So many coaches miss this, because they already know what they’re selling – their coaching services. It’s a natural way to think, but it’s also a classic marketing mistake. They try to sell coaching as the solution before they’ve even asked what the prospect sees as the problem.

You have a profound appreciation of the power of coaching, and that’s essential. But if it leads you to try to sell coaching, you may be setting yourself up for poor results. The basic law of the marketplace is supply and demand. You can supply all you want of something you think has value, but if there is no demand for it, it won’t sell.

That’s why established businesses do research before they launch a new product. I realize “market research” sounds pretty off-putting – technical, boring, expensive. But at its core, it’s just listening to people to find out what they want. What could be more coach-like than that?

I call this “listening to your market” – and you have everything you need to start doing it. To prove it, try these steps:

1. Find 10 people in your coaching market, and ask them for a brief informational interview. Be clear that you’re not selling anything, but you want their help to understand what matters to people in your niche market.
2. Ask questions that draw out specific, practical information about what people in your market want most – their highest priority goals, the problems they are most motivated to solve.
3. Pay close attention to the language they use to describe these goals and problems.

If you do this, it will change how you think about enrolling new clients. You’ll understand what I mean when I say that marketing your coaching business is not about you. It’s about your prospects – what they want to achieve, and what is getting in their way. Marketers refer to what stands between a prospect and their goal as the “Gap”.

Understand what the Gap is for people in your niche market, weave that into everything you communicate about your coaching business, and you’ll get more effective at enrolling new clients.

Whenever I encounter a coach who’s having trouble enrolling a steady stream of ideal clients, these are the first questions I ask them:

Do you have a viable coaching market?
Do you know what they most want?

The answers to those two questions are the keys to attracting ideal clients and being in high demand as a coach. Nothing else will give you more leverage.

Want support to get those answers for your coaching business? I have a process that could save you years of heartache and tons of money putting out marketing messages that you don’t know whether your prospects will buy. I’ve streamlined it into an 8-week hands-on workshop where you come away with:

• your ideal niche market,
• an understanding of what they most want,
• a marketing message they will resonate with, and
• titles for a suite of coaching programs they will be motivated to buy.

Find out more about the Ideal Coaching Market workshop here. Enroll now, because the next workshop starts August 10.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Do Your Next Coaching Clients Want What You’re Offering Them?

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Recently, a company called ThoughtLead offered “the shortest marketing conference ever”. The Influencer Project featured 60 thought leaders who offered sixty seconds worth of their best advice on how to increase your influence online. I’m impressed with the creative way that ThoughtLead offered value, started a meaningful conversation and built more influence with their market.

Six Tips to Build Influence With Your Coaching Niche

Here are six influence tips that you might not have thought of before. The first two are social media tips. The last four tips have a common theme weaving through them. Did you catch it?

Get Your Message Out There with Online Video
“Online video is probably the fastest way to get your message out there to increase visibility and to get clients and customers online. Very simple — find a good camera, there’s lots of different types online. The Cannon Vixia is a personal favorite… make sure your lighting is good and you have an external microphone. Come up with some great content — it can be two to three minutes, it does not have to be a lot. Create content around your area of expertise and then distribute with gusto!”
Shama Kabani, author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing

Repeat Your Tweets
“You should repeat your tweets. I repeat them four times every eight hours. And I see about the same amount of click-throughs for each one. So no matter what people tell you—repeat your tweets.”
Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of AllTop.com

Stop Talking About Your Products and Services
“Everything that you create on the web should be valuable information for those people that you’re trying to reach. And it shouldn’t focus on what your company happens to do or what your products and services happen to do. People don’t care about products and services; what they care about are themselves. And they care very, very deeply about solving their problems.”
David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Talk To and About Other People
“… if you’re looking to influence a certain thought leader, or even just a group of people, talking about them, talking to them, instead of about yourself is something that I find exceptionally powerful.”
Yaro Starak, Entrpreneurs-Journey.com

Start Thought Provoking Conversations
“…engage readers in a conversation. And that means introducing topics that are thought provoking and interesting, and on which people have a lot to say. People look to you to start a conversation, to lead a conversation and to engage them in topics that really catch their interest.”
Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, Happiness-Project.com

Earn Trust Through Consistency
“Consistency demonstrates commitment. So, for the people that you’re trying to serve, if you are consistent, they’re going to keep coming back. You’re going to earn their trust because you’re consistent. They believe that you’re committed to them for the long haul.”
Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid

The theme that carries through the Influencer Project presentations is what I call becoming a “champion” for your market. Make all of your messages about them – what they care about, what they want most. Your essence, style and story will flow into your messages to attract the people who resonate most with you.

Are you championing your ideal coaching market?

Do they see you as influential?

What can you do in the next 90 days to amp up that influence and connect more with what is most important to your target market?

Share your comments on this blog.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: How to Be Influential in Your Coaching Niche

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Here are three ways to raise courage on demand, for all the leaps you need to take as you build your coaching business.

1. Realize That You’re in Good Company

There are millions of intrepid coaches and other business owners who have traveled this path before you. They have done and are doing exactly what you’re attempting now. And they felt just as spazzy about it as you feel now. But they did it, and thrived.

Tap into that collective fortitude. You can do it too! And you’ll not only live to do it again, you’ll become good at this (whatever it is that inspires fear today). Bank on it.

It’s okay to be a beginner. In fact it’s a crucial part of the developmental path. You wouldn’t expect your infant child to become an adult overnight. That would be unnatural. Give yourself time to learn organically. Make mistakes, and commit to do it better next time. That’s the way to build confidence quickly.

2. Be Right Sized

Even if you’re a bit of a control freak, you know down deep that the outcome of whatever you’re attempting is not completely up to you. Take comfort in that. Do what you can to be at your best, and let go of the rest.

Angeles Arrien, who wrote The Four-Fold Way, has a beautiful creed that I often use to check whether I am being at my best:

1. Show up and be present.
2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning.
3. Tell the truth without blame or judgment.
4. Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.

If I am doing those four things, I can let go of the rest.

If it fits your sensibilities, pray or “call in” energetic support. When I’m about to do something that takes me out of my comfort zone, I take a moment to invite in the wisdom and support of seen and unseen allies. It’s a way of saying to myself: “I am powerful, and it’s not all up to me.”

3. Get Grounded in Purpose

Before you pick up the phone to call that prospect or get on the bridgeline for that teleseminar, get clear about why you’re doing this. What’s the immediate goal? What’s the long-term goal? What will you get out of it? How will you learn, grow, expand? Visualize the realization of all of that. Make it real in your mind. And then release it.

Ask yourself: Who do I want to be in this moment? How would I like to show up? Just taking a moment to set that intention helps you be more of who you want to be. Instead of fearful, you’ll be confident. Instead of worried about what people think, you’ll connect. You’re a great connector, or you wouldn’t be here.

I read somewhere that the oldest meaning of fear is “to pass through”. Fear will show up regularly as you build your coaching business. Count on that. Pass through it, or let it pass through you, and you will find it becomes a great teacher.

What other ways do you summon courage? Share them here in the Comments.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: 3 Ways to Find Courage for Your Coaching Business

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• When your computer crashes, you know who to call to help you recover.
• When your workshop doesn’t fill even though you worked hard to promote it, you focus on the lessons that will help you fill the next one.
• When something just isn’t working, you get twice as interested in how to make it work.

Whether you can define it or not, you can cultivate resilience. And you’ll be glad you did.

The Importance of Being Resilient

Almost everyone who starts their own business will get pushed to their limits, not once but many times. Face it, this stuff is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

To a large extent, the ones who succeed will be the ones who are the most resilient – the ones who can go to their limit and find that they still have something more in reserve.

Life’s not fair, and some people have been given a stronger constitution than others. But as always, the more interesting part is the part that is in your control. What are you doing to build your resilience today?

Lessons from a Disaster

My resilience was tested recently as I was packing for a short spontaneous getaway. Getting ready for a trip normally involves migrating all my current data from my iMac desktop to my MacBook. This time – tired, distracted, and rushing – I made a mistake that erased the user permissions from both computers. Before I realized what had gone wrong, Time Machine (Apple’s continuous backup utility) ran a scheduled backup – and what would have been an easy mistake to recover from turned into a train wreck that disabled both machines.

Fortunately, I have an ace computer consultant on my team. With a half day of his expert labor, I was able to get everything back.

I took away three lessons from this little disaster:

• Try not to run critical computer operations when you’re tired, distracted, and rushing.
• No matter how smart you are, disasters will happen. You gotta have resilience.
• I have more resilience than I sometimes give myself credit for. (And maybe you do too.)

I was not happy when I realized how thoroughly I had trashed both of my computers. But there was a small part of me that had to smile at how perfectly it fit the day I was having. That small smile – that’s resilience.

3 Steps to Cultivate Resilience

Building resilience requires practice. The best time to do it is daily. You’re the best judge of what works for you, but here are three steps that have helped me:

• Have great resources at your fingertips. Always be looking for ways to deepen the resource pool you can call on for support. And when you find a great resource, use them often and sing their praises, to keep the love flowing both ways.
• Get good sleep, good nutrition, and good exercise. These elements are so basic, but they are what your brain needs, in order to respond effectively when crisis strikes. To take this a step further:  Pay attention to what makes you stronger or more grounded, and make it a daily priority to do whatever that is.
• Count your blessings. Notice how, after a setback, you keep going. End each day by acknowledging what you got out of it, whether that is the main story or the “silver lining”. Gratitude is the foundation of prosperity thinking.

Do you have a favorite way to cultivate resilience? Or another quality that is as crucial in your business?

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Got Resilience?

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If you’re not using social networking for your coaching business yet, you can still leverage your network, and your online presence, to promote your blog. This post covers some simple moves to do that.

Link to Your Blog

Just about anything you are already doing online can be tweaked to help promote your blog. Take a tour of every place your name appears online, and ask yourself –

How could I use this to help publicize my blog?

Some examples:

• Include a link to your blog in your email signature block.
• If you also have a static website, or you control a page anywhere else on the Web, use that space to promote your blog.
• If you use an online service that offers you a profile,  like YouTube, Blog Talk Radio or Plaxo, update your profile to feature a link to your blog.
• If you do speaking gigs or guest expert appearances, highlight your blog in the copy you provide to event sponsors. Keep an up to date bio ready (in various lengths) that promotes your blog’s value to your market.
• If you republish your content on article marketing sites like IdeaMarketers, update your author “resource box” copy so it effectively promotes your blog.
• Do you have a Google profile yet? If not, put one up now. There’s a good chance it will show up high on Google when anyone searches your name. Include your blog’s url there, along with some streamlined promotional copy aimed at your market. When you set up your profile, make sure you select to display your full name.

You get the idea. Whatever you do that is published online, update it to feature your blog. Whenever you create a new online presence, keep the opportunity to promote your blog in the front of your mind.

If you do face-to-face networking or speaking, you probably have a business card. Feature your blog’s url there. Or print up some cards to pass around, that just have your name, your tagline or Unique Benefit Statement, and your blog’s url. To minimize the cost, use Vistaprint.

Use Your Words

Whenever you write promotional copy (anything beyond just your blog’s name and url), use some of your market’s favorite keywords for search engine optimization. When you can, to get the maximum SEO punch, link the keywords themselves to your blog.

Get People to Recommend Your Blog

Whatever you do in the realm of promotion, remember this:  A recommendation from a friend or colleague is more powerful than any other kind of promotional message.

Make sure your blog is designed to make sharing it easy. That’s what the “Retweet” button at the top of this blog post and the “Pass This on to a Friend” icons at the bottom are all about.

Then, ask people to share it.

Ask For a Favor

It’s amazing how reluctant most people are to ask for help. Don’t be like most people.

Ask for a favor from your friends and family, your clients, and your business network. First, show them how valuable your content is for people in your market, then ask for their help getting the word out. Tell them specifically what they can do:

• Subscribe.
• Introduce your blog to anyone they know who is in your market.
• Comment on your posts from time to time (if they are in your market).
• Link to your blog posts in their status updates on social networks, to let their friends know they are reading your stuff.

Make this request to all of your contacts. You never know who will jump at the chance to lend a hand. If you do this by email, put it out twice. Let a few weeks go by after the first email, then tweak it and send it again, making clear that this one is for those who haven’t already responded.

Do Me A Favor?

If you think my blog is useful for coaches, please help me spread the word. Here’s how you could do me a favor:

• Subscribe (if you haven’t already).
• Whenever you see a post you really like, link to it on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network you’re on.
• Pass a link to this post, or any other favorite post, on to any coaches you know who could benefit from it. Suggest that they subscribe.

And thanks! Whether you do any of that or not, thanks for reading all the way to the end of this post.

So there you have my suggestions for “hand made” ways to publicize your blog. Does this get your creative juices flowing? What have I left out? Share your thoughts in the comments.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Easy Ways to Publicize Your Coaching Business Blog, Part 3

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This post is about leveraging your social networking presence. If you are already using online social networks (like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter) in your coaching business, you have a blog promotion platform with powerful potential.

If you’re not using social networking in your business yet, don’t worry. Part 3 of this series will talk about some simple moves you can make to leverage your presence on the Web outside of the social networking sites.

Use Your Networks

Social networking and blogging are perfect complements. Both are interactive and frequently updated, creating a virtual conversation that can draw your audience in and engage their attention. Because their user communities are enormous and enthusiastic, the major social networks offer unmatched opportunities to expand your blog’s reach.

If you are actively using social networking in your coaching business, promoting your blog through your favorite social networks will come naturally. Be sure to touch these bases:

• Update your profiles.
• Promote your posts.
• Engage your networks.

Update your profiles. Include your blog’s url, and your tagline or Unique Benefit Statement, in all your social network profiles. Where you can, customize your profile so it echoes your blog’s branding. (Check out my Twitter profile for an example.)

Promote your posts. When you publish a new post, of course you’ll want to announce it to your social networks, with a link back to the full post. Your webmaster can help you automate this.

• If you have a Wordpress blog and use Twitter, use the WP to Twitter plug-in to tweet out each new post automatically when you publish it.
• Pull an excerpt of each new post into your Facebook profile or fan page using the Networked Blogs app.

Once your blog has built up enough of an archive, you can pull short quotable excerpts out of some of your older posts to use as social networking updates. If the article is ever-green and highly useful, include a link to it. Use a Twitter client like Hootsuite to set up multiple updates in advance.

Engage your networks. Use social networking to engage your audience on topics you blog about. Ask them what they would like to see you write about. Ask questions that relate to your favorite topics, and engage with whoever answers. Look for questions other users have asked, and give them a pithy and useful answer.

LinkedIn Answers is designed to connect users in this kind of Q&A format. To create similar interactions on other networks:

• Use the Search function to find relevant questions, then post your answer as a comment.
• Join Groups related to your topic, and watch the group forum for ideas or opportunities to engage.

Every time you post, there’s a link back to your profile, and an opportunity for users to click through to your blog. And the more you can engage your social networks with what you are writing, the more they will spread links to your blog posts.

Don’t Wear Out Your Welcome

When directly promoting your blog posts on social networks, take care not to over-do it. The ethic of social networking is to serve others more than you market yourself. The community will punish users who cross that line. Even though your blog posts are full of useful information, promoting them in your status updates counts as marketing yourself.

So, promote your posts only on networks where you are actively interacting with and serving your audience. (Of course, this includes what you do with automated tools like WP to Twitter.) Hold your self-promoting updates to less than 20% of your overall activity on the network.

There’s an exception to this rule when you have a blog post that directly answers another user’s question. In that case, linking to your post is about answering the question, and counts as service.

A Word of Caution for Newbies

No matter how strong a promotion tool social networking is, don’t get into it just to publicize your blog. This relates to the rule about not over-promoting yourself. It’s better to use each network for a while, and get comfortable with it on its own terms, before using it for promotional purposes.

But don’t let that stop you. As a business tool, social networking is too powerful to ignore, and promoting your blog is just one way to leverage that power.

So if you are not using social networking in your coaching business yet, jump in. I’ll write more on how to get started in future posts.

Help Me Publicize This Blog

If you like this blog and you haven’t yet voted for it in the Best Coaching Blogs contest, you can help me win with two clicks. Go to the Best Coaching Blogs of 2010 page, find “Prosperous Coach Blog – Rhonda Hess” and click the “up” arrow once. (It will turn green.) Even better, vote and then leave a comment by clicking the Comments link. Thanks so much!

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Easy Ways to Publicize Your Coaching Business Blog, Part 2

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There’s a better way to get clients. I’ll lay out the four steps below, but it all starts with finding out what people will put their money into. And in order to find out what people will pay a coach for, you have to know which people you are talking about.

Trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are eager to invest in professional services for a specific purpose. Finding them, and finding out what they are after, is the art of target marketing.

I’ve seen over and over how the clients start flowing in when coaches target a viable coaching market. And the kicker is, targeting a viable market significantly reduces the amount of marketing your business needs. Why?

• It’s quick and easy to learn about the people in a narrow market — what makes them tick, what they want in life, what’s missing for them. And suddenly, you have the keys to the most powerful and effective marketing.
• Your business becomes client centric. The more you build everything in your business around what you know about your prospects, the more your business connects with them where they live.

Have you ever come across a service that seems like it’s designed for you? The service provider is speaking your language, understands what you want so well that it’s a no brainer. You’ll invest, right? And you’ll tell other people about it, too. That’s what target marketing does for you as a coach.

Will Your Coaching Niche Go the Distance?

When you try to sell a coaching specialty (transition coaching, career coaching, relationship coaching) or you target a market that’s too broad, it’s very difficult to generate sustainable demand for your services. Your specialty may be valuable, and exciting to you, but attracting paying clients will be an uphill battle.

If you target women in transition, for example, you’re trying to appeal to too many diverse situations and populations. Consider the values, interests and challenges of women graduating from college, versus women entering retirement. Trying to cover all those angles won’t engender credibility or trust. And it leaves you competing with anyone who markets to women at any stage of life. That’s fierce competition!

You can tell your coaching niche is too broad when:

• You’re working extremely hard, unable to leverage your efforts and struggling to meet your financial goals.
• Each time you market, it feels like starting over.
• It’s hard to think of something new to say in ezines or blog posts.
• You quickly run out of ways to connect with groups of people in your market.

But when you choose a viable coaching market:

• It’s easy to get in front of 100 or more people in your market every month.
• You can quickly become an expert in your market.
• You’ll get pre-qualified referral business from your current clients.
• You’ll be able to charge high prices for your coaching.

Build a Client Centric Coaching Business

Here’s one of the top reasons I have so much juice for helping coaches succeed — because the most successful coaches are the ones who do the most good. They are the ones who are working at their full potential and reaching the most people.

Building any successful business is hard work. It takes loads of talent and grit. So don’t make it harder than it needs to be. The best way I know to give your coaching business every advantage, is to make it client centric. That means:

1. Choose a viable coaching market.
2. Find out what matters most to those people — the goals they really care about and the obstacles that keep tripping them up.
3. Design your coaching programs around what your market is motivated to invest in.
4. When you market — when you communicate what you are offering — use language your market will understand.

None of this is rocket science, but it does help to walk through it with someone who has been there before. That’s exactly what my workshop on target marketing for coaches is designed to do. That’s why I call it How to Choose and Champion Your Ideal Coaching Market.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: 4 Steps to Create a High Demand for Your Coaching

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