If #coaching is increasingly recognized as essential to professional and personal development, why the hesitation?
Erin Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said: “Everyone needs a coach.” The Harvard Business Review reports that coaching is an eight-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Yet, people are still puzzled and confused about whether their yield will result in a positive ROI.
I see coaching as a necessity to develop your career, get to the next level in your organization, and make more money or build better relationships.
Even though I am a coach, I have a life coach and a business coach with whom I consult weekly. There is no way I can uncover all that goes on in my thinking – and most of the time – there is a perspective that I do not see, yet when asked the right open-ended questions – I can catch a solution or choice I hadn’t before.
Here are some of my thoughts for coaches out there to get over the notion that too many coaches are out there.
Push past the fear and get closer:
Selling is hard when we fear other people. Coaching must become fearless to succeed in significant ways. Coaching is all about #courage and #creativity. You can’t skip that. If you feel distant from your prospects, you won’t sign them as clients, as when you fear someone, you cannot be direct. You must think of how to best hint at your intentions or throw shallow, needy, pitiable information at them.
Coaching is not about “information.” It is about #transformation. Change someone’s life, and they will hire you.
All other activities are weak-kneed and wimpy, and you will have to quit the profession in absolute despair. One way to get closer is to put yourself in their place and give them the level of truth you want. Another way to get closer is to ask them everything you wonder about them. Such as why they have not achieved what they say they want.
Bottom line: Focus on the person in front of you. Ask yourself: “How can I serve this person so powerfully that they never forget this experience for the rest of their life?”
Strength comes from getting uncomfortable:
A potential client once asked me: “Karolina, is there a way to coach me so I can pay your fee without hesitation?” I replied: “I want you to have hesitation before you begin coaching with me. This isn’t supposed to be an easy decision. This is considered to be one of your most significant commitments. You do not need my coaching, and if you want to coach with me, you will find a way for that to happen. In my experience, the more my clients commit, the more they #achieve – because they are fully engaged.
Bottom line: Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable, and your world will change.
The most prominent mistake coaches make:
The mistake is this. They don’t honor the person they are selling to. They place their own needs and fears ahead of the prospects.
They don’t enter the prospect’s life and solve a real problem. They stay inside their offer and their worthiness. They do this subconsciously, but they do it, and it pushes the prospect away. It makes the prospect defensive. Soon, the prospect doesn’t want to return a call.
Bottom line: If we can learn to love being in the prospect’s world, solving the prospect’s problems, and bringing out the best in our prospect throughout the session, we will always look forward to this #process we call “fearless coaching.”
Don’t charge for what you do:
You aren’t billing for time elapsed. You are billing for the genuine possibility of a goal that would not have been accomplished without fearless coaching. Your client has a default future that will occur on its own if his life does not change. When they pay you, they pay you for their life to change. They are paying for their dream to be converted into a project. You will be the project manager. (In businesses – good project managers make six figures). If all you talk about is “per hour” and how long the sessions will go, it demeans the actual value of coaching. Your client has hired you because of something they want to do differently.
Bottom line: They know that deep down, it’s true what Walt Disney said: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” That’s what they will pay for. Your clients want a breakthrough – not a list of times you have sessions and for how long.
Stop schmoozing:
Schmoozing, chats, long lunches, and social time confuse your clients into thinking that coaching is a lot of friendly chatting together… And the question is valid: Why would they want to pay for that?
Take the three hours you will lose traveling to lunch, having lunch, and traveling back from lunch and put them into a powerful intake session.
I will give you an example. I recently just signed a client who came to me as a referral from a friend that I spent hours coaching for free. I slowed down with my friend, gave her my best, and asked for nothing in return. I only served. Two days later, she referred me to her friend. I slowed down and connected profoundly and powerfully.
Bottom line: If you think the ROI will return from serving someone for free, make that a choice, and know that every conversation can turn into fearlessly serving them right out of the box.
The secret: There is no secret
I know coaches who write a weekly newsletter and use internet marketing. I understand some of the best I learned from in Palo Alto charge 150K a year. You pay in advance and fly to CA for your face-to-face coaching sessions. But I also know successful coaches who will only coach over the phone in fifteen-minute sessions. One of the most successful women coaches I know runs workshops with three other female colleagues for powerful and unique four-on-one coaching sessions. One of my friends has been a coach for over fifteen years, and he will still only coach for a maximum of three months because he puts such a high value on freedom.
Bottom line: What I love about #coaching is that you can make up how you show up. Try stuff out. Find out what you love. Be creative. Be you. Do it your way – as there are no rules. The secret is that there is no secret.
I am coming out with some VIP mastermind weekends starting in March, so be on the lookout.
There is only one you, and that is your magic.
XOXO, Coach Ms. K
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