The Mrs. Coach's Playbook
A playbook is a tool used by coaches to make a game plan. It is a manual that hopefully leads to success. A manuscript crammed with strategies to help a team achieve their common goal.
This is my playbook for moms.
This is not the usual organizational cheat sheet describing how to make our very busy schedules feasible, albeit being a mom of eleven I must say I have mastered quite a few aspects of domestic engineering
Nor is this a guide advising how to be the best "team mom", even though I have clocked countless hours running the concession stand, holding fundraisers, arranging carpools and planning banquets.
As bizarre as it may seem, I would like to offer guidance in the area where I have failed miserably. It is my disastrous mistakes I would like to share in the hopes of assisting all moms who are married to the coach.
"Learn from your mistakes" - Joseph Cannon, Santa Clara University soccer goalkeeper.
This is my game plan for Mrs. Coaches. This is a manual to help moms support and safeguard their coach and player during the exciting, rewarding and sometimes stressful experience participating in youth sports.
Being quite the connoisseur of Mrs. Coach's mistakes I now understand what is required in this role that is inherited by marriage. Coaching is a great opportunity for our husbands to make a difference. I consider it one of the most admirable commitments to undertake.
It is an obligation that can be very time consuming and mentally draining. I was so proud of my husband when he first volunteered to coach our oldest son's t-ball team 13 years ago.
My husband was very knowledgeable of baseball and our son was a natural at the game. I however was not as prepared. I was so busy dreaming of all the wonderful memories my coach and player would be creating and their strong bond that would build to even think I had any responsibilities in this mission.
I had no idea of the hazards that lay ahead which could contaminate my coach. What a rookie!
In just a few seasons my players' skill quickly excelled. My coach's intensity however, simultaneously became rapidly exaggerated. My coach started taking the games much too seriously. He began yelling at his players for not measuring up to his inflated expectations, especially my player.
He often joked around with the players after an outburst as if to soften the blow but I felt the damage had already been done. I was immediately worried but hesitated to voice my concerns. I wasn't sure if I would be interfering. I wondered if this was just a tactic in coaching, perhaps only a temporary approach.
I was uncertain if this might simply be a guy thing that I didn't understand and would have to get used to. To try justifying my reservations I would convince myself that by restraining my instincts I was actually preserving my players integrity. I didn't want to subject him to the dreaded label of "mama's boy".
"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden UCLA, basketball coach.
What was I thinking!! This rationalization was completely out of character. I am not an interfering mom! I consider myself a very dedicated mother. I'm usually the referee on the playground, the peacemaker on the field trips and the cheerleader on the bleachers.
I have always had an unbearable struggle just standing by and see a child discouraged or embarrassed, never mind seeing one cry.
I would never allow another man coaching to speak harsh words, cast disappointing glares or cause the fall of even one tear on my players face. Why was I permitting my husband to provoke these reactions?
This was not just a guy's thing. My son was not a mama's boy! I could not just quietly sit on the bleachers and watch my player's confidence gradually diminish from game to game.
"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." - Lou
Holtz University of North Carolina, football coach.
This playbook can be applied to any sport your husband coaches my reference however is baseball. I've chosen baseball because I absolutely love the game but regrettably it was the sport that led to the demise of my vocation as Mrs. Coach.
"Courage is not the absence of fear but simply moving with dignity despite that fear." - Pat Riley, L.A. Lakers basketball coach.
Before I offer my assembled approach to successfully supporting your coach I need to briefly share the extreme events that lead to the relinquishing of my failed undertaking.
It was during my oldest son's last year of Babe Ruth. At this point my coach was out of control. We didn't see eye to eye on anything that had to do with baseball. We rode in separate cars to the games and did not speak one word to each other at the field. I had to bring my iPod to every game to dilute my coach's hollering.
In spite of the immense tension I still truly adored going to the games to watch my player. He was the catcher and somehow managed to always enjoy himself. He continually joked around with the umpire, called meetings on the mound to encourage his infield and often would shoot the crap with the batter. His smile was beautiful!
After this particular game I drove up to the dugout to pick up my player. I loved when he rode home with me. The two of us would give our own take on how the game went as if his dad wasn't even the coach. Play by play we would talk about what worked, what didn't work and what was funny.
This was my quick private opportunity to make sure he was fairing well despite his dad. Unfortunately it was very obvious before my player had even got in the car that his dad had completely defeated him.
As the after game traffic began to recede I caught a glimpse of my son and my heart completely broke. His coach had been screaming at him for what appeared to be quite awhile right in the middle of the parking lot.
My coach was yelling so loud and so close to my player I could see spit bouncing of his hat. I absolutely snapped. I had never seen my son's head hanging so low. I'm amazed how he even saw the car pull up.
My player just hopped in and sat in the back seat alone. I turned around to ask what all that was about and he just stared out the window, wiping tears away and said "nothing new".
That was the final draw. I'm still not sure what ultimately made me crack. That certainly was not the first time my player cried because of his coach. For some reason every tear that I saw fall on my son's face through that rear view mirror burned massive holes in my heart.
"When you come to the fork in the road, take it." - Yogi Berra, New York Yankees baseball coach.
When we arrived home I calmly asked my player for his uniform, as if I was going to wash it. I then collected all the extra uniforms from the garage along with my player's equipment and hid everything. When my coach walked through the door I firmly said "He is not playing for you anymore."
My coached just laughed at me and walked away. He soon realized that I had indeed hid everything and flipped out. He stormed into the living room and interrogated my son as to what exactly what was said that made him so upset.
With trepidation I eavesdropped to my son's response. I was so afraid my player was going to come to me and say "It will be ok Mom, I just want to play" I tried to prepare myself to stand my ground and tell him it was not o.k.
To my elated surprise however I heard my player say "I don't want to play for you anymore Dad." His coach absolutely lost it. My husband yelled at me "See what you have done!" He kept asking our player what it was that he had said that bothered him that much. With his voice drowning in tears my son said, "It's the way you look at me Dad. It hurts".
I was so proud of my son. It was almost as if he didn't even know he had a choice or say in this matter. All those years my player had felt trapped with no options but to just play through the pain.
The following day in school my player never gave the impression that his mom had pulled him from the team. With confidence my son announced to his friends that he had decided not to play for his dad anymore.
"Confidence is contagious, so isn't lack of confidence." - Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers, football coach.
Although my player made the right choice, it is a terrible choice that no son should have to make. A few weeks after my son retired from his dad's team, the league's All Star coach called my player and asked him to be on the team, even though he hadn't finished the season. My son had a great time.
"Either you love your player or you get out of coaching" - Bobby Dodd Georgia Tech, football coach.
Of course all of our husbands love their sons. That is what inspired them to coach in the first place. They are truly proud of their boys and want the best for them. Yet along the way some coaches change.
Since all my children are athletes, I have been watching youth sports for over a decade in just about every type of venue. I've been able to rank most coaching styles into two categories. These two clusters are not arranged by sport, age or background. The two types of coaches are strictly based on manner, one being a stand up coach and the other a stressed out coach.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2643328
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The Secret to a Successful Coaching Business - It Is Not Where You've Been
Your Success Comes From Designing a Business, Not Just in Doing What You Do
Here's the difference.
I've seen that same pattern among most of the small business owners I've coached, and it's even more rampant among the coaches that I coach. Strange, isn't it, that coaches have the same problems that their clients have? But it's very true.
Are you more comfortable coaching than in marketing and selling? Do you know what needs to be done to successfully bring in tons of new clients in marketing, and getting them to buy in sales? And stepping back even further, from the 10,000 foot level to the 30,000 foot level, where you'll start designing and redesigning the whole business, that's where you'll be asking questions like, how do I go from $150/hour to $500/hour, and then from $500/hour to $1,000/hour.
As long as you are working as a coach and not as a business designer you'll be stuck making $150/hour decisions and never selling many of those. So, in reality you are making way less than $150/hour.
In any business, the more focused the business owner is on "what they do" instead of building a business around what they do, the less likely they will succeed.
Coaches, who discover the principles to resolve this will be even better at helping their own clients design and redesign their business for more success and higher income.
More Time Thinking . . . Coaching . . . Than Designing and Then Redesigning the Business of Coaching
Do you spend more time thinking about coaching than designing and redesigning a business of coaching? How much time do you spend working on coaching, and how much time on building a business of coaching?
As a coach, don't you work with people to help them get focused?
So, what should you be focused on as an owner of a coaching business?
Obviously you want to focus on becoming a better coach, thinking about how you coach, however, if you never spend time thinking about marketing better, selling better, and, at an even higher level, how would you design this business to make more money, to find clients that would spend more money, and on making exactly what you'd like to be earning from your coaching business, then it's likely that you aren't finding those answers that are even more critical to your success than coaching itself. Am I right?
Let's look at one of my clients who was a cook in a restaurant. As the cook, he believed he could run a business better than his boss. However, do you want a bet that his focus was around making a better meal than in how to become successful at a restaurant business? So, he went across the street and started his own restaurant.
Where do you think he was working? In the kitchen! He believed that his success depended upon how well he cooked and what kinds of fantastic meals he cooked, yet no one was walking through the door. Does that sound like your coaching business?
It Doesn't Matter How Good You Are at What You Do If You Can't Sell Any
One of the things I preach to my clients would likely be defined as sacrilege in business schools, but it is the truth. It doesn't matter how good you are in the kitchen (or in coaching) if you aren't getting anyone to walk in the door (that's marketing), and if you aren't getting anyone to set down to buy (that's sales).
To restate that: It doesn't matter how good of a coach you are if no one is walking in to discover you, nor to buy your services. You could be the best, or the worst, and your results will be exactly the same if no one is there to buy it.
You Can Have a Successful Business If You Can Get Tons of People Walking in and Buying Even If You Aren't Good at Delivering
In fact, let's look at it from the other side. Let's say that you are absolutely fantastic at marketing and sales, and aren't any good in the kitchen (or coaching) at all. In that case you are good at getting people in the door and getting them to set down and buy, but the food (or your coaching) is absolutely horrible. The money is flowing (imagine what that would be like for coaching), yet the food is horrible.
What happens is that there are a ton of people coming through the door and buying, but they'll never come back. As long as you are out there marketing and selling there are still people flowing through the door and you are successful.
In no way am I suggesting that you do it this way, only emphasizing to you that without marketing and sales you'll never be successful, and that with them you could be even if you aren't any good at coaching, so marketing (the ability to get tons of people in the door), and selling (getting those that do come through the door to buy) are critical, and the ability to design and redesign a business that includes all of the pieces of your business, marketing, sales, coaching are all critical pieces.
Coaching, and how good you are at it, doesn't even come into the picture until you've got them coming in the door, wanting what you have, and then getting them to buy. Sounds logical, however, most coaches start with coaching and never have many clients.
How to Become the Top 1% of All Coaches
Do, you know the statistics are that over 90% of all coaches and consultants will fail within months, and that, of those that do succeed, most will never make more than $20K? Your success will come only when you can get your hands around the BUSINESS of coaching, learn what makes less than 1% of all coaches the top earners, and design the business that not only works in all of those areas, and then focus on how to make that business deliver EXACTLY what you want it to in dollars and cents, and in the time you want to put into it.
One of the coaches I worked with was having problems getting enough people to even show an interest, let alone someone who would buy. She kept saying, but I'm good at coaching, but I can't get anyone interested in coaching.
When I finally got her to look at how to refocus on the RIGHT customer, how to sell, and THEN even how this business was to make her more and more in less and less time, she changed everything and went from less than $10K in a year to $6,000 an hour. Yes, I said that correctly.
It wasn't just learning to market and sell, which is very important, but it also was a total redirection of what she was doing, and how she was doing it. It was redesigning her business so that it will deliver the dollars you want in the time you want to spend, and the way you want to do it.
Instead of focusing on selling at $5,000 per client, which wasn't working the way she was doing it, she developed a marketing funnel that leads people in steps toward coaching. Each step moved from giving a free taste of coaching, to a low cost group session, to full blown coaching. She's now making $5,000 an hour, not just per job, doing Intro to Coaching at $250 a month for groups of about 100, and has a waiting list for her one-on-one coaching, which, by the way, she now charges a lot more for and spends very little time doing. She spend 4 1-hour sessions a month with about 100 people, $25,000 a month total income for 4 hours of work. And that leads to a waiting list of people wanting her coaching.
Your Job Isn't Just to Coach . . . It's Designing and Redesigning a Successful Coaching Business
So, your job isn't to coach. It is to design, and redesign a business of coaching that delivers exactly the dollars you want in the time you want to put into this. And, of course go do it.
It's designing the business at the highest level around what you want to make and how you'll do it, and then breaking it down to how many leads are needed from marketing, what percentage of those will be closed in sales, and, finally the delivery, your coaching.
Do you know how to deliver exactly that many leads each and every week?
Are you delivering that many each and every week?
Is your sales process converting exactly the percentage of those leads into sales that are necessary to hit your target sales in number of customers and dollars per customer?
Do you know how to fix your marketing to make it deliver at that rate, or better?
Do you know how to fix your sales to deliver at that rate, or better?
What are you going to do next to start delivering on all of those critical goals? Those are critical in that if you deliver each and every one of them each and every week, you will get the dollars you want this year in the time you are willing to put into it.
And, if you miss even one of these goals you not only won't hit your goals for amount sold in the time you want to put into it, but you are likely going to fail in business. That's critical!
Do you know how to make marketing work to deliver the number of leads a month you need?
Do you know how to close 40-50% of those leads?
What would it be worth to you to be able to do that?
So, would you like to do a quick assessment of your critical business goals? The things that are absolutely critical to your business?
Be sure to look for the next article, "Assessing You and Your business success, The Critical Issues of Coaching Business Success" to grade just how well you are doing at building a successful coaching business.
Do you want to learn more about how to increase your coaching business?
I have just completed my brand new guide to coaching marketing success. You'll also get a free invitation to join a mastermind group of other coaches as they build their business. Hear what works and doesn't work.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1739073
Here's the difference.
- If you find yourself wanting to coach, and avoiding marketing and sales, then you are playing at coaching and not running a business of coaching. Your chances of success are small.
- If you are wanting to coach, and not spending time designing and redesigning a business of coaching that delivers exactly the DOLLARS that you WANT, in the TIME that you want to put into this, then you are playing at coaching instead of running a business of coaching. Your chance of making a lot of money coaching is small.
I've seen that same pattern among most of the small business owners I've coached, and it's even more rampant among the coaches that I coach. Strange, isn't it, that coaches have the same problems that their clients have? But it's very true.
Are you more comfortable coaching than in marketing and selling? Do you know what needs to be done to successfully bring in tons of new clients in marketing, and getting them to buy in sales? And stepping back even further, from the 10,000 foot level to the 30,000 foot level, where you'll start designing and redesigning the whole business, that's where you'll be asking questions like, how do I go from $150/hour to $500/hour, and then from $500/hour to $1,000/hour.
As long as you are working as a coach and not as a business designer you'll be stuck making $150/hour decisions and never selling many of those. So, in reality you are making way less than $150/hour.
In any business, the more focused the business owner is on "what they do" instead of building a business around what they do, the less likely they will succeed.
Coaches, who discover the principles to resolve this will be even better at helping their own clients design and redesign their business for more success and higher income.
More Time Thinking . . . Coaching . . . Than Designing and Then Redesigning the Business of Coaching
Do you spend more time thinking about coaching than designing and redesigning a business of coaching? How much time do you spend working on coaching, and how much time on building a business of coaching?
As a coach, don't you work with people to help them get focused?
So, what should you be focused on as an owner of a coaching business?
Obviously you want to focus on becoming a better coach, thinking about how you coach, however, if you never spend time thinking about marketing better, selling better, and, at an even higher level, how would you design this business to make more money, to find clients that would spend more money, and on making exactly what you'd like to be earning from your coaching business, then it's likely that you aren't finding those answers that are even more critical to your success than coaching itself. Am I right?
Let's look at one of my clients who was a cook in a restaurant. As the cook, he believed he could run a business better than his boss. However, do you want a bet that his focus was around making a better meal than in how to become successful at a restaurant business? So, he went across the street and started his own restaurant.
Where do you think he was working? In the kitchen! He believed that his success depended upon how well he cooked and what kinds of fantastic meals he cooked, yet no one was walking through the door. Does that sound like your coaching business?
It Doesn't Matter How Good You Are at What You Do If You Can't Sell Any
One of the things I preach to my clients would likely be defined as sacrilege in business schools, but it is the truth. It doesn't matter how good you are in the kitchen (or in coaching) if you aren't getting anyone to walk in the door (that's marketing), and if you aren't getting anyone to set down to buy (that's sales).
To restate that: It doesn't matter how good of a coach you are if no one is walking in to discover you, nor to buy your services. You could be the best, or the worst, and your results will be exactly the same if no one is there to buy it.
You Can Have a Successful Business If You Can Get Tons of People Walking in and Buying Even If You Aren't Good at Delivering
In fact, let's look at it from the other side. Let's say that you are absolutely fantastic at marketing and sales, and aren't any good in the kitchen (or coaching) at all. In that case you are good at getting people in the door and getting them to set down and buy, but the food (or your coaching) is absolutely horrible. The money is flowing (imagine what that would be like for coaching), yet the food is horrible.
What happens is that there are a ton of people coming through the door and buying, but they'll never come back. As long as you are out there marketing and selling there are still people flowing through the door and you are successful.
In no way am I suggesting that you do it this way, only emphasizing to you that without marketing and sales you'll never be successful, and that with them you could be even if you aren't any good at coaching, so marketing (the ability to get tons of people in the door), and selling (getting those that do come through the door to buy) are critical, and the ability to design and redesign a business that includes all of the pieces of your business, marketing, sales, coaching are all critical pieces.
Coaching, and how good you are at it, doesn't even come into the picture until you've got them coming in the door, wanting what you have, and then getting them to buy. Sounds logical, however, most coaches start with coaching and never have many clients.
How to Become the Top 1% of All Coaches
Do, you know the statistics are that over 90% of all coaches and consultants will fail within months, and that, of those that do succeed, most will never make more than $20K? Your success will come only when you can get your hands around the BUSINESS of coaching, learn what makes less than 1% of all coaches the top earners, and design the business that not only works in all of those areas, and then focus on how to make that business deliver EXACTLY what you want it to in dollars and cents, and in the time you want to put into it.
One of the coaches I worked with was having problems getting enough people to even show an interest, let alone someone who would buy. She kept saying, but I'm good at coaching, but I can't get anyone interested in coaching.
When I finally got her to look at how to refocus on the RIGHT customer, how to sell, and THEN even how this business was to make her more and more in less and less time, she changed everything and went from less than $10K in a year to $6,000 an hour. Yes, I said that correctly.
It wasn't just learning to market and sell, which is very important, but it also was a total redirection of what she was doing, and how she was doing it. It was redesigning her business so that it will deliver the dollars you want in the time you want to spend, and the way you want to do it.
Instead of focusing on selling at $5,000 per client, which wasn't working the way she was doing it, she developed a marketing funnel that leads people in steps toward coaching. Each step moved from giving a free taste of coaching, to a low cost group session, to full blown coaching. She's now making $5,000 an hour, not just per job, doing Intro to Coaching at $250 a month for groups of about 100, and has a waiting list for her one-on-one coaching, which, by the way, she now charges a lot more for and spends very little time doing. She spend 4 1-hour sessions a month with about 100 people, $25,000 a month total income for 4 hours of work. And that leads to a waiting list of people wanting her coaching.
Your Job Isn't Just to Coach . . . It's Designing and Redesigning a Successful Coaching Business
So, your job isn't to coach. It is to design, and redesign a business of coaching that delivers exactly the dollars you want in the time you want to put into this. And, of course go do it.
It's designing the business at the highest level around what you want to make and how you'll do it, and then breaking it down to how many leads are needed from marketing, what percentage of those will be closed in sales, and, finally the delivery, your coaching.
Do you know how to deliver exactly that many leads each and every week?
Are you delivering that many each and every week?
Is your sales process converting exactly the percentage of those leads into sales that are necessary to hit your target sales in number of customers and dollars per customer?
Do you know how to fix your marketing to make it deliver at that rate, or better?
Do you know how to fix your sales to deliver at that rate, or better?
What are you going to do next to start delivering on all of those critical goals? Those are critical in that if you deliver each and every one of them each and every week, you will get the dollars you want this year in the time you are willing to put into it.
And, if you miss even one of these goals you not only won't hit your goals for amount sold in the time you want to put into it, but you are likely going to fail in business. That's critical!
Do you know how to make marketing work to deliver the number of leads a month you need?
Do you know how to close 40-50% of those leads?
What would it be worth to you to be able to do that?
So, would you like to do a quick assessment of your critical business goals? The things that are absolutely critical to your business?
Be sure to look for the next article, "Assessing You and Your business success, The Critical Issues of Coaching Business Success" to grade just how well you are doing at building a successful coaching business.
Do you want to learn more about how to increase your coaching business?
I have just completed my brand new guide to coaching marketing success. You'll also get a free invitation to join a mastermind group of other coaches as they build their business. Hear what works and doesn't work.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1739073
Friday, July 8, 2011
Seven Coaching MegaTrends Every Coach Should Be Aware Of
Coaching MegaTrend 1: Increased Supply of Coaches
We are seeing a vast increase in the number of coaches qualifying from the rapidly-growing numbers of coach training establishments. And the number of coaches qualifying each year is accelerating. Recent estimates indicate that there are now between 30,000 to 50,000 active coaches worldwide.
As well as far more choice of coach training, there are far more good books, seminars and other support materials both on coaching and on managing your coaching practice.
This means far more competition for both newly qualified and established coaches alike, and these coaches are learning both coaching skills and practice management skills at a rapid rate.
Coaching MegaTrend 2: Increased Demand for Coaching
Marketers distinguish between four different stages of a market: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. We see the coaching market as a whole as still being in its Growth stage, where the expansion of coaching significantly exceeds the growth of the economies in which it operates.
The characteristics of the Growth Stage of a market are increasing customer interest, with rapidly increasing sales and the equally rapid emergence of more coaches as competitors.
So there is an increased demand for coaching - but at the same time the coaching market is expanding, the competition from other coaches is also increasing significantly.
In this stage, to attract new clients, the marketing activities of coaches become more and more important. On the plus side, several clients typically engage in repeat purchase behaviour patterns.
Coaching MegaTrend 3: Increasing Maturity in the Coaching Market
The Wild West days of coaching are over. A significant percentage of coaches have now been coaching for more than five years, many for ten - and they have a maturity of approach & experience.
There is an associated increasing maturity in the coaching market itself, with clients having an increasing awareness about coaching and its benefits. Purchasers of coaching services have changed from Innovators in the early days of coaching through Early Adopters, and now firmly into the Early Majority.
What this means is that there is a much bigger market out there - 34% of any market are seen as Early Majority, with innovators making up 2.5% and early adopters 13.5%.
The Early Majority are more cautious purchasers and need more reasons to buy. They are deliberate, not impulsive decision-makers. They have many informal social contacts that they rely on to know whether they should decide to do something.
They adopt innovations - like coaching - just before the average member of the market. They seldom lead, are not the first, and not the last to do something.
This means that we need to take a different approach to presenting and marketing coaching services to the Early Majority.
Coaching MegaTrend 4: Niches & Differentiation
The need to differentiate oneself from the ocean of other competing coaches is more vital than ever. As competition in the generic life coaching market intensifies, more coaches will need to specialise to differentiate themselves.
There is more and more focus on niches - weight-loss coaching, presentation skills coaching, marketing coaching, career coaching, coaching for lawyers, dentists, executive coaching, relationship coaching...
Yes, these options have been available via life coaches for a while, but niche coaches focus on one specialisation, and therefore bring more experience and knowledge of what's required in that niche to their clients.
The coaching market is already showing signs of fragmenting, with specialist coaching sub-markets continuing to develop rapidly. These coaching niches are growing faster than the rest of the market, with executive coaching, relationship coaching, career coaching and weight loss coaching growing particularly rapidly.
This is good news for coaches who can exploit these profitable niches, and is bad news for the undifferentiated life coach.
Coaching MegaTrend 5: Coaching Products
Coaches are increasingly using online products - both their own products and those of others - to achieve different marketing objectives. These products can be ebooks, articles, short courses delivered by autoresponders, teleclasses, downloadable mp3s, CDs, home study courses and combinations of the above.
Some coaches are using products to augment their coaching offerings, to appeal to different segments of their market. Others use them as a promotion device, to attract new prospects to their marketing funnel.
Yet others are using products to leverage their time with clients - so that the client gets the maximum benefit while minimising costly 1:1 coaching time.
Coaches are finding that products can achieve multiple objectives - they can bring in revenue while building client loyalty and gently guiding prospects to the coach's higher-value coaching services.
This means that with coaching products coaches can increase their revenue, leverage their time with clients, build their prospect list and increase their exposure in the market all at the same time.
Coaching MegaTrend 6: Coaching Programmes
We are seeing the growth of the specialist coach, who blends coaching with instruction and training, and sometimes adds consultancy. Coaching programmes have an overall aim, and a set duration and have specific content that is communicated in addition to the coaching.
They typically offer a programme - often between six and eight weeks - designed to build knowledge and skills in a particular area. Examples of this are CJ Hayden's Get Clients Now! programme which typically blends training and coaching.
This trend is leading to the coaching market fragmenting somewhat - and becoming less homogeneous. It's not enough to just be a coach, it's what sort of coach are you, dealing with what sort of clients to achieve what?
Taken together with MegaTrend 4 - niches and differentiation and MegaTrend 3 - the increasing maturity of the coaching market, we are seeing coaches profiting from providing coaching programmes to specific market niches.
Coaching MegaTrend 7: Availability of Web-based Technologies
We are in the midst of an explosion in the availability of affordable, easy to use web-based technologies. And savvy coaches are beginning to realise what benefits this can have to their coaching practices.
A coach's website is taken for granted these days, as is a their newsletter. If you look at several coaches' websites you'll see a remarkable consistency. They no longer differentiate. The area in which to compete has moved on.
Audio and even video are creeping into coaches' websites. But the coaches who will succeed are those offering something that their market want - their content must be relevant and valuable to their target market.
Those coaches who utilise teleseminars, autoresponders and increasingly blogs that meet a client need will prosper. The next big technology trend is likely to be coaches' podcasts. And the same dynamic will apply - the content must be relevant and valuable to the client.
We're seeing far more use of internet automation - for keeping in touch with prospects via autoresponders and newsletters, online surveys, membership sites... ...the list is long and growing.
The winners in the use of the web-based technologies will be those unafraid to experiment, who use technology for the benefits it can bring to them and their clients, rather than for its own sake.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/705473
We are seeing a vast increase in the number of coaches qualifying from the rapidly-growing numbers of coach training establishments. And the number of coaches qualifying each year is accelerating. Recent estimates indicate that there are now between 30,000 to 50,000 active coaches worldwide.
As well as far more choice of coach training, there are far more good books, seminars and other support materials both on coaching and on managing your coaching practice.
This means far more competition for both newly qualified and established coaches alike, and these coaches are learning both coaching skills and practice management skills at a rapid rate.
Coaching MegaTrend 2: Increased Demand for Coaching
Marketers distinguish between four different stages of a market: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. We see the coaching market as a whole as still being in its Growth stage, where the expansion of coaching significantly exceeds the growth of the economies in which it operates.
The characteristics of the Growth Stage of a market are increasing customer interest, with rapidly increasing sales and the equally rapid emergence of more coaches as competitors.
So there is an increased demand for coaching - but at the same time the coaching market is expanding, the competition from other coaches is also increasing significantly.
In this stage, to attract new clients, the marketing activities of coaches become more and more important. On the plus side, several clients typically engage in repeat purchase behaviour patterns.
Coaching MegaTrend 3: Increasing Maturity in the Coaching Market
The Wild West days of coaching are over. A significant percentage of coaches have now been coaching for more than five years, many for ten - and they have a maturity of approach & experience.
There is an associated increasing maturity in the coaching market itself, with clients having an increasing awareness about coaching and its benefits. Purchasers of coaching services have changed from Innovators in the early days of coaching through Early Adopters, and now firmly into the Early Majority.
What this means is that there is a much bigger market out there - 34% of any market are seen as Early Majority, with innovators making up 2.5% and early adopters 13.5%.
The Early Majority are more cautious purchasers and need more reasons to buy. They are deliberate, not impulsive decision-makers. They have many informal social contacts that they rely on to know whether they should decide to do something.
They adopt innovations - like coaching - just before the average member of the market. They seldom lead, are not the first, and not the last to do something.
This means that we need to take a different approach to presenting and marketing coaching services to the Early Majority.
Coaching MegaTrend 4: Niches & Differentiation
The need to differentiate oneself from the ocean of other competing coaches is more vital than ever. As competition in the generic life coaching market intensifies, more coaches will need to specialise to differentiate themselves.
There is more and more focus on niches - weight-loss coaching, presentation skills coaching, marketing coaching, career coaching, coaching for lawyers, dentists, executive coaching, relationship coaching...
Yes, these options have been available via life coaches for a while, but niche coaches focus on one specialisation, and therefore bring more experience and knowledge of what's required in that niche to their clients.
The coaching market is already showing signs of fragmenting, with specialist coaching sub-markets continuing to develop rapidly. These coaching niches are growing faster than the rest of the market, with executive coaching, relationship coaching, career coaching and weight loss coaching growing particularly rapidly.
This is good news for coaches who can exploit these profitable niches, and is bad news for the undifferentiated life coach.
Coaching MegaTrend 5: Coaching Products
Coaches are increasingly using online products - both their own products and those of others - to achieve different marketing objectives. These products can be ebooks, articles, short courses delivered by autoresponders, teleclasses, downloadable mp3s, CDs, home study courses and combinations of the above.
Some coaches are using products to augment their coaching offerings, to appeal to different segments of their market. Others use them as a promotion device, to attract new prospects to their marketing funnel.
Yet others are using products to leverage their time with clients - so that the client gets the maximum benefit while minimising costly 1:1 coaching time.
Coaches are finding that products can achieve multiple objectives - they can bring in revenue while building client loyalty and gently guiding prospects to the coach's higher-value coaching services.
This means that with coaching products coaches can increase their revenue, leverage their time with clients, build their prospect list and increase their exposure in the market all at the same time.
Coaching MegaTrend 6: Coaching Programmes
We are seeing the growth of the specialist coach, who blends coaching with instruction and training, and sometimes adds consultancy. Coaching programmes have an overall aim, and a set duration and have specific content that is communicated in addition to the coaching.
They typically offer a programme - often between six and eight weeks - designed to build knowledge and skills in a particular area. Examples of this are CJ Hayden's Get Clients Now! programme which typically blends training and coaching.
This trend is leading to the coaching market fragmenting somewhat - and becoming less homogeneous. It's not enough to just be a coach, it's what sort of coach are you, dealing with what sort of clients to achieve what?
Taken together with MegaTrend 4 - niches and differentiation and MegaTrend 3 - the increasing maturity of the coaching market, we are seeing coaches profiting from providing coaching programmes to specific market niches.
Coaching MegaTrend 7: Availability of Web-based Technologies
We are in the midst of an explosion in the availability of affordable, easy to use web-based technologies. And savvy coaches are beginning to realise what benefits this can have to their coaching practices.
A coach's website is taken for granted these days, as is a their newsletter. If you look at several coaches' websites you'll see a remarkable consistency. They no longer differentiate. The area in which to compete has moved on.
Audio and even video are creeping into coaches' websites. But the coaches who will succeed are those offering something that their market want - their content must be relevant and valuable to their target market.
Those coaches who utilise teleseminars, autoresponders and increasingly blogs that meet a client need will prosper. The next big technology trend is likely to be coaches' podcasts. And the same dynamic will apply - the content must be relevant and valuable to the client.
We're seeing far more use of internet automation - for keeping in touch with prospects via autoresponders and newsletters, online surveys, membership sites... ...the list is long and growing.
The winners in the use of the web-based technologies will be those unafraid to experiment, who use technology for the benefits it can bring to them and their clients, rather than for its own sake.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/705473
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