Get LinkedIn®! Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Coaching Practice

You go to networking event after networking event, meet lots of business people, but when you get back to your office you leave the business cards you collected on your desk.

They seem to multiply. Lurking in dusty little piles.

From time to time you look at them, and think: Who are these people? What did they want? Were they interested in coaching? You know you need to do something with all of those business cards! But what?

One of the biggest mistakes coaches make is not maintaining a personal connection with their valuable business contacts. But there’s a free tool that can help! LinkedIn® is a business-oriented social networking site that enables users to stay connected with their business contacts and create new business relationships.

Why LinkedIn?
Because LinkedIn has 187 million members, who have an average income of $109,000 (40 percent of which hold a position of manager or higher). And LinkedIn is one of the most used social networks in the world, with an average of 2.8 visits per member per month.

What Can LinkedIn Do for You?
LinkedIn can help you connect with important business contacts on a regular basis and it can help potential clients find you.

All you have to do is type in the names of your business contacts and send a “LinkedIn Invitation” to them (or better yet, scan the business cards and upload them in batches). Once a business connection accepts your invitation, they become part of your LinkedIn network.

LinkedIn is a contact database on steroids. It’s got a wealth of information on each contact:

• Name
• Contact information
• Picture
• Headline
• Work and education history
• List of connections (who they know)
• Recommendations and information on the writers of their recommendations
• Group memberships
• Status updates

Each piece of information will help you in a different way. Their picture can help you recognize them at a networking event. Their work and education history can help you see what you have in common (e.g., you both went to UCLA or worked at United Healthcare). Their work history can help you see if they are part of your target market. Their group memberships can help you determine if they can help you access your target market.

What LinkedIn Can’t Do
LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool. But business won’t magically appear just because you’re on LinkedIn. As Chef Gordon Ramsey of “Hell’s Kitchen” has said, “... business doesn’t just come and sit on your lap, you’ve gotta go looking for it and if you don’t you’re going to fail.”

So that’s why most people have a LinkedIn account, but don’t get much out of it. LinkedIn is not a replacement for the in-person contact needed to build business relationships, rather it’s a tool to enhance relationship building.

You still need to talk to people on the phone, meet with them for coffee, see them at networking events, or at the very least, send them a personal note via LinkedIn or email. You still need to interact with them on a human level.

How Can You Use LinkedIn to Build Business Relationships?

Maintain connection:
1. Send “LinkedIn Invitations” to every quality contact you meet. Personalize the invitation to build a foundation for the relationship: “It was nice meeting you at the MGMA Meeting. I enjoyed our discussion about Pay for Performance. I would like to continue to build our business relationship and am inviting you to link with me on LinkedIn.”

Build relationships:
There are many ways to use LinkedIn to build business relationships, for example, you can:

 

1. Review a contact’s LinkedIn profile, once they accept your “LinkedIn Request,” send them an email highlighting the experience, education, or connections that you have in common.

 

2. Review a contact’s LinkedIn profile before a phone call so you can target questions to address their business needs.

 

3. Take a contact’s LinkedIn profile with you to coffee or lunch and use it to build rapport.

 

4. Review the profiles of key people in a networking group, prior to attending an event, to:

• Select people to look for
• Help you recognize them
• Prepare questions to initiate meaningful business conversations

Meet new business contacts:
There are many ways to meet new business contacts on LinkedIn.  You can find them in:

• A “people” Search
• A friend’s connection list
• A group
• A comment they made in a group or the “answers” section
• They can also find you in one of the ways listed above

How You Can Use LinkedIn to Enroll Clients
Once you become more active on LinkedIn, you will begin to get more “LinkedIn Invitations” from people. Converting them from a stranger to a client does not have to be a difficult process. Here’s an example of the process I use:

1. Let’s say a woman named Sara sends you a “LinkedIn Invitation.”

2. If you don’t know Sara, look at her LinkedIn Profile (occupation, work history, education and connections) to determine if she is a potential coaching candidate.

3. If Sara is a potential coaching client, write a LinkedIn email to her to ask for a “get to know you” phone call. NOTE: Don’t accept her “LinkedIn Invitation” until after the call and make it easy for her to schedule the call by offering three times you’re available. If Sara doesn’t look like a viable candidate, either accept the invitation (if being linked to her could be beneficial) or archive it.

4. Before the phone call, review Sara’s LinkedIn Profile and create questions to build rapport: “I really enjoyed attending UCLA, did you?” And uncover her pain points: “What keeps you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish?”

5. Come to the call with curiosity and the intent of building a business relationship with Sara.

6. On the call, ask:  “What attracted you to send a ‘LinkedIn Invitation’ to me?” 

If she is considering hiring a coach (I get this response about 25 percent of the time): 

• Ask: “What is compelling you to look for a coach?” 
• After letting her know how coaching can help her with her issues, make an attempt to enroll Sara into your coaching practice: “Are you ready to sign up for coaching?”
• Or if you sense she’s not ready to enroll or your enrollment attempt fails, offer her a sample coaching session.

OR

If she isn’t looking for a coach:

• Ask her questions to uncover her pain points.
• Tell her how coaching can help her.
• Offer her a sample coaching session. (I have enrolled many clients this way).

7. After the sample coaching session, ask if it was helpful. If it was, ask if she would like to engage you as her coach, explain the pricing, and give her three options of dates/times when she can start her coaching sessions.

8. When she chooses a date and time, send her your welcome package.

Works Cited
1. LinkedIn process: www.linkedin.com
2. Gordon Ramsay quote: I wrote this down while watching the show. Here a reference to it: http://ventstation.blogspot.com/2007/12/marketing-advice-from-gordon-ramsay.html
3. Definition of LinkedIn from PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=LinkedIn&i=60336,00.asp

Donna Schilder, MCC, Leadership, Career, and Business Coach (and Coach U Graduate) is the creator of the “6 Weeks to More Success Through LinkedIn” Video E-Course: getlinkedinnow.com. In the E-Course, in teleseminars, and in individual coaching sessions, Donna helps coaches and businesspeople leverage LinkedIn to get more clients and/or job offers (with step-by-step instructions for the online process and real business strategies). In addition, Donna coaches executives, consultants, coaches, and public speakers to break through what blocks them from achieving wild success. Connect with Donna on LinkedIn, donnaschilder.com, and @GetLinkedInNow. This article was first featured in the February 2013 issue of Coaching World.

Modelling the ‘dream warrior’

When I started my coaching practice, I was bright eyed and excited about the future.

I organised my website, business cards and started a mailing list. I met with potential clients and talked to those who might promote my business.  I did free talks. I even advertised. I did lots of things.  “If I build it, they will come” was my philosophy. 

But I waited. And waited.   

And you know what? I received more calls from telemarketers than new clients. I spent far more money than I brought in through client revenue.  This was not what I was expecting. What was I doing wrong?

Getting clients as a new coach can be a very challenging process, and I know many new coaches face a similar dilemma. For me the question about what to do next was answered by taking a look inside.

As coaches it can be a challenge to practice what we preach. I myself had put off travel for 12 years as I busied myself with work and day-to-day life.  When I started my coaching practice I did what I had always done- took action.  I thought that I had to spend all my time working on my business, and felt terrible guilt taking time out to do the things I enjoyed.  Putting myself first was still something I viewed as an indulgence rather than a necessity.  But all this activity covered up that inner voice which was begging for a break.  When I started getting colds and viruses every two weeks, my doctor sat me down and explained that I had suppressed my immune system.  She ordered me to take five days off work and do nothing more than watch Dr Phil.  Did she know who she was talking to? I was always doing something- well lots of things, actually.  To do nothing at all but rest was something I found hard to do, but my body was making it clear that I had to change my ways.  After this experience I looked inside myself and asked what it was I really wanted at this point in time. Not what I thought I should do, or what I thought I had to do.  The answer was clear- go on a holiday.  No plans, just go with the flow and experience life in a different setting- my idea of heaven. So I went.

Coming back, I was far more focused and gentler with myself. I pared down the ‘to do’ list and put more energy into myself.  It was interesting that I began to get calls from people who wanted to talk about starting up a new venture after a secure corporate job.  Funnily enough, my ups and downs were just the sort of issues they wanted to know about.  They wanted to hear about a real life ‘dream warrior’- not a seemingly perfect person for whom things happened effortlessly.  I realised that it was okay that I shared the struggles faced by my clients in trying to balance personal and professional commitments, paying the bills, self-care, and striving towards goals.  My experiences began to make sense.

So, dream warrior, what is the most important piece of advice you would give to new coaches?

If I could give one piece of advice to new coaches, it would be to make personal foundation work a priority when starting a coaching practice. The journey toward developing a solid personal foundation provides an abundance of experiences that clients will be drawn to you for, as I found when I returned from my travels.  Another recommendation would be to enlist the help of a coach to support you through the journey. Mine provided me with invaluable insight and gentle, consistent encouragement.  Without it I may have given up in the middle of the road, missing those experiences I needed to help me achieve my goals, and ultimately, make me a better coach.

“Never give up on something that you can't go a day without thinking about”- Author Unknown

For all those new coaches out there who feel like their coaching practice will never get started, keep believing in yourself and your dreams and working toward them little by little. Trust that you were drawn to coaching for a reason, and that you will be supported in sharing your gifts. As Richard Bach said, “You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.” Every time something seems to go wrong or nothing seems to be happening, tuck that away as a ‘dream warrior’ experience that will come in useful one day.  Most importantly, keep moving forward. You owe it to yourself and your current and future clients to model the ‘dream warrior’ spirit by working towards your dreams.  May the New Year give you abundant opportunities to make them your new reality. 

Kristina Pawliw is an Australian based coach and writer. Kristina’s professional passions include helping people make their dreams a reality; and developing capacity in individuals, organisations and communities. As a step along her ‘dream warrior’ path, this year Kristina released her book Steps to Success- Sustainable Capacity Development following her experience working in a mentoring and coaching role in Papua New Guinea. Kristina can be contacted via her website a http://www.keytosuccesscoaching.net.

The first step to determine your coaching fees

Are you a new coach? Are you struggling with deciding on how much you should charge for your coaching services? Teresia LaRocque, MCC, Director of Erickson Business Center shares the first thing you need to ask yourself when deciding your coaching fees to make the income you want to make as a coach in business and highly serve your clients.

 

 

Passion into Profit Coaching Challenge: Decide and claim your intended monthly revenue. 

 

Teresia LaRocque MCC, is Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Building Mentor for the Erickson Business Center –  www.ericksonbusinesscenter.com at Erickson College International www.erickson.edu. Teresia is a pioneer in the booming profession of personal coaching, the first recipient of the International Coach Federation’s Master Coach Credential in Canada and cofounder for the Vancouver International Coach Federation chapter. Teresia is committed to supporting coaches to take their talent and passion for coaching and make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Teresia is the founder and facilitator of the Passion into Profit Program, a customized business building program offered through the Erickson Business Center.

How I got 1,000 Facebook Fans (in Three Months)

Never before has there been such an open space for anyone to have a podium to express themselves. In the past, only thought leaders, authors, or celebrities could get up on a stage and share their thoughts and opinions, but now with Facebook anyone can do it. So as a coach, how can you use this platform to spread positivity and simultaneously build your brand?

From committing to your status updates to creating ads and ‘promoting’ your posts, growing your Facebook page requires a strategy. Here I’ll share my secrets to developing my Facebook fan following.

Declare It On and Offline
In my latest personal development book, “Don’t Think of a Blue Ball,” I explain how the process started for me by making a declaration.

“When you want to do something and you decide that you will, you will. Since I learnt how powerful the power of declaration was, I started to achieve everything that I dared to declare. When I joined the social networking site, Facebook and created a Facebook Page, I declared that I would have 1,000 ‘Likes’ in three months. And I did it 15 minutes before the date that I had declared it for.

When you declare and announce it to people in your community—you give it power and it attracts the support of that community.”

Since then my page has received more than 5,000 likes in less than two years. As a life coach, we know how to coach ourselves out of fear and into courage. Taking action, making declarations and moving forward in spite of the fear, which after all is only “false, evidence appearing real.” When we make a declaration like this, we are managing our own accountability, we have set a goal and we are designing actions, which are integral attributes of an ICF coach being authentic and competent.

Walking the talk, is how we inspire people rather than “telling” them what to do.

Communicate Directly on Facebook Daily
I used to find this hard to do because in the past I had associated Facebook as “wasting time” but Facebook is not a game. It is a place you go to meet and interact with real life people and the only way to gain “likes” or fans is to be interested and engage with other Facebook users.

I take about an hour in the morning and then another 30 minutes at the end of the day to look through other people’s profiles and I like or comment on them, then I find something that I am inspired by and write a line or two on my Facebook page. Be sure to truly engage, remember that these are real people with thoughts and feelings and they have a message to shout out as well, they want to be heard not just bombarded with your inspirational words or your sales pitch. I learnt this lesson from Katrina Kavvalos—(Social Media Coach).

Be an Active Listener
Browse through profiles and see who your friends and potential clients “like.” Go on and “like” a few pages that interest you at first and then over the next few days, see if you really do “like” their posts. I found that I needed to reduce the number of pages I “liked” as it became too much for me, so I went through them again after a while and “stopped liking” the ones that I didn’t really enjoy, keeping my list of “liked pages” to very few that I truly did “like.” These should usually be made up of people you admire, you aspire to be like, you have learnt from and even your peers. Read what they post daily and “like” or even “share” when you appreciate or agree with them. People who like your page want to see and read content and it does not necessarily have to be all your own original stuff. They need to see that you are human like them on the same playing field and you too like and admire others.

Invest a Little
Although you can build your “likes” organically, it does help to set aside a monthly budget for Facebook Advertising. It is one of the most comprehensive and specific target market aimed tools I have ever come across. You can design ads or you can just simply click on the “Promote” icon below your post and set the budget for that particular post, starting from $5. I usually go for $20-$30 each time and receive at least 40–50 new views and page “likes.” This is far better than advertising the page, as it is promoting two things for the price of one. You have the potential to receive a “like” and you already have the viewer “engaged” and interested. This has worked wonders for me and I use it every time I want to promote a workshop, my book or a new video. There are many tools out there to measure how effective or influential you are being on Facebook including Edgerank and Klout.

Word of caution, there are a lot of sites that offer to get you more likes for $5 or $10 or more, these are not real and they do fall out eventually. You are better off having fewer engaged likes than many silent ones.

To conclude, don’t separate people you meet face-to-face with people you meet on Facebook. Some of my best connections and clients have come from Facebook. They are resourceful individuals just like you and are enjoying this incredible new platform where each and every one of us has a voice to declare, to share and to have an opinion. The “like” key is powerful, the comment key, even more so but the one you really want to get your users to click is the “share” key, for that shows that you have influence. Think about why someone would want to “share” your post on their profiles before you post anything.

Malti Bhojwani, PCC, is the founder of Multi Coaching International (1999). She is also an NLP practitioner and is trained in Ontological Coaching. Her latest book, “Don’t Think of a Blue Ball,” has gained international endorsements and is available online. As a coach she aims to serve, not fix or help, through her personalized sessions, virtual coach program, YouTube videos and her writing. For more information visit maltibhojwani.com.You can also connect with her on Facebook, LinkedIn, or follow her @MaltiBhojwani. This article was first featured in the February 2013 issue of Coaching World.

The Good Life

Note:  This is a blog that I wrote specifically thinking about parents, but on further reflection I realized that the same is true of the space that coaches need to hold for our clients.  In reading, you can think of either the parent/child relationship or the coach/client one.

I am currently preparing a presentation for parents on ways to help their children pursue the future that taps into their greatest gifts, makes them feel most alive, and connects them to their greatest passions.  However, as I am preparing this work I am becoming more and more concerned about my audience and their reaction to my message. Running through my mind are thoughts of “don’t let them think you are discouraging these kids from becoming doctors and lawyers” and “parents aren’t going to support something that leads their children down a path of being a poor starving artist type.” While in no way am I promoting the route of starvation for anybody, I realize that connecting young adults with the things that make their spirits soar can lead them anywhere. There is an uncertainty in this that can be very scary. Most parents desire for their children to go to a good college, so they can be prepared to have a good career, and make good money;  all based on the dream of their children having good lives.

In the thralls of this internal debate between full honest disclosure and the desire to actually get an audience of people to listen to me, I began to reflect on my own children and what I want for them.  Of course I want them to have a good life, but what does good mean? I believe a common explanation of a good life is equated with a life filled with opportunity and happiness. Without our intention, however, this definition has been contorted by society to mean “a secure and pleasurable experience,” but do these things really lead to opportunity and happiness? For some, it absolutely does. If going to that college and getting that job that offers security and great pay also provides personal fulfillment and opportunities for growth, then the answer is definitely yes. For others, however, the answer is a big resounding NO. What do parents do in this case? Do we sweep in to persuade our children that they need to go after a guaranteed paycheck so that they do not have to deal with poverty, adversity, and disappointment as adults? For many, this is our first reaction. Before we jump on that reaction though, I think we need to ask ourselves the following questions:

• By trying to help pave the safe path for our children, are we cheating them out of the most rich and resonant experiences of their lives?
• What is more joyful than claiming our passion and working through adversity to become a master at what we love most? 
• Is having financial security while doing a job that we have no connection to really superior to the fulfillment of producing work that we are passionate about and, then,  putting it out in the world to share with others? 
• What inner joy, what strength of spirit, what connection to humanity is created by an easy and safe path? 
• What is the worst thing that could happen if my child pursues his dream? 
• If my child does not realize his goal, is there still value in the experience that cannot be gotten otherwise?
• Finally, the most important, profound, and possibly scariest question that we need to ask ourselves is this:  What is possible if my child shows the courage and dedication to pursue her dream? 

It is only by the courage that parents show in saying to their children “I want you to pursue your dream and do whatever it takes to realize it, even though there are no guarantees” that we are giving our children what they need from us more than anything in the world:  Faith, Hope, and Love…not to mention an amazing role model.

 

If all parents had the courage to do this, I wonder what the future would look like for our children as they create together communities of passionate, dedicated, compassionate, and authentic individuals.  Is there a good life out there that we haven’t even dared to dream possible yet?

 

Regina Hellinger is an inspirational writer, speaker, and life coach who specializes in working with aspiring coaches, gifted individuals, and educators.You can reach Regina at www.ReginaHellinger.com or on Twitter @ReginaHellinger.