It is often said that a good coach will assist a client to obtain their desired goal or goals by using powerful tools and techniques to help their client uncover their own answers.
The problem is, how do you help someone who doesn’t know the answers?
Many of the clients I’ve coached over the years have set up their business because they’re good at what they do for clients. They could be a great IT guy, a great Graphic Designer, or a great Architect. What they are not so good at is running and growing a business.
You see they’ve probably gone to university or to college or have done an apprenticeship to become good at what they do, but no one has ever shown them how to run a business.
My point is that some clients might not even know how to uncover their own answers and those that do may not know how to implement what they think they know.
However, with a coaching approach that firstly identifies those areas of the business that need improving and then guides them through a series of frameworks they could implement to improve these areas they would effectively be growing their business as they learn.
Having researched the areas in which clients want help in their businesses, there are three areas that stand out. Sales and marketing, time management and keeping their team on track.
The interesting thing is that all these three issues are linked to one thing. Knowing your story. Knowing how your business can make the lives of your clients, customers, or patients better.
In the book Building a Story Brand, Donald Miller highlights the importance of telling the story of your business from your customer’s perspective. Customers aren’t usually interested in your story – they’re interested in their own, in how what you have to offer can make their lives better.
Engaging people in your story takes them with you – provided they understand the story and can see how it relates to them in the first place.
Keeping your team on track
Without a clear and compelling mission statement and set of guiding principles, you will not motivate people (your team) to go on a mission at all.
Using your story to craft a mission statement and guiding principles for your business will tell your team why the work they do matters. In doing so, your people will know their role in achieving the mission of your business and will all be moving in the same direction.
You will have people who are more engaged in their work and more customer focused, which in turn will make your business more profitable providing you with the funds to help you grow.
Time Management
When you know your mission, you will have a focal point, but you will need to develop a plan to get there.
With no plan, you won’t know what to focus on each day and you’ll allow fate to determine the course of your business and life and let’s face it fate can be a terrible writer.
Reverse engineering where you want to be (your mission), you will decide where you want to be in ten years, three years, and a year. From here you can decide what you need to do in the next ninety days to get you to where you want to be in a year.
Setting goals in this way means you are much more likely to achieve them as you will have a clear vision of where you want to be, you will know what you need to do every day to keep you on track and so you will become more productive than you’ve ever been.
Sales & Marketing
Communicating the right message is essentially an exercise in memorisation. You need to repeat the right things often enough for your message to stick.
Elements of your story can be developed in such a way that you will be able to write a speech, produce a video, write emails, and run social media campaigns that reinforce your message making it relevant to your target market (whether they be clients, staff, or other stakeholders).
Once you know what you should be talking about, you will want a proven, repeatable plan for capturing leads and then converting those leads to clients, customers, or patients.
A sales funnel consists of:
A one liner that clearly explains your value to patients
A website wireframe that brings in more patients
An effective lead generator
A follow-up email series that encourages patients to book an appointment.
As one of the first Certified Business Made Simple Coaches in the UK, I can coach you through the frameworks that will help you to create your story and made it easy to understand (and buy in to!) for any stakeholder.
If you’d like to run a Business MRI on your business to talk about some of the pain points outlined in my BLOG, simply drop me an email or book a FREE MRI session HERE.
Paul McCartney is Managing Director of ebusiness coaching 0203 887 1270.