HOW TO… SET UP AND DEVELOP A SUCCESSFUL COACHING PRACTICE
By Gladeana Mcmahon and Antoinette Oglethorpe

This third article in our series on developing a successful coaching practice, considers how to sell and market your business in order to win new clients
Part three: Defining a business proposition

Defining your target client and being clear on the value they get from working with you is the first important step in selling and marketing your coaching services to win clients.

Why coaches must market services
Marketing works on the premise that if you don’t attract clients, you don’t have a business. It’s a simple, yet fundamental, idea. Some coaches think that marketing is somehow degrading or unprofessional. That’s true if you make false claims or misrepresent what you offer. However, sharing genuine information about yourself and your services can only be helpful to those who would benefit from them (McMahon, Palmer & Wilding, 2005).
People who have experienced coaching know it can have a positive and profound impact on their life and work. But then, they already have a coach. Your future clients are more likely to need to understand how coaching can help them.
Marketing is no more than building good relationships and helping people get the support they need to solve a problem or achieve desired outcomes. Clients need coaches as much as coaches need clients, and a good match brings mutual benefits.
Marketing coaching is not like marketing a detergent or a breakfast cereal. Coaching is intangible. People can’t see, hear or touch what it’s going to be like when they buy it. They can only experience it. Clients are taking a big risk when they decide to work with a coach because it is a significant financial investment and they have to take your word that they’ll get what they hope for. So, marketing a coaching business relies heavily on building trust and credibility – and that takes time. Few people are an overnight success as a coach.

Defining a target client
When we ask newly qualified coaches who their target client is, one of the most common answers we get is: ‘anyone’. As coaches ourselves, we know the skill of coaching can be applied to any individual in any situation with any problem. Most coaches like the variety of working with different people and don’t want to limit themselves. Unfortunately, even though that is true of coaching in practice, it is not helpful when it comes to marketing your services. Many coaches fear that by being too specific in their marketing they will miss potential business from clients outside those specifications.
The reality is that by being too general, you significantly weaken your marketing efforts. Clients can choose from literally thousands of coaches who are all trying to promote their businesses. Therefore, your marketing needs to grab their attention, but in a way that is true to you and not pushy or aggressive. To do that your marketing needs to resonate with the issues and concerns of your prospective clients (Harding, 2008). If your marketing focuses on their particular industry sector, or their particular role or the particular challenge they want help with, then they’ll listen.
Not only that, but specialisation implies expertise. Who would you rather have as your accountant, for example: a generalist, or someone who specialises in working with sole traders and micro-businesses? Most of us would prefer to deal with a specialist. We assume that they will better understand the specifics of our situation.

Two ways to define target clients
Effective marketing relies on you understanding the needs, wants and motivations of your target clients (Maister, 2003). One of the best ways of doing that is to think through what you know about them, other than their need for coaching. For example, their age, gender, profession or job/socio-economic group, location and likely referral sources.
There are two ways to define your target client:

1. Start with the people you want to coach and then consider the challenges they might be facing. For example, you might want to coach senior leaders in financial services firms or people starting businesses, or working mothers. If so, what are the challenges they face and how can you help them meet these?
2. Start with challenges you like to help people with and then think about the types of people who are most likely to want coaching on those issues. For example, you may be passionate about, and skilled at, coaching people around relationships or stress management or coping with redundancy. This is a case of who and why. Who would need these services and why?

Three questions you must answer
Whatever way you approach defining your target client, here are the simple (but not easy) questions you need to answer:

1. Problem What problems do I help my clients solve (that they will pay money for help with solving)?
2. Solution What results do they get when they solve those problems?
3. Target audience Who experiences these kinds of problems? What characterises them?

Let’s use an example of a career coach who specialises in working with senior people in organisations. Their answers to these questions may be:

1. Problem Clients feel they’re not in control of their careers and aren’t getting satisfaction from their jobs, which, in turn, affects their motivation and performance.
2. Solution Coaching helps clients get in touch with what’s important to them in their careers and develop strategies for how they can achieve what they want. That gives them a sense of greater control, empowerment and motivation. This, in turn, improves their performance, which also gives them a better chance of getting what they want from their organisation.
3. Target audience Clients tend to be ambitious high achievers who have a track record of performance and progress. They are typically in their 30s and 40s and hold leadership positions in established organisations.

Try it out
Think about the people you have coached and see if there are any key patterns that will help you answer these three questions – and then develop your business proposition. 

Gladeana McMahon is UK chair of the Association for Coaching
www.gladeanamcmahon.com
Antoinette Oglethorpe provides executive coaching, training and facilitation for organisations
www.antoinetteoglethorpe.com

References
F Harding, Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field (2nd ed), USA: Adams Media, 2008
D H Maister, Managing the Professional Service Firm, USA: Free Press, 2003
G McMahon, S Palmer and C Wilding, Achieving Excellence in Your Coaching Practice, London: Routledge, 2005

coaching at work, volume 8, issue 3