How to automate online communication for coaches

One of the most effective ways to grow your coaching business and keep your sanity is to automate your online marketing activities where ever you can.

There are a number of comprehensive software programs that can support an online marketing machine; InfusionSoft is a popular one.

These platforms can:

• Provide templates and schedules to stay in touch with your prospects.
• Help you stay connected with your community.
• Systematize and simplify your online marketing.

Once you set up the framework and fill in the templates, the system will generate auto responders and carefully timed promotional messages that enhance the customers’ experience of your brand.

 

 

For example: They buy the product and get a series of e-mails, all automated, up selling them into your next level product. These e-mails describe the next product in detail, including all the features and benefits. Cell phone companies such as Rogers/Fido and are prime examples of this; if they notice you are reaching the limits of your current airtime plan they automatically send you upgrade deals and offers. The same goes for when your contract is coming to expiry; they send you details on the latest handsets depending on the needs your current handset fulfils.

 

So, taking a life coach or business coach example; once a client has been coaching with you for a number of months, you tell them about the incredible retreat where you might work with them in person and really give them the extra support that will help them apply and get the most out of the principles you've been teaching them. After they graduate from the retreat, maybe you go on to offer your premium, one-on-one, full day coaching. If they want you personally, they will pay big bucks for that high level of coaching. All of this can be automated, going on silently and effortlessly behind the scenes, while you’re busy doing what you do best – delivering your service and expertise.

 

When building your community and exploring online marketing, it is important to set up some type of system. It could be a weekly three-minute video that explains a coaching tip. It could be a newsletter, or even just a paragraph on how to take their life to the next level. The most important thing about this type of communication is that it should provide value to your customers; it should not simply be a sell-in. Does your customer actually gain something by engaging with your communication, or is it just adding to the noise? Regular value added contact with your community can provide more impact than any other marketing that you do. How do you think this applies to the Rogers example above? Is this good online marketing?

 

Passion into Profit Coach Challenge: Take a close look at your marketing activities and ask yourself - where and what can I automate?

 

Teresia LaRocque MCC, is the 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. She is the founder and facilitator of the Passion into Profit Program, a customized business building program for coaches and is committed to supporting coaches to take their talent and passion for coaching and make their entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Ten ways coaching can help your organization

The below post was written by ICF Global staff for the Human Capital Institute.

In recent years, professional coaching has shown a significant return on investment for companies. Wondering how it can help your organization? Read on for ten ways.

1. Coaching can assist organizations with key business goals. Within the coaching partnership, the coach will work with your employees to identify and create clarity around key business goals and establish effective management strategies to ensure goals are met.
2. Coaching can bolster creativity. A coach will support your employees in confidently pursuing new ideas and alternative solutions with greater resilience and resourcefulness. A coach will encourage fresh perspectives and provide inspiration through the questions they ask during sessions and the actionable goals they co-create with your employees.
3. Coaching can manage the change that accompanies growth within your organization. Professional coaching is an important modality for managing change—including growth. A coach will help your employees assess current needs, opportunities, and challenges, all while maximizing the potential they already possess.
4. Coaching can boost productivity and effectiveness. This is especially important if you have employees taking on new or leadership level roles. Coaches are trained to work with clients to inspire them to their personal and professional potential, thus increasing productivity and effectiveness. Within the coach-client relationship, a focus will be placed on learning and clarity for forward action. According to the ICF Global Coaching Client Study 70% of clients reported a positive improvement in work performance.
5. Coaching can develop communication skills. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study revealed that 72 percent of those being coached noticed an improvement in communication skills. Furthermore, individuals who have engaged in a professional coaching partnership have walked away with fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision-making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out chosen work and life roles.
6. Coaching can help your organization attract and retain talented employees. If you have trouble finding great employees (or getting them to stick around), your organization needs to commit to investing in employee development. Coaching is an ideal way to develop your employees and show your employees you value their development.
7. Coaching can bring work-life balance into the lives of your employees. An employee experiencing the benefits of a balanced life is a happier employee. And a happier employee is a more productive employee. A coach can work with your employees to discover, clarify, and align with what your employees hope to achieve, including a stable work-life balance. According to the ICF Global Coaching Client Study 67% of coaches saw an improvement in balancing work and life.
8. Coaching can help your employees thrive. Virtually all companies who hire a coach are satisfied with the outcomes. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study found that 99 percent of coaching clients were “somewhat” or “very satisfied” with their overall coaching experience. And 96 percent of them would repeat the process.
9. Coaching can help your company flourish despite uncertain economic times. Coaching is a very powerful tool in the face of uncertainty—organizations of all types and sizes have experienced the value professional coaching brings including: increased business performance, improved product quality, higher employee retention and morale, greater employee commitment, leadership development, conflict reduction, team building skills and more.
10. Coaching can restore self-confidence to organizations hit hard by the recession. Organizations that have experienced workforce reductions through downsizing, restructuring, or a merger place extremely high expectations on the remaining workforce. Restoring self-confidence to face the impending challenges is critical to meet organizational demands. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study shows 80% of those being coaching saw an improvement in their self-confidence.

You’ve seen what coaching can do for your organization. Now we’ll show you the bottom-line.  Coaching offers a significant return on investment (ROI) for companies. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study found that 86 percent of companies made back at least their investment. Of those, 28 percent saw an ROI of 10 to 49 times the investment and 19 percent saw an ROI of 50 times their investment.

Begin your search for an ICF Credentialed coach in the Coach Referral Service at Coachfederation.org.

Converting interested prospects into coaching clients

As coaches in business we will spend the majority of our time “marketing” (yes even when you are an established coach). To leverage your marketing efforts you want to ensure you have captured contact information.

Once you’ve attracted someone’s attention and captured their contact info, you’re in position to seal the deal – by converting interested prospects into committed clients.

No matter what kind of marketing activities you’re doing – online marketing, speaking, networking, or something else – the goal is to create your community (through your blogs, social media, weekly newsletter etc) and steer people toward a complimentary coaching session.

Before jumping into how coaches specifically can create community, it is helpful to look at how other local businesses are successful. For this example we have chosen local bakery and brand name, Terra Breads. Terra Breads was one of Vancouver’s first artisan bakeries, they have a strong commitment to community and authentic artisan baking remains stronger than ever. They operate four bakery locations around Vancouver. So, how do they garner a community?

First, let’s look at what they do offline:

This screenshot from their website shows how many different existing communities they get involved with. Helping other communities is a great way to introduce yourself into the right circles and start to get your name out there. Depending on what kind of coach you are will make a difference with what existing local communities you can start to penetrate. For instance, if you are a life coach who has experience in personal finance, then making yourself known and offering some hours at the local nonprofit credit counselling service is a great way to meet new people within your community.

Let’s turn our attention to online marketing. Terra Breads have an easy to navigate, well branded and informative website. It tells the visitor everything about artisan breads, shows the visitor some rich media in the form of photos and gives great detail about Terra Bread's story. This on its own is not enough to garner community; however it is imperative to facilitating an online following. Without a central place to find information, how will people find you? Terra Breads also run a Facebook Page and Twitter Feed to keep their followers up to date on company news, local events and promotional offers. It is important to notice that they do not just talk about themselves on social media, they share and comment on other companies Page's in their community (see below). For coaches this means getting online friendly with your local ICF Chapter, nonprofit organizations and other relevant businesses to your type of coaching.

Now for some coach specific points; this is the lynchpin of the marketing process, and there are a few ways to work it.

• At regular intervals, invite the prospect to contact you and inquire about coaching options. (Have your tiered menu of offerings and new-client package ready).
• Periodically let your list of prospects know that there is an opportunity for them to get the support they need to move ahead. (“I have three new spaces open in my practice at this time. If you’d like to see if coaching is for you, I’m offering a complimentary coaching session to anyone who may be interested in exploring new ways to get what you really want”).

Another pathway into your practice is to enrol people in a group program. Often, this eliminates the need for a complimentary coaching session. (“In two months, I will be starting a 10-week tele-class series, and the first 10 people to sign up will get to register for half price”).

 

A word to the wise: As you nurture leads and aim to convert prospects, be sure that the majority of your messages are value driven, not promotional. If you’re consistently delivering value in short, bite-sized pieces, people will stay on your list. If you’re too heavy handed with promotional messages, your prospects will soon abandon ship. So be sure you honor their interest and maintain their loyalty by consistently delivering more value than they ever expected.

 

Passion Into Profit Coach Challenge: Be consistent in sharing value with your community and be clear of your call to action strategy.

 

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.

Making the gift of neuroplasticity work for you

Your brain changes all of the time. What was once described merely as learning now has a neuro- label: neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is notion that mental experiences and mindfulness can change the actual structure and function of the brain. The idea of neuroplasticity is good news because it means we can change and grow up until our very last days of existence. It can also be bad news if we don’t attempt to direct our brain toward experiences that will change our brain for the better.

There are at least three ways that the neuroplasticity process occurs:

One way neuroplastic change can take place, is when some sort of dampening down of the usual mind map occurs. So for example, if you were going to learn a new language, you would do well to eliminate as much use of the native language as possible so the new language can build resilient neuro-connections in the brain. The brain doesn’t like competing stimuli. That is why language immersion programs seem to work. Basically you direct your efforts toward a new behavior while resisting the use of an old, competing behavior.

Another way is to bring about can bring about neuroplastic changes in the brain is a mindful, goal-directed approach. Either through self-driven intent or the external guidance, the brain can adapt to the demands placed upon it. The result is resilient change. An example of this would be setting goals around becoming a more effective networker.  Ultimately networking begins to feel more natural because you have deliberately pushed yourself through the learning process via goal setting and the motivation to embrace the process of learning. Your brain changes as a result of this.

Finally, changes can take place in the brain as a result of passive learning experiences. This can either be positive or negative depending on what you are exposed to, but it is generally not goal directed or mindful. Human beings have a tendency to adapt to their current environment, whether positive or negative. It’s probably built into us for reasons of survival.  Unfortunately, this tendency can also derail us from our goals unless we deliberately pay attention to our environment. Are we surrounding ourselves by stimuli that support our vision?

I recently came across the term Self-Directed Neruoplasticity (You Are Not Your Brain, Jeffrey Schwartz 2011).  The author describes the term in this way:

“Using the power of focused attention, along with the ability to apply commitment, hard work and dedication, to direct your choices and actions, you can thereby rewire your brain to work for you and with your true self. “

Actively focusing attention on developing new healthy brain circuits is achieved by having a clear sense of goals and values. It is one of the best ways to get the most out of our capacity to adapt and change at the level of the brain via the wonderful gift of neuroplasticity.

Ann C.Holm, MS ACC CCC. Ann is an ICF certified coach with a lifelong interest in brain science. For 25 years, she coached brain injured clients toward cognitive recovery with an emphasis toward optimal functioning in the community. In 2009, she started a coaching practice in order to serve any client who wishes to uncover personal potential through increased awareness of how the brain works, and knowledge of psychological type preferences. Ann holds a B.A. in Psychology, Speech and Hearing Sciences (1983) and a M.S. in Speech and Language Pathology (1986), both from the University of Michigan. She received Life Coach training from the Coaches Training Institute in 2008.  She is also an MBTI Master Practitioner and currently one of less than 100 MBTI practitioners worldwide certified to administer the newly released MBTI Step III.  Her website is www.annholm.net/.

Need to generate Chapter community? Serve others

One of the biggest challenges for ICF New England (ICFNE) is helping our members get to know each other. It is a problem that raises its head during important events throughout the year – when we are in search of board member nominations, soliciting volunteers or when we are voting for the annual Coach of the Year Awards. At these times, when maximum participation is imperative, it is difficult to rouse significant response when our members don’t feel like they know the other people in their coaching community.

We seem to be up against a “barrier of perceived familiarity.” Although our members see each other at events throughout the year, they are not connecting on a community level. We have incorporated a variety of networking activities into our live events, engaged the community through social media, and invited members to participate as volunteers but still the barrier persists.

When we announce that it is time to vote for the annual Coach of the Year Awards, we inevitably receive requests for our membership list because they “don’t know anyone.” While our members may know each other better than they think, there remains this persistent barrier of perceived familiarity preventing a sense of community within our membership - until now.

Finally, we may have found the answer – not surprisingly – in serving others.

On December 6, 2012, 40 ICFNE coaches gathered in Boston at the Massachusetts Conference for Women to volunteer their coaching services to more than 200 conference attendees. As a Chapter, we saw this as a wonderful opportunity to place ICF on a public stage and reach out to the larger community. What we did not anticipate was the benefit experienced by the 40 coaches: how it fed their sense of belonging to ICFNE, and their sense of community with one another.

Attending coaches agreed to set aside personal marketing initiatives and instead represent the coaching industry as a whole. This meant that we were creating a cooperative environment rather than a competitive one; coaches were working together to help the conference attendees, not against each other in search of clients.

Our agreement with the Mass Conference for Women included a well-placed booth in the conference marketplace. Coaches took turns representing ICFNE at the booth and the cooperative environment we’d structured enabled them to work as a team and to connect and get to know each other.

When it was time to gather for the scheduled coaching event that afternoon, all 40 coaches emerged from various corners of the conference to take their places to do some speed coaching. It was really a wonderful thing to see: 40 coaches each sitting at their small tables, talking to each other, energy building. Close by, the coachees were in line, eager for the event to begin. There was no shortage of clients; we were originally scheduled to work with 200 women and managed to connect with 240 by the time all was said and done.

The post- event energy was powerful—and now there was a connection between all of the coaches.

Nothing describes the experience better than their direct the feedback immediately after the event:

“It was a highlight of my career and my life to be a part of this Fabulous 40 - to meet other coaches and connect so instantly and strongly." – Kim Ravida, CPC, ELI MP

“It was fabulous to get inspired about women finding their voices and then to have an opportunity to coach individuals doing exactly that!!” – Tracy Fitzpatrick, PCC

“I was honored to be one of the "fabulous 40." The Conference was energizing and inspiring--I was so glad to be able to attend. And, the "speed coaching" was meaningful and FUN.” – Lisa Kleitz CPCC, PCC

In the role of serving others, these 40 coaches stood together to represent the coaching industry through ICFNE and ICF Global. It is in that stance that they connected as a community. Unlike so many attempts during ICFNE events throughout recent years, we didn’t encourage the coaches to connect and meet each other; it simply happened.

During the annual ICFNE events where members are nominating, voting and volunteering, we are still going to need to provide a membership list to participants because they still don’t “know each other.” We have a large Chapter and that issue will not go away entirely. Even so, we are hopeful that the level of recognition and maybe even the level of participation in those events will increase.

The best feedback of all? 100 percent  of the participating coaches indicated that they would like to participate in this event again next year. Now that we know what we’re getting into, it can only get better.

Suzan Czajkowski, M.A., ACC, is a Communication & Online Marketing Coach, working with entrepreneurs and small business owners to design and implement online marketing strategies that are customized to their specific business marketing goals. This work often includes developing and integrating WordPress websites, newsletters, blogs and social media. As a coach, Suzan’s goal is to help her clients understand and execute their own online marketing strategies effectively and efficiently. Suzan serves as V.P. of Marketing for ICF New England. You can find her at SuzanCz@mycommcoach.com or visit Suzan’s blog at http://mycommcoach.com.