As I sit with a hot coffee in my hand this morning contemplating my thoughts on what I can share from my experiences as a business person or better still an entrepreneur I feel there are three things that pop into mind. If only I knew each of these well enough when I first got started.
My Thoughts About What I Would Love My Business Coaches To Have Taught Me More Of!
- Cash Flow Management! This is one area where most small and medium sized businesses fail miserably. Most businesses work one week to the next and they often spend what they make hoping the next week will be as good as the last. Quite often it fails to be. What I learned is that we as business people need 3 months of cashflow to cover expenses. How many of local businesses can say they do have cash reserves that can at least cover their next 3 months if things were not to go as planned. This is so true in COVID19 with the present lock down as seen in Australia and overseas. Businesses are being pushed to the wall well in their first month of the lock-down instead of month #4. Cash-Flow is king. PS: I learned how crucial cash-flow was in my 19th year in business quite by accident while playing #CashFlow101, a board game. Highly recommend you play it too.
- Accountability! This is one area where most businesses fail too. These business owners do not want to answer to no one. They feel free and want to be in control. Being in control is one thing. Getting a business out of control is another. Answering to a business coach isn’t something people want to do so readily. I remember paying for coaching 4 times to four different coaches. Their fees would have paid for the deposit on a rental property if I had diverted the money towards that. Only one of those coaches enforced accountability. The results were astonishingly positive. If you want success in business be accountable for what you set out to accomplish.
- Create a Sales Funnel! Coaching should never be a pre-determined solution, the greatest benefit of a one-to-one process is that it can fully embrace the preferred learning style of the coachee and support their working commitments. A good coach should be creative in approach with the coachees’ development at the core – a process should never limit learning. Every business must have a system or pathway that a prospect can drop into the business prospecting funnel. This funnel must introduce you to the business, what its values and mission are, what its product are and what they can do for the client, as well as how to buy. At various steps along the funnel pathway you must be able to either up-sell or down-sell your product to get the potential customer to get their first experience with you or your products. Funnels are very important to a business success. Remember that you are only ‘one funnel away’ from securing your next sale.
What Are The Biggest Headaches For Online Business Coaches For Entrepreneurs?
In my opinion there are two headaches that business coaches for entrepreneurs experience.
- One headache is directed externally towards their clients. Here a business coach feel their students do not follow their advice. Especially being accountable. They are not disciplined enough to do those daily mundane task everyday to make things happen. Its very easy to decide to write a blog post for example everyday. However its harder to get it done. Most often students do a post or two then slow down, seldom coming back to write another.
- The second issue lies with the coach himself/herself. What if the coach knows just a little about coaching and not able to take the business entrepreneur towards success entirely. What I mean is besides helping them writing out a mission statement and creating the vision for the business what about the business plan? What about actionable steps in making the plan work? What about helping the business with their business funnels and the USP (unique selling propositions) that the business has to offer to potential clients. Do you have a sales funnel in place right now that you can help clients to get to know your company and its products. If you haven’t got one as a business coach or even as a business its time you looked at Click Funnels.
In all my years as a restaurant owner I knew the money in any business was in the list. Back in 1990 I started creating a database of my repeat clients. I kept those details of my customers in a spread sheet and through mail merge sent out repeat snail mail in the 90’s. This was well before email marketing and autoresponders came into existence. I knew the value f a list back then. When it was time to sell the restaurant business in Brisbane I manage to get premium money just because of that list I had that was valuable to the potential buyer back then in 1992.
However, back then I had never heard of the value of a sales funnel. I bet sales people know this well but I was ignorant back then about this.
Today I am talking of electronic sales funnels that we can tap people into. These funnels are valuable if you are selling real estate or e-commerce, in local business or in network marketing, in blogging/ affiliate marketing or non-profit, coaching/ consultancy or information products.
Again if you have never heard about a funnel in sales like me before take a look how Russel Brunson took a company from zero dollars to over a 7 figure business in 5 years. All because of funnels. This is one thing most business coaches never taught me before.
If you want to survive in post COVID19 its time to get ahead of the curve and position yourself as a market leader, a game changer in your business niche well before others out there do. More an more people are on the internet than ever before. Position your business in front of these people. Start to learn about affiliate marketing and internet marketing. See if you products can be marketed through these mediums too. Start to learn how to diversify your income streams.
Its time you learn about Click Funnels too.
A Good Coaching Business Plan
A good coaching plan should incorporate at least 3 of the following elements…
- Setting clear defined goals – the goals should be around personal as well as business goals. A good support system must be setup to help the coachee move through the various goals and circumventing hurdles. It is a good idea at this point to set out a partnership agreement between coach and coachee to establish trust, confidential boundaries and develop commitment.
- Understanding the ‘as is’ position – It is imperative to build a true picture of the starting point for the coaching which should be supported by as much fact as possible.It is important to understand your own qualities and bench marking your abilities so you can measure progress as time goes on. Using psychometric assessment can offer an excellent solution can help create better understanding of current situations.Without the relevant background at this stage, it becomes very hard to measure any development and understand what successes have been achieved.
- Tailor the process – Coaching should never be a pre-determined solution, the greatest benefit of a one-to-one process is that it can fully embrace the preferred learning style of the coachee and support their working commitments. A good coach should be creative in approach with the coachees’ development at the core – a process should never limit learning.
Conclusion!
In summary a good business coach will help set you up on the path to success, monitoring your progress on the goals you set with his or her advice. They will keep metrics on everything you do and help tweak the sales process over looking the funnels you create. In moments of hardship they will help steer you away from muddy trouble waters towards green pastures all because they have the experience. Its well worth the money spent when you get the right coach behind you with the right systems and tools to automate your business needs.
I hope you picked up a few points on cashflow, accountability and systems/ funnels.
Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
