Coaching: Communicating What Service You Provide

Coaching: Communicating What Service You Provide

by: Catherine Franz

Coaching is unique because it makes a special promise: transformation. At the root of any desire for personal development is the expectation that, every time they have an encounter with their coach, they have some how changed from the person they were into the person they more prefer to be.

Instead of focusing your communications, this includes all marketing materials as well, on subject areas or benefits, concentrate on lives the kind of person you help create. This isn’t merely an issue of who they can become; it includes values, ethics, the sense of personal mission, and what people want to accomplish within their life times. In this way, you can reach beyond the practical considerations within the decision making process to speak to the individual underlying core: a person’s dreams.

Here are a few ways to make your communications more personal, and directed towards their dreams, thus, making it more appealing and attractive:

1. Speak and Write to Their Values

In any coaching communications, two of the most important words you can use are กwe believe.ก Even the most practical personal development desiring person believes in something. Tell prospective clients what your coaching stands for so that they can evaluate whether they share your coaching values, which is the same as your personal values if you are solo.

This step helps filter that would most likely not be a match anyway.

After all, in a country crowded with coaches, your values can be your greatest distinction. Maybe your coaching encourages an entrepreneurial spirit through projects or creative approaches to familiar problems or challenges. Some people prefer the word challenge, so I included both. Put your coaching values front and center.

2. Connect Benefits to Ambitions

Describing what people are going to learn, such as living their lives by their values or building a strong personal foundation isn’t enough; you want to show how coaching helps them reach their goals. Instead of writing mere descriptions, write stories with the prospective coachee as the potential hero.

Tell readers how your fieldwork prepares them for realworld experiences, how your group coaching hosts relationship opportunities, how your teleclass sharpens them, changes their criticalthinking, or decisionmaking skills.

3. Use Endorsements and Case Studies

Selecting a coach can be intimidating and overwhelming even for the most courageous people. An endorsement, in an ad or printed material created for sales, shows how your coaching welcomes and works with people just like them.

Case studies is a step up from endorsements by actually describing in some detail the transformation story how a person from one kind of background acted on her ambition and was able to move forward through your program or by working with you.

Conclusion

These techniques also work well for service or products communications if you also offer teleclasses, workshops, or group coaching programs. Actually, not that I think of it, it works in all personal development communications.

© Copyright 2004, Catherine Franz. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Catherine Franz

To learn more about how to turn your life into a fabulous success, visit the Abundance Center for techniques, tips, and programs to support your goal. While you are there, check out the three enewsletters Catherine writes monthly.

http://www.abundancecenter.com

blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 07, 2004

by Catherine Franz

Home Based Businesses Have Their Share Of Frustrat

Home Based Businesses Have Their Share Of Frustrations

by: Kirk Bannerman

The source of frustration addressed in his article may be all too familiar if you happen to work at an Internetbased home business which relies on personal relationships and/or teamwork.

I am often contacted by members of my business team with a tale of woe regarding a lack of response from their affiliates. It typically goes something like…กI send out lots of emails to all of them and I very rarely get any response. What am I doing wrongก.

If your particular internet business involves selling well known branded items, personal feedback is not an issue. Visitors to your website (potential customers) are primarily interested in selection, availability, and price. If it is a returning customer, then you can also throw customer service into the equation. Once the desired item is selected, your mouse does all the ‘talkingก without any human interaction involved.

However, there are many types of internetbased home businesses where feedback and interaction are quite important and getting an affiliate or business team member to communicate with you is a definite objective. Itกs not at all surprising that this can be a challenge when you stop to think that what you are trying to do is initiate a dialog between two complete strangers who have never even seen each other.

Heavily branded websites like walmart.com or amazon.com are household names and carry an implied trust with visitors. However, the vast majority of websites are not well known and are found and visited as a result of searches performed by search engines. In these instances, the visitor is probably arriving at the website for the first time and human nature often dictates a sense of fear or suspicion of the unknown which is manifested by a reluctance to respond to email messages from an unknown party.

It seems that there is no pat answer as to the best way to elicit an initial email response from a person. I have tried several approaches with varying degrees of success. Individual styles will vary, but the following four points should be kept in mind:

*you need to build trust & credibility with thorough knowledge of your business and with straight forward talk about realistic expectations

*don’t oversell or indulge in hype as many people are expecting this and it can be an immediate turnoff

*send messages with at least one openended question that requires a response

*keep the messages fairly brief, long winded messages that go on and on quite frequently will not be read

One other thing to keep in mind is that your messages may not even be reaching the intended recipient and they have no opportunity to give you a reply. At the end of your messages you might want to ask the recipient to send you a return email just saying กgot itก.

We all agree that spam is a very serious problem. These days, many email providers and ISPs have appointed themselves to be the กinformation policeก and are employing various schemes to try to recognize and block messages that constitute spam. Unfortunately, these mail filtering or blocking techniques are often very inaccurate and many messages that people actually want to receive are arbitrarily being sent off into the ozone.

I have some first hand experience with this situation. Not long ago, the ISP that my mother was using suddenly decided that she would not be allowed to receive messages from me! It took us a while to figure out what was going on, but once we did, that ISP was going to soon become history as far as my mother was concerned.

In the final analysis, all you can do is give it your best shot. Some people will respond, some won’t…and the beat goes on. Remember, itกs nothing personal, just human nature at work.

About The Author

Kirk Bannerman operates his own successful home based business and also coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. For more information visit his website at http://www.homebasedbusinessteam.com

This article was posted on April 01

by Kirk Bannerman