5 Key Strategies for Coaching Success

The professional coaching industry is growing rapidly, creating new opportunities as well as challenges for both new and experienced coaches. If you are just entering the coaching field or already established, more than ever you need to have smart strategies for success.

So, with a growing industry that presents many opportunities as well as a few challenges, what does it take to achieve success? Hint: It is more than just good coaching skills. Yes, it is important to get quality training, to develop good coaching skills and gain confidence. But success as a coach goes much further.

In an organization, success is not just about good coaching skills but also about doing the work yourself and being a coaching role model. As coaches, we need clear objectives and goals. We need a clear path on how we will achieve our goals and we need to understand what is holding us back. People are drawn to those who exhibit the attributes they are seeking so it is important that we get our house in order first.

As a solopreneur, success is not only about excellence in coaching skills but setting up and managing a business. This includes business development, marketing, operations and finance. It is important to have a plan on how you will manage your business in addition to coaching your clients.

Based on our decades of experience in the coaching field and the work we’ve done in training and supporting coaches around the globe, we’ve identified 5 key strategies for coaching success.

  1. Do the work yourself, first

Do the work yourself and get a coach. Going through the process yourself will give you unique insights as well as a powerful success story to tell your potential coachees.

  1. Leverage your strengths

Each of us has unique strengths. The smart strategy is to leverage your strengths first. If you aren’t sure what your strengths are, take an inventory, ask trusted associates and then put them down on paper. As you develop your list of strengths, consider all experiences; personal, professional, good, bad and neutral. For example, maybe you are naturally a good listener. Write that down. Also, look at your accomplishments, in all aspects of your life, and identify what you can leverage. These could be professional accomplishments but they could also be athletic, academic, hobbies or others.

  1. Invest in education

An investment in education and training will not only give you the skill and confidence you need but it will also help you market yourself. And, it is important to keep the learning going. Even after you have the basics down it is important to refresh, enhance and refine your skills.

  1. Capitalize on your current position

Whether you are working within an organization or already building your coaching business, find opportunities where you are today to start building your credibility. For example, you can start coaching trusted colleagues or business associates. Once you take that step you can then start to develop a track record of success as well as leverage those relationships for your word of mouth marketing.

  1. Determine what makes you unique and how you will tell that story

It is competitive out there. You need to craft your story about what makes you unique and why people should come to you for coaching. This story needs to be personal, compelling and concise.

Once you’ve crafted your story you then need to tell it to everyone, everywhere. For example, make sure your story is told in your bio, on your website, in your talks, and when networking. You may need to modify your story slightly to fit different audiences but the message should be consistent.

Bonus tip for Solopreneurs:

  1. Don’t try to do it all

As a business owner, your time is best spent on acquiring new clients and coaching. To free up your time for these important activities you need to have systems or people in place that will take care of the other tasks. This is one of the biggest challenges, and often downfalls, of coaches who go into business for themselves. They believe they must do it all and end up falling short. They find out that by trying to do it all they actually can’t get everything done and end up sacrificing quality.

There are highly experienced people available for hire to do just about anything you need help with including accounting, administration, marketing, information technology, legal and more. Hire the experts to do the work or at least have them set up systems that are efficient for you to manage.

Pursuing a coaching career is exciting but it takes hard work, smart strategies and time. If you’d like more help on strategies for success, we are here to support you. Register for our free webinar: Making it as a Coach: Strategies for Success and check out our Video – Making it as a Coach.

If you have questions or would like to discuss these strategies for success in more detail, get in touch by sending an email to info@coachingoutofthebox.com.

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