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You’ll already know that your agenda (for long-term, high paying clients) is different to your Prospect’s Agenda (for quick and preferably free advice from you!)…

See how a Group programme fits into the Pathway Strategy and how to utilise three super-helpful outcome of the Pathway:

These are just some of the benefits of having a Pathway Strategy…

If you want to talk about how to install the Pathway Strategy into your business, talk to us!

The Coaching Cycle…

In this blog we talk about how to use the coaching cycle to keep clients long term…

This is a theme we talk a lot about as there’s a lot of money that gets lost by coaches when they have clients leaving early… not only revenue loss from losing the client, but also the time it takes in sales and marketing to replace them!

A lot of consultants have the ability to solve a problem in a business, but that can lead to a very start/stop type of engagement.  When you approach your clients with a cycle, it gives a lot of structure to your coaching that is missing when you are merely fixing problems.

So building a coaching cycle works like this…

You start with a Plan… a large part of the plan is the process you go through to make sure you’ve covered everything before you start.  Without one, your subsequent sessions can feel random and “unplanned”… this is not helpful for confidence from the client!

The next part of the cycle is breaking down the Plan into specific Tasks or projects.  Turns out that no one gets super-excited about a big plan with a tonne of pages to read… just looks like endless work on top of the endless work your client already has :(…  So the Tasks are the bite size chunks that come from the plan… We use worksheets to help with this process of making the Tasks easy to implement.  Means the client isn’t starting with a blank sheet of paper that never gets much traction between sessions.

Once the Tasks are being implemented, the next part of the cycle is to Monitor the results of those Tasks.  This is to make sure the needle is moving in the right direction… if it’s not, then why are we working on it!  Important here is the quantification of the Monitoring as this is what confirms to the client the ROI of the programme they are paying you for.

The last part of the cycle is the Review… this allows you to put the spotlight on them to make sure they’ve done their part of the process.  Your job as coach is to lead them in the right direction… this doesn’t mean doing it for them as that’s not your role.  Therefore for your programme to be successful, you need a mechanism to Review their performance and to reset the plan for the upcoming period.  If you don’t review, you lose the opportunity to reset their commitment to the big picture that you planned from the outset of when you decided to work together.  Gotta review people!

Now you’ve done the Review, your ready for the next Quarterly Plan and you’ve started the cycle again…

That’s the coaching cycle!

We have taken the (rather rash!) step of custom designing a Software system that builds the coaching cycle into your client programme.  It take all the hard work out of operating this with your clients and gives you the tools you need to “Find your Fee” and make sure the client can see ROI on their programme to keep them long term as a client with you.

Check out our Home Page where it says SOFTWARE for a demo… if you like the look of it, we should talk!

Quantifying Your Wins…

This is another big deal when it comes to keeping clients long term…

The process of quantifying your wins is something that’s not done at all by clients!  We have to do it for them and remind them of the great decision that they made to engage our services.

If we don’t do this, they can think that all the gains that have been made would have happened anyway, and why should they keep on paying for our services!  Without a solid way to quantify our wins, it’s no wonder that clients get to wondering “what have you done for me lately!”

We think this is a massive part of being a professional business coach!

The business optimisation software that we have built makes this process obvious in the way that we are able to compare our fees to the upside that’s available in the business…

A review that looks at quantifiable wins is how to do this as it shows the client 3 things:

1. Shows the client the progress you’re making as key mile markers

2. Also they can see great value for the time they are spending working on their business with you

3. Lastly it demonstrates ROI on your fees which is really important for retaining

We’ve automated this into a propriatory Software system because retention is such a massive part of building a successful coaching business… check out the demo on the home page where it says SOFTWARE!

How to Fix a Business… and find your Fee Fast!

When it comes to getting stuck into working with a new client, it’s super easy to get distracted with doing what THEY want you to do, rather than what YOU know you should be doing!

To deal with that, its helpful to have a basic format that deals with fixing the business in the right order.  It works the same as a ladder…

Here’s what I mean. Climbing a ladder means stepping onto the first rung… if you try and miss a rung, it’s easy to fall off the thing and end up back where you started.

So the first rung of the ladder is Margins… it’s not the most glamorous place to start, but it’s where the easiest gains are made so don’t let the numbers put you off.  Working on pricing and costs have huge opportunities in most businesses… so always start here.

Next level is working with team Productivity.  The reason why this is second is simply because as soon as you start working with people, it takes time to implement.  There’s “Team Talks”, deciding on scoreboards and sometimes confronting people in the business who have been there a while… The Margin strategies are far quicker to implement and it only takes one person to make the decision… Teams are slower, for that reason work on them second.

Third level is Sales… sales in preference to marketing.  No point in breaking out your awesome marketing gear if you’re missing converting them into bankable sales.  Also no point if the Margins haven’t been assessed to make sure the marketing is going after the right targets who are paying the right prices… Sales next, followed by Marketing.

Forth level is putting in the System and polishing the business model.  Process maps and systemisation is important once the basics of the previous 3 steps have been done.  No point systemising a business model that loses money.  Sure it might be easier to run, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s losing money.  Lots of work with the team at this stage as processes are refined and culture is built.

Last level is Scale… or Sale.  Whatever the business owner is looking for here.  Scale means that you’re working with your client on acquisition targets and building capacity into the business.  Often there’s significant investment needed here for market development, product development or capital development projects.  Very exciting here as you’ve done much of the work in getting the business prepared for scale.

Find your fee in the first step, that will buy you the time you need to scale up the rest of the Ladder…

So that’s the order… important that each level has it’s focus!