and perhaps worried) by the speed and usability of the answers. Does that mean we should fold our coaching businesses and do something else? I don't think so.  If access to information was all that business owners needed then we would all have been out of business years ago. AI is an opportunity for us.  Firstly, a productivity opportunity.  Use it to write the emails inviting people to your next event.  Use it to write a blog (just be aware that  it makes mistakes, and that people want orignal thought in a blog, not just recycled words). The second opportunity is really the obverse of the first.  Examine the things that you do that help business owners and t
Read more