Business coach start-up lessons

Just starting as a business coach?  Here are three things I have learned from my own journey and from mentoring other business coaches who are starting theirs:

1.  Target a niche.

Telling prospects that you are a business coach and that you are "pasionate about helping them" or you have "been there and done it" is not compelling.  Deep experience in solving the exact problems they are facing is far more likely to get their attention.

Your niche could be vertical (dentists or IT service companies, say) or functional (sales or leadership, say).  Note that you still need the complete range of business knowledge at your fingertips; what manifests as a sales problem may actaully be rooted in strategy or structure, and the ability to apply cross-industry experience to solve problems is valuable to your clients.

2. Create a tangible solution.

Coaching and its outcomes are difficult for your prospect to envision.  Presenting the coaching process in terms of some framework or methodology make it far easier for them to to picture how it will feel to be coached, what will actually happen, and what the results will look like for them.

A framework also makes it easier for you to keep you both focused and on track, although they should not be a strait-jacket and once you are delivering value to your client you will find that the framework becomes less important.

3. Build a marketing engine.

Prospects are not waiting for you to call them.  They must be identified, informed and inspired to work with you.  Leaving this to chance or taking an ad-hoc approach will result in you having no business.

Your marketing engine must be built and kept running flat out to provide you with a continuous stream of qualified leads.  To be achievable, much of this must be automated.

If you'd like a cost-effective, rapid approach to getting your coaching business up and running then try this one-to-one start-up mentoring session.