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Copyright: 2007 Coaching Club

Welcome to IQ, the official CoachIQ Coaching Club member eZine. Each week you receive the latest CoachIQ news, resources, professional development tips and industry information. IQ is your ally in developing your flourishing coaching business.

This edition's highlights:

Highlights in this edition include the latest UCBBP lesson; ten facts about coaching products; how to handle email communications; a book review; some tips to improve relationships and; industry resources and opportunities.

We welcome IQ readers to forward this publication to friends, colleagues, family and anyone you think will benefit from the eZine's content. Make YOUR community part of OUR community.

Team Up With Hundreds of Successful, Progressive-Thinking Coaches... and Skyrocket Your Business Growth!

Use their tools, apply their strategies, pick their brains and take their knowledge to DRAMATICALLY escalate the growth of your coaching business.

Don't miss out on the most important opportunity of your coaching career! Here are some of the resources you'll access with a free unrestricted 30-day pass into the INNER SANCTUM of the world's coaching elite:

• The industry leading 104-week eCourse (UCBBP) that steps you in detail through every process required to build a flourishing coaching business.
• Dozens of 'fill-in-your-business-name' marketing and operational templates.
• Audios and Podcasts by some of Australia's leading Business Leaders and Master Coaches, discussing their most intimate business and coaching secrets.
• Access to the country's most exclusive coaching networks, previously only open to the coaching elite.
• A Bookclub with over 75 world-renowned publications.
• Videos, life tips and strategies, interviews, plus much more.

CoachIQ Coaching Club is a resource rich community for practising and aspiring coaches. It contains ALL the necessary information, resources, templates, networks and intellectual property you need to avoid costly pitfalls and implement powerfully effective strategies to build a flourishing coaching business.

Latest Additions

Developing and Maintaining Effective Teams (Part 2)

Learning how to work effectively with teams - or building a successful team - can be an extremely powerful skill in growing your business. Whether we're talking about a team of 3 or 4 individuals, or 300, the principles outlined below are applicable to any situation.

In Part 1, we introduced the Five-Factor Model of Team Management and established how team 'Focus' and 'Commitment' play an indispensable role in developing and maintaining effective teams.

In this UCBBP lesson we explore three other factors in the Five-Factor Model: 'Communication', 'Accountability' and 'Performance'.

URL: www.coachingclub.com.au/ucbbp

Featured Resource

Coaching Tool - GROW Model

The GROW model provides a basic structure for communication with a client. It provides focus and direction. The letters GROW form the acronym for:

• Goal
• Reality
• Options
• Wrap up/Way forward

This tool is available exclusively to members at the 'Resources' section.

URL: www.coachingclub.com.au/resources

10 Facts About Products

A product is a packaged and branded educational resource. Successful coaches all over the world know that developing products should be a top of mind exercise to grow their business.

In a nutshell, coaches that develop products are significantly more successful than coaches that don't. In this article, we review WHY it is so important to have products and; HOW you can use your products to grow your business.

WHY are coaching products important?

• Increased Credibility. Delivering high quality, branded products to your niche is one of the most powerful means to build your credibility. There is virtually no other way to accelerate your perception as an expert in your niche.

• Better networks. Authorities in your niche are usually very willing to assist and participate in the development of products that assist their industry. Networking with these authorities will give you an immediate, highly leveraged entry into your niche. It will open many doors to Joint Ventures; list sharing; public forums; group meetings; etc.

• Less reliance on time. As a coach, what is your commodity? When everything is distilled down, what are you selling? Coaching? No. Happiness? No. Success? No. Health? No. You are selling your time! Time is your commodity. And when time is your commodity, when you are reliant on selling your time, your income potential is extremely limited.

You can only realistically work 8-hours a day. So the only way to earn more money is to charge more. There is a limit to how much you can charge. And when you stop selling your time (go on holidays with your family; get sick), your income stops. Products are your escape from being time reliant. By commercialising products you rely less on time as your commodity.

• Switch from one-to-one to one-to-many. Most coaches sell one-to-one coaching as their core service. This restricts your time, and also limits your commercial reach.

Commercialising products allows you to leverage your intellectual property by 10, 100, 1000 times. You can be selling hundreds of eBooks; eCourse; tele-clinic seats; per week. Now that's how to leverage your knowledge and time!

Once you have products, how can you put them to use for maximum affect? We'll now investigate ways you can use your products to increase enquiries; conversions and sales. Let's look at HOW you can use your products:

• Building your list. In an earlier module we discussed the sales funnel, and how important it is to get as many qualified prospects in the top of your funnel as possible. Using your products is a highly leveraged means to do this. Here are a few examples:

1. Offer a free eBook as an incentive to join an online club; eZine; newsletter.
2. Let people download a "Special Report" after subscribing to your list.
3. Mention your list (education-based) on your tele-clinic call.
4. Gather business cards or contacts at your seminar.

• Loss Leader. You know by now the net marginal worth of your clients, and hence how much you can afford to invest at the front-end on acquiring a client. A strategy to attain client contracts is to use a 'loss leader'. This means you make a financial loss at the front-end, knowing you’ll make gains over the term of the life of your client.

For instance, you may give away free vouchers to a group coaching workshop to members of your niche. This may cost you $100 per attendee. However, you get 90% of attendees into the top of your funnel; 30% of them to level 2 within 3-months; 20% to level 3 within 6-months. The net result may be a $1,750 gain over 6-12 months per attendee.

• Value-add. Products are an excellent way to value-add your services. For instance, you may use a 6-week ticket to your specialist tele-clinic as an incentive to upsell prospects from a 3-month contract to a 6-month contract.

• Referral. Your products can be an excellent tool to incentivise referrals. You may go to the prospects in your funnel and say to them "We know you enjoy the information we provide you, and we're sure you know other that would benefit from it. If you put us in touch with these people, as a thank-you we'll give you this XYZ product".

• JV Incentives. Products are an excellent way to provide incentives for joint ventures. For instance, just say you approach a gym or a health spa, and undertake some cooperative marketing.

They write to their members and inform them that for a limited time they can go to your website and download a free special report "How to Overcome the 7 Biggest Barriers to Achieving Your Fitness Goals, by specialist coach ABC". To download the report they have to give you their name and email address.

• Conversion. You can use your products to improve conversion and shorten conversion time lines. For instance, offer your product as a value-add to a core service for a limited time.

As you can see, there are many powerful advantages to creating products, and many flexible ways to use them.

For more information about business strategies, subscribe to a free 1-month trial at www.coachingclub.com.au.

Enjoyed this article? Forward it to a Friend! Sharing business insights has never been easier with our automated forwarding system. You can select any edition of IQ online and forward it instantly to 4 friends or colleagues.

How to Handle Email Communications

Email has fast become the one of the most widely used mediums for business communication. Mastering email correspondence is one of the simplest and most effective ways of ensuring that your messages are not only read but followed up accordingly.

Inboxes are often overloaded with numerous messages of varying importance. If you are sending emails as a means of communicating with your fellow team members and business contacts, you will want to ensure that your message gets read and is clearly understood.

Constructing an effective email - To construct an effective email it may be helpful to remember the following key points

1. Make use of the subject line: The subject line provides an opportunity to inform the receiver of the purpose of the email. A subject line ideally should describe exactly what the email is about. An appropriate subject line will maximise the possibility of your message being read.

2. Use concise language: Like any written business correspondence it is important to keep business emails concise and to the point. Often the viewing area for emails is limited, so if possible limit them to a few short paragraphs. Everyone is busy - do not waste their time - be clear and concise.

3. Make any required follow up clear: If your email is a request for action or follow up from a team member make this clear in your message. Remember to include any contact details (such as phone or fax numbers and addresses for snail mail) that the receiver may require.

4. Respond to emails in a timely manner: Prompt response to emails not only promotes efficiency, but often encourages team members to respond in a similar timely manner.

5. Use Templates: Using templates can fast-track responding times, particularly when you receive similar queries on a regular basis. Do not be afraid to cheat; leave a few pre-designed messages saved on your emailing program (usually drafts) and simply fill them up with the appropriate information.

Finally, make sure you organise your email. Create concise categories to store your messages. In many occasions, you will need to check previous emails to respond to a new one or find useful information about a transaction.

By having well-designed categories, you will save time (instead of scrolling through hundreds of records on your inbox) and clear your inbox (keeping you away from unnecessary reading as you search through your records). Finally, keeping emails organised is important as much of your communication with clients may be done via this medium.

Note: Occasionally, you should make backups of your email messages and keep them on a CD, DVD or other storage medium. You never know when your computer will crash, do you?

Enjoyed this article? Forward it to a Friend! Sharing business insights has never been easier with our automated forwarding system. You can select any edition of IQ online and forward it instantly to 4 friends or colleagues.

Moments of Truth

Moments of Truth is Carlzon's story of how, under his leadership as president and CEO, Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) emerged from deficits to profitability, improved services, and enhanced its market position by becoming a customer-oriented company organized for change.

His strategies a focus on the customer, encouraging risk-taking, delegating more authority to front-line employees, and eliminating vertical levels of hierarchy for a more horizontal organization bear the hallmarks of entrepreneurial management and the pursuit of excellence.

Reportedly a Scandinavian bestseller, Carlzon's book has a universal message and deserves attention for its clear illustration of these strategies in action.

Title: Moments of Truth

Author: Jan Carlzon

Category: Customer Service

Business Coaching Worldwide (BCW)

Business Coaching Worldwide (BCW) is a unique online publication that delivers practical, leading-edge international content related to topics associated with business and business coaching.

Tens of thousands of readers from over 90 countries and counting enjoy open dialogue and debate about pressing business and business coaching issues.  

Tips to Improve Relationships

In 1972 Carl Rogers surveyed the changing marriage scene of his day and said "It is becoming increasingly clear that a man-woman relationship will have permanence only to the degree to which it satisfies the emotional, psychological, intellectual and physical needs of the partners".

He went on to quote the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard , saying "The greatest danger , that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, etc., is sure to be noticed" (in Rogers, 1972).

Accounts of divorce do often read very clearly as accounts of people who somehow lost themselves in the marriage. Today we have come to accept that marriage is a commitment of two unique individuals to a partnership, where they must reach satisfaction on their own terms and where individual happiness and fulfillment are not to be compromised.

But for many, a committed relationship and a prolonged period of living with someone are new experiences, and for these people their wants and needs may not be clear even to themselves.

Should this seem evident from the introductory interview, a counsellor can get down to the business of helping them to gain better knowledge of themselves and their needs and expectations of each other, and how they are going to work together to achieve mutual cooperation and fulfillment.

Dr Willard F. Harley is a marriage counsellor and author in the United States who has studied the needs of men and women for many years. He has summarised those needs and placed them in the general perceived order of importance of his clients as follows:

Click here to continue reading this article

Upgrade Your Coaching Skills

Finding high quality professional development programs is challenging. There are rarely programs of interest offered in your proximity. Even if there is, they are usually cost prohibitive. And not to mention the imposition of sacrificing a day or evening.

Well, you now have an alternative. An alternative that over 3,000 industry-members are ALREADY taking advantage of. Counselling Academy is the largest professional development educator in mental health in the country. Counselling Academy has over 50 courses, 560 hours of training, and over 3,000 registered learners.

Here's why Counselling Academy is the latest revolution sweeping through mental health professional development...

• You can access Counselling Academy courses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All courses are delivered and assessed online for your convenient access.
• All courses are developed to the highest industry standards, ensuring you get consistent, predictable, high quality training.
• Courses are delivered utilising the latest technologies. Many courses blend video and textual content to enhance your experience.
• CA delivers, on average, over 25 new courses each year.
• Plus much more!

To learn more about how you can boost your professional development, and save thousands a year, visit www.counsellingacademy.com.au.

Be Found With Find A Coach

Marketing is the thorn in the side of most coaches. Particularly coaches just starting off. Getting clients is a skill in its own right. It's time consuming, difficult, and expensive! But does it have to be? Not with Find A Coach - the leading search engine specifically for life coaches.

Find A Coach offers a range of tools for coaches wanting to market their services, or simply who would like to see more return for their marketing investment. If you haven't checked it out yet, don't miss the opportunity to be a step ahead of the rest of the pack.

Your clients are searching for you right now. Make it easy for them to find you.

URL: www.findacoach.net.au

Broadcast Your Brand to the World

Coach Radio is an online broadcaster of Life Coaching specific content. Delivered online via the Coach Radio website (www.coachradio.com.au) and Podcast, Coach Radio content is extremely convenient.

Coach Radio is currently accepting applications from CoachIQ members who would like to become broadcasters of this growing community. If you are interested in finding out more information, email info@coachradio.com.au to request a Coach Radio Prospectus.

URL: www.coachradio.com.au

Enjoyed this newsletter? Forward it to a Friend! Sharing business insights has never been easier with our automated forwarding system. You can select any edition of IQ online and forward it instantly to 4 friends or colleagues.