growasacoach

Coaching Ethics and Parliamentary Questions

I've been watching all the unfolding anger and questions relating to the parliamentary system and MP expenses here in the UK.

I admit to an addiction to developing news stories which doesn't sit with the mindful approach I like to cultivate, that I hold in awareness. It's definitely the move from curiosity into "nosiness!" about what's happening next.  One of the things that I've found myself bringing parallels to as a coach is how we as coaches build the practical and ethical foundations for coaching as a whole and our own practices/ businesses in specific.

Some useful questions to ponder:

• If you had to share what you claim as business expenses, are they all fair and above board?  Could you say that they were "solely and neccessarily" for coaching, in the same way as MP expenses should have been?
• Do you talk about what you do as a coach, and know how to talk about what your boundaries are, what you can and can't do, will and won't do, with clients, so you are being clear with them up front?
• Are you positive about coaching as a profession, and how does that show up in the way you work and market your business?

Managing Progress and Accountability & Marketing your Coaching Business

This is the 11th and final post in the series on aligning your marketing of your coaching business wiht your coaching core competencies

Managing Progress and Accountability:  If this with the client is about holding attention on what is important to them and leaving them with accountability to take action, with your marketing the important thing to take away is that you focus and find out what marketing works for you (both emotionally and in terms of results) and that you are holding yourself accountable for taking regular action in your marketing. 

If you struggle to keep this regularity, think about getting yourself an accountability partner, or a marketing coach who will help you manage your own progress.  Measure what success looks like and then you can see which marketing is worth the time you are putting into it.

Planning and Goal Setting and Marketing your Coaching Business

This is post 10 in the series on aligning your marketing your coaching business with your coaching core competencies

Planning and Goal Setting:  As a coach marketer, it’s important to have a plan for your marketing. 

The great thing is that you already have lots of tools out there to help you create your own plan and goals for marketing! 

What do you know that you coach to clients that will help you create a more structured approach to your marketing? 

One of the keys to marketing is consistency and a plan will help you with this.  Goals will help you measure whether you are being successful:  Set SMART goals to help yourself move forwards with your marketing. 

Then you can review them (see next post coming up!) to find out what is working.  Little and often is best with marketing rather than a big bang and then no contact for a long time.  This approach will also help you avoid marketing from desperation when you don’t have clients. 

Designing Actions and Marketing your Coaching Business

This is post 9 in the series of aligning marketing your coaching business with your coaching core competencies

Designing Actions:  When you are marketing what you do as a coach, make it clear about how coaching is focused on actions. 

Work out what those actions are, and how these will benefit your clients.  When you are talking to prospects, you can share what kind of actions people in similar positions you have worked with have taken, and what impact this has had for them. 

When you are designing new programs, again go back to what your niche wants to be different and think about what that means for what you offer and what actions, and questions you can focus on. 

Where you use tools and structures, talk about these up front with what benefit they can have.

Creating Awareness and Marketing your Coaching Business

This is Post 8 in the series of aligning marketing your coaching  business with your coaching core competencies

Creating Awareness: 

As a coach marketer, you want to create awareness for your products and services out there in the market which means getting comfortable with sharing useful resources and information with your niche. 

I build awareness through writing articles, blogging, and most recently through social media which fits with the coaching ethos I have of sharing and connecting – such as twitter and Linked in.  

Direct Communication and Marketing your Coaching Business

This is post 7 of the series aligning your marketing your coaching business with coaching core competencies

Direct Communication: 

This comes out of your steps above – if you have actively heard what your niche is saying, you’ll be able to use language which they use, which matters to them. 

You’ll be able to build programs and coaching models which help them get to a different perspective. 

When you write copy about courses, set out clearly what the client will receive through being on the course – what information will they get, learn, what will they do?

Powerful Questions and marketing your coaching business

Post 6 of the series on aligning marketing your coaching business with coaching core competencies

Powerful Questioning:  This again comes back to your research – the ability to ask powerful questions as a coach can help you be effective in asking the right questions in your research. 

And, once you’ve asked those questions in your research, using them as powerful questions in their own right in your marketing copy. 

And then what you answer in your copy and your products and services is the outcome – what the client will be left with / what results they will have after working with you as a client.

Active Listening and Marketing your Coaching Business

Post 5 of the series of aligning marketing your coaching business with the coaching core competencies

Active Listening:  I find market research a huge part now of my business, both in finding out how well I am serving existing clients and in creating information and resources for potential clients. 

It’s something I am slowly building on – the best way is to ask! 

If you are marketing to 25-40 year old males, go find some and ask questions of them.  What do they do, where do they hang out, what are they most stuck about in relation to your niche?

Then you can use this information you have listened to, along with the language they have used, to build marketing information, copy and program that talks their language.

Coaching Presence and Marketing your Coaching Business

Post Four in the series of aligning your coaching business with your marketing:

Coaching Presence:  I see a few themes here which will help with the marketing of your coaching business.

Presence is about flexibility and intuition.

Test and learn from your responses and measurements as well as your gut feel, about what works with building connections with your clients. 

Be creative about how you can be present to their needs by mapping different products and services which fit what they are looking for. 

Be present in your business by having that sense of what is working and what isn’t, and again, go back to your ethics and check in that you are comfortable about what you are marketing – who you are is how you coach, and how you market. 

Put across in the presence your personality as well as the facts about your business.

Establishing Trust and Intimacy and Marketing to your coaching Business

Day 3 of the series aligning coaching core competencies and your marketing of your coaching business.

Establishing trust and intimacy with your client:  I don’t have the source of the fact, however I think it is quite well established that it can take about 7 contacts for someone who is interested in potentially working with you to actually come to fruition as a client. 

So when you are marketing, whether this is via your newsletter, blog, website, social media, is helping to build a sense of trust. 

In marketing terms, this is about being consistent and useful, telling implicitly why you are the right person for their current aspirations and challenges. 

By understanding the challenges and goals of your client group (more research!) you will be able to build more of a conversation with them and more depth of relationship – more attractive to business building.

Some questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• What do you know about the pain that your clients situation causes them? How can you help them to feel safe to move from pain to exploring what they do want?
• Do you market the fact you are a professional coach?  How do you show this? 
• Are you a member of a Coach Association such as the ICF, AOC, EMCC?  Do you include this info in your marketing to show you are credentialled and work to a "safe" way of working with your clients?
• Are you registed with Data Protection (Information Commissioner) in the UK - do you know what to do to help keep your clients info safe?
• Do you create safety by spending time creating a coaching agreement and contract effectively with your client?  Does this form part of your marketing?
• How does who you are as a coach, your personal attributes and coaching style, come across in the marketing of your business?