Library - Coaching for Businesses
10 reasons to have a Business Coach
10 reasons to have a Business Coach
Here are 10 reasons, in alphabetical order, to have a business coach:
- Accountability: as a coach I will hold you to account, check on your progress, care about how you own or manage your business, support, champion and challenge you. Self-help books are great, but they don’t do follow-up.
- Agenda: a coach will normally work on anything you want – however small or random. Not every business owner who sees a coach wants their business to go global or be worth millions. Some business owners just want to find the motivation to structure their day, market more effectively, get on better with staff, stick to a routine, explore local business opportunities, or just make a change means not working 24/7. You set the agenda in coaching and I commit to supporting you.
- Feelgood factor: coaching isn’t like sitting an exam. There’s no right answer. In fact, it’s exciting, stimulating and fun to be coached. I’m entirely comfortable using humour while offering you support, praise and challenge. You should expect to leave every coaching session feeling more entrepreneurial, capable and resourceful than you did when you started.
- Fresh Start: I have no preconceptions about you or your business. There is no agenda and no history to cloud my view of you. Unlike anyone else in your life, I see you and your business as you and it show up in front of me – not as your job title or as a brand I’ve known for years. I see you and your business as you and it are and as who you and it could be. Then I hold up a mirror to you so you can see too.
- Individual solutions: coaching is not one-size-fits-all. I don’t impose solutions. Instead, I appreciate the uniqueness of each business and know that each one is different. As a coach I help you understand yourself as an entrepreneur or business owner – what motivates you, what holds you back, what excites you, what gives you purpose.
- Listening: coaches know how to listen. When was the last time you were really listened to, without interruption, so that you could hear yourself think? There’s a reason for asking: “How Do I Know What I’m Thinking Until I’ve Heard Myself Speak?”. It’s not the same as talking to yourself when you’re driving or out for a walk. Neuroscience has found that having attention from another human floods the brain with chemicals that improve your thinking and reduce stress.
- Questioning: I will ask you questions – sometimes tricky ones – to help you find the solutions or goals that are right for you and your business. And then you (not I) will find solutions that are right for you and your business. Coaching is like having a bespoke suit that only fits you!
- You: you pay for my time, expertise and ability to partner you in your business thinking. We don’t have to take turns in a conversation – you can just indulge in pure “you time” and I may not speak much. When was the last time you weren’t interrupted and thrown off your train of thought?
- You and your business: perhaps for the first time in your life you can be entirely yourself. You can let go of trying to be perfect, people pleasing, or other habits you have acquired. I create an adult-to-adult relationship in which you will learn that being perfect doesn’t exist and also isn’t necessary. Instead, you will learn to accept and even celebrate your minor flaws! What’s wrong with being idiosyncratic? You will learn self-awareness, self-management and business growth skills that last.
- Effectiveness: behind every successful sportsperson is a coach. Behind many successful business persons there is a coach. Behind many successful individuals there is a coach. High achievers know they can’t do it all on their own. And there’s nothing wrong in accepting that you and your business can do more or better with support.
10 Reasons to have a Business Coach
What is a Business Growth System?
What is a Business Growth System?
A business growth system involves developing a series of business-related habits that create a methodology. This then generates more profit, which in turn not only brings your business more money, but also gives you more time to focus on those parts of your business that interest you most, as well as more leisure time when you can dispose of that money or do other things.
There are four (or five if you think long-term) elements to a business growth system. They’re called (1) Find Your Gap;(2) Do The Basics; (3) Define Your Message; (4) Know Your Numbers; and (5) Consolidation. Each element has several sub-elements that need to be methodically address if the synergy of all five elements are to result in the overall benefits mentioned earlier. Each of them comprises a separate part of the Coaching for Businesses program offered by WynLewisCoaching.
- Find your Gap: is where we start to understand:
- you and your business;
- where you want to get to;
- where you are now;
- the difference between here and there (this is your Gap);
- what you need (financially, personally, practically and in other ways) to bridge your Gap
- a clear goal;
- a sense check of your goal (is it even possible?)
- Do The Basics: this is where we establish the basic requirements of a successful business:
- as the business owner, it’s your responsibility (nobody else’s) to get and keep more clients/customers;
- if you don’t get and keep customers, your business will fail;
- most business owners don’t understand the direct link between:
- rhythmic business growth activity; and
- the rhythmic acquisition of clients/customers as a result;
- being reactive on an “everything will work out fine” basis isn’t enough;
- haphazard “spray and pray” marketing, with no follow-up, doesn’t work;
- to become a (more) professional business person you have to:
- introduce, develop, monitor, refine and leverage systems that result in leads, prospects and clients/customers;
- know your numbers (how much does it cost you to get a client/customer? what is the lifetime value of a customer? what are your margins? what work is most profitable?)
- you have to act and think like an investor with a plan to exit your business a few years’ time.
- the basic requirements for a successful business include:
- a marketing assets audit;
- activating Google Business;
- following up clients/customers;
- re-marketing;
- price review;
- getting reviews;
- publishing content in social media and other places; and
- having arrangements that capture enquiries.
Once you have the basics, all you need to do then is monitor and refine them every so often. But getting the basics in place is often overlooked.
- Define Your Message: this is where we focus on marketing your products or services so that you:
- understand your ideal buyer;
- present your business in a way that makes it memorable and needed;
- explain what your business does;
- think like a potential client/customer – why should they care about your personal circumstances – your product is more important than you are;
- establish your business as the place to go for your product or service;
- create an offer that a potential client/customer would be silly to resist;
- assess and work out the most effective marketing;
- follow up
- don’t focus on selling – focus instead on others buying.
Marketing and messaging don’t have to be “sales-y”. All that it involves is supplying information to people who are already looking to buy something. They key point is to do this in a targeted way. Then do it again. And again. And again. That then creates a rhythm, which creates a habit, which makes marketing easier, which results in business growth.
- Know Your Numbers: this is when we identify, understand and know how to manipulate your management financial data: it’s Business Maths…. The reason it’s important is that:
- most small business live from week to week / month to month / year to year and then send their data to their accountants to get their annual accounts done. But they (i.e. your accountants) only process your data – they don’t understand how your business works;
- many small businesses are OK if there is enough money in current account to pay for overheads, remuneration, tax and some contingencies;
- and most small businesses have no idea of the numbers that would let those businesses flourish and profit, such as:
- how much money did you make in the last 12 months?
- how many clients/customers/sales did you add this year?
- how much does it cost you to get a new client/customer/sale?
- how much is your average client/customer/sale worth to you?
- what is your most profitable work (i.e. which takes you least time and effort to produce the highest profit)?
- which bit of what you do or provide creates the most profit for the least effort?
There are also 12 key numbers you need to know. These are:
- your leads;
- your lead conversion rate;
- your prospects
- your prospects conversion rate;
- your sales;
- your average order value;
- your total revenue;
- your gross margin;
- your gross profit;
- your overheads;
- your remuneration; and
- your net profit.
These numbers let you know how much money you need to spend to make more profit and how effective is that to bridge your Gap. The extent to which you know these numbers will determine whether you focus on “busy-ness” or whether you are a business person. You need to know your numbers. If you don’t know the score, you won’t know your status.
- Consolidation: this is when we accept that business growth isn’t something that can be done once and then forgotten about. Instead, it’s an ongoing process that needs to be developed and refined and, sometimes, changed entirely. It has three stages:
- Stage 1: involves putting everything in place so that you know more about your business and can manage it better. This is what the first four stages are all about:
- Stage 2: involves improving, refining and generally polishing what you now have in place, so that (part of) your business can run itself; this then leaves you free to focus on other things; and lets you build (not create) your business: optimisation.
- Stage 3: is what happens when you have stabilised and maximised. It’s when you can expand your reach, your client/customer base, your products/services:
Everything that’s mentioned above is part of a system, rather than a series of one-of activities. Each activity builds on and/or is related to other activities to build and benefit from the system. It’s having a system that result in someone owning a business, rather than owning a job.