So you know how to fix and grow businesses… great! But what are the skills you need to acquire that will give you the base you need to be successful as a business advisor. You’ll probably have an idea of what “coaching” skills are. But technically, what does a professional business coach know how to do, that maybe you don’t?

There are four areas where a professional business coach will have strong skills that are worth having a look at… especially if business advisory is a track you’re thinking about.

Firstly, a professional business coach has a set of beliefs that are different to most people. I call it being an “unreasonable friend”. Maybe you’ve got a friend who always seems to have an unreasonable expectation that you’re capable of more, no matter what! They believe in you for sure, but they expect you to be smashing it and they don’t listen to any lame excuse from you if you try and push back on them. That’s what the best business coaches are like… an “unreasonable friend” where their permanent belief is “nice, need more!”

Secondly, a professional business coach knows how to make the complex, simple and the simple, compelling. And the way they do that is by drawing simple models and using simple formulas. Check out my latest video for an example that uses a simple triangle… every industry is made up of many businesses. They’re all in the same industry with the same opportunities, but depending on how the businesses are run, you’ll see very different results. So, the top 20% of businesses end up making 80% of the money, while the bottom 80% scrap around for only 20% of the money. This is true for local plumbers, in the same way it’s true for companies like Apple. The question is, what do these guys know, that these guys don’t… and how do you get above the line if you’re stuck down here. PAUSE, can you see if you’re a local plumber, you probably want to know the answer… it’s compelling! And all I needed was a triangle and a line to make the complex, simple and the simple compelling. Coaches are great at using models!

Thirdly, professional business coaches are awesome at profiling tools. When you know how to use tools like DISC and Values profiles, it means you’ll know systematically how to motivate and challenge your clients based on their profile. This means you’ve got an unfair advantage when it comes to getting high performance out of your clients. These tools are so powerful when you know how to use them that you can literally predict what your clients will be doing to sabotage their success. And when you point it out to them, they can’t hide and that’s where break-throughs happen. Profiling tools are very powerful in the hands of professional business coaches who know how to use them.

Last one, professional business coaches have perfected what I call “the art of the ask”. They know how to string questions together in a very specific sequence that causes people to become very focused and clear on the actions that they need to deliver for their coach. Most question-based sequences are based on a very old coaching process developed by John Witmore called the GROW model. G stands for “Goal” based questions such as “what’s the outcome you want but don’t have?”. The next letter in GROW is R which stands for “Reality” based questions such as “what’s the current situation that you’re not happy with?”. These first 2 parts of the GROW model are designed to get a gap. No coaching is possible without the person being coached acknowledging that they have a gap between what they want vs what they have. Now we can ask questions about Options, that’s what the “O” stands for in GROW. Questions such as “so what could be done to close the gap?”. Then the last type of coaching question is where the accountability comes in with “What will you do based on the options we’ve talked about?”. GROW gives you a simple framework for your questions and professional business coaches are masters at this. Questioning sequences is a core skill and often the hardest to learn especially if you’re used to being the person with all the answers!

That’s the advantage professional business coaches have over people who have great business backgrounds. Four skills… beliefs, models, profiles and questions… and they’re all learnable!