Photo Courtesy of Thomas Szynkiewicz and Flickr
Over the past week, I’ve been releasing a series of free videos for coaches as part of the launch of a programme I’ve created called The Thriving Coaches Blueprint. Each video has a particular theme, and video 2 is called “Engaging Conversations: Finding Clients (And Beyond)”
It may seem too obvious to be worth mentioning, but coaching and therapy are “conversation businesses”. Conversations are like the “delivery system” for the coach to have an impact, and conversation is the vehicle for engagement and enrolment of your client.
And while we often think of conversations as having only two or three participants, you can model the entire process of growing an audience as a kind of ‘fractal conversation’, with lots of people being ‘in the conversation’ at many levels.
So here’s a summary of the key distinctions in Engaging Conversations: Finding Clients (And Beyond). If you want to see the video where I dive into this in-depth (as well as the other 3 free videos), just go to www.JamieSmart.com/FreeVideos to get access.
DISTINCTION 1: Your visibility to clients VS Clients’ visibility to you
It’s less important that you’re visible to clients and more important that the people who are going to be good clients are visible to you. Once they make themselves visible to you, you can have a conversation with them. And every client-relationship starts with a conversation.
DISTINCTION 2: Niches VS Mansions
Most coaches struggle to choose a so-called ‘niche’ because they either a) haven’t had enough coaching experience to base a rational choice on or b) they intuitively sense that it could label and confine them at a time when they actually want greater freedom of expression. A simpler approach is to imagine your audiences as a beautiful mansion with countless rooms to explore. You don’t need to limit yourself to one, or stay with the same audience forever. You don’t need to make the group part of your identity. But it can be very useful to choose one you want to start with; a group you’d love to serve. Then, if you decide you want to increase your domain, you can decide which group you want to serve next. Every audience is like another room in your mansion.
DISTINCTION 3: Explaining what you do VS Engaging people in conversation
Most coaches either get anxious and go blank, or start babbling when they’re asked about what they do. They’re trying to explain, and it often falls flat. Instead, engage them in conversation. Speaking to you as a coach, you’re likely to relax and feel at ease as you start to ask questions and listen to their responses. That makes it a lot easier to come up with ways of talking about what you do that are relevant and meaningful to the person you’re speaking with. And once again, every client-relationship starts with a conversation.
So in the interests of conversation, take a moment to reflect on these two questions:
Q1) If I was having a conversation with someone who’s a GREAT client for you… this person’s PERFECT for you… how would I know?… What would I see, and hear and feel that would let me know THIS is one of the people you’d love to work with?
Q2) How comfortable are you with having connected conversations with people, where you engage them, put them at their ease and find out what’s really important to them, because that really is the KEY to signing them up as a client?
And if you want to ‘get in the conversation’, head over to video 2 at The Thriving Coaches Blueprint Free Training and type your answers in the comments below the videos. I’m looking forward to reading your comments and responding to any questions YOU may have while you’re there.
You can get instant access at www.JamieSmart.com/FreeVideos
NB: These free videos will only be available until this Friday, November 24th. Similarly, we’re only accepting registrations for the full Thriving Coaches Blueprint training programme until this Friday. I’ve just released a new video today, called Your Thriving Practice (Moving Forwards), which shows you exactly what you need to do to grow a thriving coaching practice.
You can find out all about it here: www.JamieSmart.com/FreeVideos
To your thriving practice
Big love
Jamie
Sunday Times Bestselling Author, Speaker and Executive Coach