How to be able to think like a true marketing coach
One of the main reasons why coaches become involved in coaching is because they want to positively affect others’ lives. As a coach, you will be able to accomplish this objective based on two factors: your expertise as a coach and the number of people you can reach with your services. We will discuss the latter factor in this article.
In addition to assisting others, coaches can also develop a fruitful lifestyle of their own. They are mutually beneficial.
Coaches, as well as many business people, fail to recognize the important ethical role marketing plays in their businesses. Thus, they develop an attitude that harms themselves, their business, and their clients.
You are a coach in your business. The success of your business depends entirely on you. Neither the number of clients, income, or coaching outcomes determines the success of a coach, nor the ability to make a living. It is not their coaching competencies that differentiate these two extremes, but rather their mindsets. If you do not have clients to use your services, no matter how good you are as a coach, it doesn’t matter how skillful you are.
Then what kind of mindset is needed to become a successful coach?
The mindset of a successful coach is:
- Clients and prospects’ needs come first;
- Actively seeks to help clients achieve their goals;
- Demonstrates empathy toward clients and prospects;
- Provides clients with a wide range of services, and
- Provides ethical advice.
To be a successful coach, you need a marketing mindset.
Marketing is perceived as ‘leading’ and ‘unethical’ by coaches, who believe it is too “sales-oriented” and unnatural for them. We will explain to them how marketing is both ethically valid and commercially critical.
Validity in terms of ethics
Coaching would benefit a large (and growing) number of people in society. Those who could benefit from coaching are called prospects. In order to live a better, more fulfilling life, they have specific goals they wish to achieve or challenges they wish to overcome.
You have an obligation to help these people as a coach. Once they’re utilizing your services, you can begin assisting them. Marketers link prospects’ desires to your ability to assist them in fulfilling their desires.
Marketers can become unethical if they fail to deliver on their marketing promises to their clients. In this case, you knowingly or unknowingly misled your client and acted unethically.
In light of the fact that prospects will hire a coach to assist them in achieving their specific goals, coaches should assist prospects in selecting the coach that will best enable them to achieve their objectives. As coaches, we should fully, comprehensively, and transparently disclose to prospects what services we provide; where our specializations lie; how we have assisted others with similar goals before; and how we can help them. In other words, to market.
Crucial to commercial success
Marketing is important for companies because it links prospects with professionals who can assist them in achieving their goals. By identifying you as a potential resource for prospects’ pre-qualified needs, you can assist them. Prospects have identified for themselves what they need in terms of coaching services:
- They want to achieve certain things in life or overcome certain challenges.
- Having the requisite skills and experience to serve as a coach is essential.
- Financial investment is being made by them.
It is imperative that coaches accept the above point.
Coaching comes generally from two schools of thought when it comes to marketing, as we explained earlier.
The first school of marketing thinks marketing is leading and sales. They believe marketing influences people’s decisions proactively. Or, specifically, that marketing may influence people to take any action they otherwise would not. This idea is known as the Influencing Paradigm.
The second school of thought holds that prospects are people who have recognized themselves the need to instigate change for themselves. This change will be assisted by a coach. In terms of the prospect, they recognize that it has made a link between their needs and how they want those needs met. It is what we call the service paradigm.
These two perspectives have entirely different thought processes. On one hand, the prospect is portrayed as someone who is reluctantly inducted into using coaching services, and on the other hand, the prospect is portrayed as someone who has actively sought out coaching services based on their own needs.
The second paradigm of thinking is critical for you as a coach. It is only then that you will be able to assist your clients ethically. In this symbiotic manner, you will be able to build a successful coaching business.
When you put yourself in the service paradigm, you will recognize that to assist clients in reaching their goals.
In other words, you need to:
Engage in compelling advertising that explains clearly what your company can do for your clients.
- Coaches and trusted advisors are often in a better position of knowing what their clients need to achieve their goals.
- By providing various products and services to your customers, be empathetic to their needs.
- Don’t underestimate your client’s intelligence or ability to make decisions.
- You should not pre-empt your customers’ wants by limiting the range of products and services you provide to them.
- Assumes the role of an ethical adviser.
Once you understand the Service Paradigm of marketing, you’ll see that marketing provides you with a much higher chance of achieving your primary objectives — to assist your clients and build a successful coaching business. As a result, your client’s and your own objectives become complementary and you create a truly win-win situation.
