The temptation when setting up in business is to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Experienced coaches and marketing specialists warn however this is not the path to success but a fast route to frustration and ultimate failure.

Defining your niche and speciality is crucial to your financial success as a coach. A niche or target market, is one well defined group like small business owners, stay at home mums, parents, female executives or retirees.

You can see that by trying to attract all these different groups your marketing would be scattered and ineffective, whereas if you market consistently and persistently to only one group, offering services and resources that interest them, you’ll attract clients more easily. You have to choose a target market that you can relate to and have some knowledge about.

Contrary to popular opinion, narrowing your focus will result in more not less clients. A good niche will give you between three and 10 times more clients than general or unfocused marketing. It will also provide you with a long term, sustainable advantage in your marketing that will position you apart from all the competition and attract an endless stream of prospects.

The key to finding a great niche is identifying where your passions and strengths allow you to package coaching as a tangible solution to your target market’s biggest unmet needs.

One of the biggest mistakes is trying to find your niche too early on in your coaching career. Unless you know exactly who you will target you are encouraged to explore as many possibilities as possible.

Students come to the coaching academy with one main question in the forefront of their mind; ‘how will I find my niche’. The answer is simple… your niche will find you. Throughout all of your sessions you will attract a certain kind of persona, and would prefer coaching them to anyone else. This is your niche.

Once your niche has found you it would be time to focus on ways to target that market effectively. You must reject the ‘all things to all people’ model and adopt a narrow scope for prospecting. Do not fall in to the trap of the “trawl net” method of marketing: they drag their net over a huge area and hope they catch someone – anyone.

Sadly, casting a huge net costs a lot of money and the catch is normally bottom-feeders not trophy fish.

This is where becoming a specialist comes in. when you focus on being the best at one thing you gain credibility. For example; would you trust your GP to do brain surgery or would you prefer to be in the hands of a brain specialist?

If you truly want to become attractive, and have credibility you need to stand for something. If you’re a generic life coach then know this: people want to be able to turn to someone for a specific area of life – this could be relationships, health, or wealth etcetera.

So ditch the shopping list right now – you can’t be the best at everything and even if you are no-one will believe you.

By focusing on providing solutions to customers’ problems, you’ll be able to make a strong, targeted promise. The result? People will seek you out.

When considering a niche you need to have the following:

Burning Need – is there an intense, perceived need for the niche in the minds of your prospects? Are they truly concerned with the issue that you can help them solve with your coaching?

Underserved – is your niche underserved? One of the factors to consider is how much training / consulting / coaching is already being offered to the niche. A coaching business will grow faster in an underserved industry than in a highly developed one that has many vendors trying to meet the given need.

Precedent – are there already successful businesses operating in this niche? If so, it suggests that people will pay to have a specific need addressed. Coaches can be more assured that there is a need that will be responsive to marketing than if the niche had never been defined and addressed before.

Some of the risk is reduced if you know that there are others who are successfully targeting the niche at a local level.

Being the first – take a successful niche and narrow it further. For example, if you are coaching youths in London, you could be the first to offer coaching specifically to public school youths currently doing their GCSEs in London.

Narrow focus – It’s much better to offer business coaching to a narrow professional industry. For example instead of targeting lawyers, which is very broad, what about targeting only divorce lawyers?

Industry focus – are members of your niche from a single professional group or industry? If you focus on a subset of a specific professional group, the niche is much easier to penetrate. You can email a specific newsletter to your target group.

You can make the niche group through its local, national and even international professional organisations. You can forge alliances with suppliers who serve the same niche.

Establish your niche – once you’ve decided upon a niche, you’ll want to launch it. Follow these steps to establish your coaching niche:

1. Research your niche – interview at least three prospects to identify what their needs are, how best to communicate with the niche, learn more about the competition, how to quickly position yourself as an expert, and how best to package your coaching as a solution to your niches greatest unmet, tangible needs that they are prepared to pay to resolve.

Package in this sense means arranging your coaching in some tangible parcel: six months of one-on-one coaching with specific content, workshops, and teleseminars for example.

2. Test market your solution – create a programme to try out your coaching solution, gain testimonials and learn more about your niche.

3. Roll out your finished product – seek every opportunity to speak, write, present or share you knowledge with your target audience to increase your exposure and solidify your position as an expert solution provider to this niche.

The greater the ‘expert’ profile you have with the group, the more responsive they will be to your innovation to participate in your programme.

4. Identify your speciality – your speciality describes the benefit your coaching will offer the target market. With both your niche and speciality clearly defined and articulated, you can come over as credible and knowledgeable rather than foolish.

To begin, create a hub statement, one short statement that demonstrates who you work with and what and how you can help them. All of your marketing materials, your articles, your workshops and public speeches should all be created with your target market in mind.

How do you butter your toast?

How do you pack your case before going on holiday?

How do you relax at the weekend?

How do you deal with stressful situations?

How do you respond to people who cut you up on the motorway?

Your answer to each of these questions tells you something about your patterns of behaviour or habits.

Some of your habits might be really useful, enjoyable and give you a great outcome such as working out at the gym after a hard day at work, laying all of your holiday documentation out and checking it 100 times before you leave to go on holiday or having a quiet coffee on a Friday afternoon in your favourite coffee shop.

Some of your habits may, in fact, be less useful, maybe even destructive such as aggressive driving and shouting insults at the guy who cut you up on the motorway or going to the pub every Thursday night and drinking 10 pints.

However, habits are habits for good or bad. When they kick in, you are usually not considering whether they are right or wrong you just go into the flow. Your subconscious mind takes over and plays out a well rehearsed set of actions.

Do you sometimes recognise patterns of behaviour that are starting to have a negative effect on you or people around you?

For example, eating when you are feeling a bit down, snapping at a colleague who always (to your mind) makes stupid comments in team meetings, flopping down on the sofa in the evening rather than taking some exercise.

If you have, then perhaps you are looking for a way to break those patterns of behaviour and create new habits. Ones that will give you a more positive outcome such as help you get fitter, lose weight, build better relationships at work, spend more time with your children, get ahead at work and so on.

Developing new habits is remarkably simple to do (believe it or not!). All it requires is time, patience and determination. Are you up for it?

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon who tried to help his patients deal with their self-image and limiting beliefs so that they could deal with their body image more effectively.

Through his research he found that if positive mantra’s or affirmations were said by his patients every day for 21 days, their self-perception changed and they began to feel more confident about the way they looked.

Maltz’s research has become the foundation for recognising that new habits – patterns of behaviour or thought – can be generated in 21 days through repetition.

So, there is your first step to creating a new habit……repeat whatever it is that you want to do or think every day for 21 days. Simple!

Actually, it’s not that simple! If your aim is to change an existing habit, you have to replace the current behaviour or thought pattern with the new one and that can take 100 days.

Think of your habit as a comfortable pair of shoes! You have worn them so many times that when you put them on you don’t even know you are wearing them. They fit perfectly and enable you to go about your daily business as you have always done.

You trust them because you know how they are going to look, what outfits they go with and the fact that they don’t give you blisters.

You know that they are really old looking now and people are starting to comment on how bad they look but the alternative is going out there, trailing around hundreds of shops to try and find an replacement pair. You just know the process will be long and painful and you still may not end up with such a good pair.

So…..you stick with what you know, despite the feedback other people (perhaps including yourself) are giving you.

To change your habit you need to consider what the benefits of that initially painful process of change will be. What will this new habit give you? What will it enable you to do that you can’t do now? How will it impact on other people who are important to you?

Once you have given yourself a compelling reason to make the change, you then need to do 4 things:

• become aware of the behaviour or thought that you want to change and specifically when they act out (you may want to write it down so that you can start to recognise the pattern)

• every time you feel yourself doing or thinking that thing, pause, take a breath and change your physiology or your environment

•  identify what behaviour or thought you would like to have instead

• start doing it and keep doing it for 21 days

Then you will start to see the benefit. You will have “broken in” the new habit, just like that new pair of shoes, and, if you keep focusing on your compelling reason, you will be eventually be able to replace the old with the new and very soon your new habit will be just as comfortable as the old one!

“Every coach needs to run their practice as a small business owner.”

Most coaches have an absolute passion for the work they do. Many will say that coaching isn’t hard work because they find it such a pleasure. Their core motivation is rarely a desire for riches – most are driven more by the wish to make a tangible difference to people’s lives.

Being good at what we do gives us a sense of purpose and personal satisfaction, which is great for self-esteem. But a love of the task on its own will not make a profit. Without positive cash flow a livelihood can quickly be in danger and the freedom to focus on clients’ needs will be compromised.

Coaches have often make a significant investment in time and money to gain life changing skills and qualify as an NLP professional, but have taken little or no time to learn the basic principles of how to run a business.

As MD of The Coaching Academy, and the Entrepreneurs’ Business Academy for Coaches, I know that building a business is not down to luck. It is a process that can be learned, like any other.

I had already been running a series of commercially successful companies when I first trained as an NLP coach, which meant it was easy for me to combine my new coaching skills with my existing business experience and make a healthy living.

But the coaching had to be the main priority. Focusing solely on getting a financial return from my clients felt incongruent to me.

Now I am on a mission to encourage more people in the coaching profession to think of themselves as business owners as well as caring professionals and to help them to tell as many people as possible know who they are and what they offer.

My forthcoming series of articles headed Coaching Heart – Commercial Mind is all about adding value to your coaching service, remaining true to your core ideals and selling with integrity. The first is about the importance of running your coaching practice as a business owner.

PRESS PAUSE AND TAKE TIME TO PLAN

A coaching or training business can be run with few overheads and minimal set up costs. Many coaches and trainers work from home and will continue to work full or part time until their business takes off.

This reduces the risk of business failure, but the low-key approach can also lead to a complacent attitude towards business planning and personal goal setting.

Coaches often tell me that they don’t have enough clients for a sustainable business – but when I ask them how many clients they need, they don’t know.

NLP practitioners are used to encouraging their clients to set specific and achievable goals – but it is crucial that they take the same approach themselves. Coaching or training is the service the business provides – but coaches need to manage that service with the mindset of a business owner.

Growing a successful business depends first upon knowing what you want to achieve, and then finding enough clients to pay for your product or service.

It means taking time out to develop a business plan and to consider your vision of the future. For those who are motivated more by helping others than by financial success it can be a hard lesson to learn.

KNOW YOUR NICHE

Businesses fail not because therapists and counsellors are not good enough at what they do – but because they are not effective at generating enough new clients. Unfortunately it is not enough to be well-qualified and to have a website or to think ‘my reputation will do the talking’.

Being successful is not only about being professionally excellent, it is about being clear about your niche area of expertise and running your practice like a business owner: prospecting for clients, managing costs, and marketing yourself in an ongoing and cost-effective way.

START WITH THE END IN MIND

Always start with the end in mind. Commercial goal setting starts with creating a business plan. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it needs to be very clear.

If you know how much you want and need to earn each year, you will be better able to plan how to achieve that aim. Look at your costs; look at your prices; set them properly and view your coaching business as a business. Ask yourself:

• ‘What are my running costs?’ (Premises, bills, rent, living costs and so on.)
• ‘How much do I need to earn per year? (And how does that break down?’)

• ‘How much do I need to allow for Tax and National Insurance?’ (Consider setting up a separate bank account to put the money aside.)

• ‘What is the market rate, and what is my scale of charges?’ (Do some market research.)

• ‘How many clients do I need to make this work – per year, per month, per week?’ (People often don’t know this.)

• ‘Is this more or less than the number of clients I want?’ (Alter pricing accordingly.)

• ‘Have I taken account of seasonal variations?’ (For example, December is likely to be slow.)

• ‘How am I going to find them?’ (Target your marketing.)

Ask yourself – what is my customer profile? If you are positioning yourself as an expert (and I suggest that you do) then you are likely to become highly sought after and people will be prepared to pay more for your help.

Remember: generalists seek clients but clients seek specialists. If you are a specialist, it will be easier for other people to recommend and promote you. Very often you can charge more for your time because there are fewer people offering your service.

YOUR TIME HAS A FINANCIAL WORTH AS WELL AS A PROFESSIONAL VALUE

No matter how much you want to help your clients, you need to remember that your time really is money, which means you need to manage time carefully. Many coaches over-commit their time and under-charge for their services.

It is wise to agree a scale of times and charges up-front, otherwise you may find yourself working twice as long for half your hourly rate. Consider offering a course of treatments and encourage pre-payment, rather than charging by the hour.

Not only does it increase client commitment in some cases, it also means that if someone cancels at the last minute, or if you go over time, you can charge accordingly.

To build a sustainable business you need to tell as many people as possible that you exist and to keep communicating your business message as clearly as you can – and ask them to be proactive about recommending you too.

Selling and success go hand in hand. The more effective you are at selling, the better able you will be to provide a great service to your clients.

In the next few issues I will be writing about the importance of sales, marketing, first impressions and business branding, e-marketing and financial management.

Connect with Bev on Google+

Calling all fellow coaches. Last year, an overwhelming number of you were kind enough to take the time to complete our online coaching survey. We conducted this survey to gain a better understanding of where the coaching profession currently is and where it is heading in the future.

Following the succcess of our Infographic – The Make Up Of A Modern Day Coach, it was always our plan to publish a full report of our findings on the current coaching market. We’re very proud to see some very interesting and positive statistics.

• Over 60% of coaches regard self-motivation as the most important factor when starting a coaching career
• Over 50% of coaches have increased the amount they charge for coaching
• 40% of coaches positively report an increase in their number of clients.

To download the full report from The Coaching Academy’s survey report, please click here.

Thank you to all those who took part. We really do hope you enjoy the findings.

On most occasions, individuals that seek out coaching possess a demeanour that is conductive to a successful coaching relationship. However, every now and again coaches are presented with some challenging situations.

It may be that a client has no idea of what they want, find it difficult to follow a plan or are simply unwilling to change.

The Top 5 Challenges that we believe coaches face are:

1. A Lack of Commitment

Some people find it extremely difficult to commit to a cause, whether it has to do with work or life in general. One of the most effective strategies to encourage commitment is to build an individuals drive and motivation.

If a client finds meaning and purpose in what they’re doing, they’ll be motivated and willing to to put in the hard yards to achieve their goal.

A coach could assist a client to achieve that drive and motivation by having the client draw a self-image that reflects the positive outcome of their coaching relationships.
2. Procrastination

Procrastination is a common problem that can be a major obstacle for many people. One of the best ways individuals can work around this stumbling block is to break their goal down into manageable sizes – mini goals.

They should then create a timeline that clearly states when their mini goals should be achieved. This is a great strategy for coaching clients to see the rewards that can be gained from disciplined actions and self-control. After all, discipline is always required to achieve goals of substance.

3. Poor Communication Skills

Poor communication skills can leave both the client and the coach in strife. How is a coach supposed to assist someone if they don’t understand what they want? It’s extremely important that a coach knows what their client wants, and therefore vital that they’re well equipped with communication skills that can counteract whatever skills a client may be lacking.

A coach can improve communication with clients by rephrasing what has been said and having them confirm it was in fact what they meant. A coach could also improve client communication by encouraging feedback at every step of the way and by stimulating insights, opinions and ideas.

A coach with good communication skills will also be able to recognise what communication styles work best with their client and deliver their messages in a clear, concise manner that resonates with their client.

4. Lack of Direction

When a client has little idea of what they want to achieve it can be quite challenging for a coach to assist a client to discover what they want out of their coaching relationship.

In circumstances like these, helping a client to identify their personal values, preferences, needs and vocational skills is particularly important, as it will assist them to form a Purpose Statement which will give them heightened perspective of where they are now and a direction to work towards with their coach.

5. Lack of Pro-action

On occasion clients perceive a coach will be able to assist them without having to do anything themselves. They expect to get to their desired destination with very little effort on their part.

This mentality can be extremely challenging for a coach, so it’s very important the coach stresses what their role is at the start of all coaching relationships. It’s also important to clarify your expectations of the client as well as what assistance can be given.