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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 news from UCBBP and upcoming resources; how bad pricing can undermine your coaching business; using viral marketing to endorse your business; this week's IQ book selection; and an extract from our forum discussions (great practical content).

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.

Not Yet A Member? Don't fall behind.

Take at a look at some of the resources hundreds

of your peers already have access to...

• 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

UCBBP x25

Early members have already reached lesson 25 of the Ultimate Business Building Program. A flagship business building eCourse for coaches, UCBBP is produced by a team of coaching, business, marketing and strategic development professionals from the Life Coaching Institute and CoachIQ Coaching Club.

The first 25 lessons of this comprehensive eCourse amount to over 50,000 words; it's a full business book on its own! Many concepts contained in UCBBP are based on works of various leading marketing specialists and business leaders such as Robert Cialdini, Jay Abraham and Chet Holmes, and contextualised to suit the specific needs of a life coaching business. 

In addition, each lesson includes resources such as Self Assessment and Action Sheets to assist facilitate the implementation of concepts into your business. Resources such as audios, articles and reports are also included in support of content. It really is a wealth of knowledge to skyrocket your business success.

For more information, visit www.coachingclub.com.au/ucbbp.  

Coming Soon

IQ Special Reports

Our team is currently developing tailored special reports for IQ members. These reports will be distributed in PDF format from early next year. They focus in specific business areas such as sales, product development, copywriting, etc.

Mistake 5: Poor Pricing

Learn the "10 Crucial Mistakes Coaches Make" and how you can avoid them to create the lifestyle you desire in the 3rd fastest growth industry in the world!

There are numerous coaches in the market earning over $100,000.00 per annum. And yet, there are also coaches struggling to etch out a living. Why is that? That's the purpose of this Special Series. In this edition, we tackle poor pricing as one of the crucial mistakes coaches make. 

Note: Parts 1-4 of this series are available in the eZine Archive page.

Coaches are generally very concerned about how they price point their services. Obviously this is an important decision and will affect conversion.

Most coaches price their services based on competition, or rule of thumb. Yet, successful coaches price their services on the value of their solutions. Remember we said your services should be targeted to a niche? And that you should offer Niche Solutions to Niche Problems?

Well, you should value your services on the value of your solutions. Here are some common pricing mistakes coaches make:

• Price against competitors. A common and flawed approach to pricing is to investigate what competitors are charging and price the same or undercut them. This process has no financial case. You may quickly find that each customer is actually costing you money!

This mindset is also destructive as you create no point of distinction between your service and your competitors. Without creating, defining and promoting your unique points of difference, you can be assured that new coaches entering the market will undercut your prices, further eroding profits and clients.

• Hit and miss. Possibly even worse than pricing against competitors is just taking a hit and miss approach. This approach demonstrates a lack of willingness to conduct market research and build the necessary substantive case as to why clients should choose your service over competitors.

• Price out of fear. Many business people establish their prices from a paradigm of fear. They discount the value of their services due to self limiting beliefs. They don't believe in the value of their service because they don't truly believe in the value of themselves.

• Price as a 'product' not a 'benefit'. Many business owners price their service as a product. This approach is too pragmatic. You should not take the approach "I'm selling a 6-hour per month coaching service, how much are people willing to pay per hour for coaching?"

Rather, you need to be focussing attention (your and your prospects) on the benefits of your service. "I have unique knowledge and skills that will solve my client's significant emotional and financial challenges. To have these problems solved clients will invest..."

• Base pricing on negatives. Often business people set prices too low because they focus on negatives, such as 'people won't buy from me at $X.00 because…' Instead, find evidence proving why clients WILL invest in the benefits your service affords them.

• Incongruence. Some people establish prices too high (or too low) when they don't have the requisite congruence throughout all aspects of their business. If you want to sell your service at a premium to the market, you need to be able to justify why you can charge a premium. This justification may be in the form of unique experience; knowledge; solutions; benefits; networks; etc that your competitors can not match.

When you communicate to your prospects you should always get them to focus on the financial cost of their Niche Problems that YOU have the solution to! Get them to put pen to paper and add up what the problem or challenge they face is costing them.

If you do this effectively, the perceived cost of your services (the solution) is very low when compared to the ongoing cost incurred by not employing your services (their problem).

Biz Tip: Value your services on the value you give to your clients by solving their problems. Don't value your services on some ad-hoc value established by your perceived competition. This strategy is most effective if you have already developed your brand and are well entrenched in your niche. However, you have to start somewhere, so begin by placing more value on the solutions you provide.

Pricing is also sensitive to a range of influencers. In some instances, you may have the right price, but not the right supporting marketing and branding. In other cases you may have excellent marketing but the wrong pricing strategy.

It's important to recognise that to find the perfect price requires the perfect balance between all influencers: product/service; marketing; demographic and psychographic profiles; branding; and pricing. Change one and you change the entire mix!

Get Free "Word-of-Mouth" Publicity Using Viral Marketing

This is step 7 of the IQ series "8 Steps to Generate Prospects". In the previous edition we discussed how to get 1,000s of websites to promote your business at no cost. Now we discuss our second last strategy – Getting free publicity using viral marketing. Let's roll to step #7.

Note: Steps 1-6 of this article are available in the eZine Archive page.

Simply defined, viral marketing enables you to spread your marketing message like a virus. You encourage people to pass on information about your web site to one another and use that word-of-mouth publicity to advertise your business!

Once you start the "virus", it spreads without you lifting a finger.

Hotmail.com, the free web-based e-mail service provider, is a classic example of viral marketing. At the bottom of every single Hotmail e-mail sent by Hotmail members, there is a simple one line message:

"Get your free, private e-mail from MSN at www.hotmail.com"

How much time do you think it took Hotmail to include that signature line as part of their e-mail service? Not much at all, yet look at the impact that this simple strategy had on the growth of their business.

You can easily duplicate this strategy by doing something as simple as including a "pass it on link" at the end of a free newsletter.

Something as simple as...

"If you've enjoyed this article, please be sure to forward it to a friend!"

By simply asking readers to take action and forward your newsletter, you'll prompt free "word of mouth" exposure for your business without any extra cost or hassle.

So how do you put viral marketing to work for you? Here are a few simple ideas:

-         Give away free articles (like the ones in Step Four) with a "pass it on" link.

-         Give away free demos of your product.

-         Offer a free trial of your service with a "share this great resource" button on the page.

-         Hold a contest on your web site and give participants an extra entry for every friend they refer.

-         Start an affiliate program.

Who Moved My Cheese?

This book is an analogy of mice vs. men (simple and complicated) in a maze, about how many things such as over-analyzing, stubbornness, and fear can over-complicate simple things, making anything, even life, unnecessarily unbearable.

It is intended to help readers get the most out of anything situation, stay content, and increase their confidence levels. Contrary to the title, the book is neither cliché nor "cheesy". Few if any things stay the same forever, and the book emphasizes the importance of accepting change, and even capitalizing on it. In context, it includes many inspirational quotes such as, "What would I do, if I wasn't afraid?"

The Story itself is very short and to the point, and includes a section where the storyteller and his classmates reflect on how 'The Story' can be applied to their lives.

This provides many examples on how the overall wisdom can easily be applied to many situations in everyday life, from personal relationships, to running businesses. Read this story with an open mind and it just may improve the quality of your daily life, whatever it entails.

Counselling Academy

Counselling Academy is a professional development training provider with a range of courses for the mental health-related industries. All courses can be completed online and from anywhere with a PC and a good internet connection, and are approved by the Australian Counselling Association.

Many of the courses include content which is part of mainstream coaching training, such as CBT, solution-focused and person-centred approaches, and NLP. There are also other general courses on communication and coping skills which can be a useful resource to refer clients to.  

Conversations with a Coach

The content below was extracted from the CoachIQ Forum, available exclusively for Coaching Club members. If you have a coaching or business-related query, pose it at the forum and you shall have your answer! 

"I work as an accountant in a multinational Accounting Practice and am intending to create a coaching role for myself there once I get a little further down the track with the coach training. I see this as a valuable service for the employees and will fit in with the firm's current slogan of "Creating Experiences" (for clients and employees).

How do I go about making a case to the Human Resources to make this happen?"

CoachIQ Coach:

We're aware of many coaches working as consultants or employed coaches to the finance sector. Generally they work to a) assist client businesses, b) optimise practice business performance, c) optimise practice operational performance.

From your post it seems you want to focus on area c, optimising practice operational performance. IE Coaching the firm's employees.

There are few things for you to consider.

Firstly, and this doesn't deal directly with your query, but it's an important consideration, is the labor shortage presently in the accounting industry. You must give consideration to how your firm will perceive your request to transition away from accounting to coaching.

Regarding your specific query, you may consider chunking down your request. Rather than hitting them directly with your request to transition to coaching, you could identify a specific area they're having challenges with and pitch the concept of you leading a coaching program to deal with it. You may be able to point to issues relating to recruitment; retention; staff transitioning; training; motivation; etc.

When you implement this pilot you can be vigilant in quantifying results and gaining the endorsement of the team members involved. You'll then be able to take a quantified in-house case study to HR and/ or management and request, based on proven results, to expand the project.

When developing your pitch (IE sales process) it's always paramount to firstly put yourself in the other person's shoes and identify their objections. Once you know their objections you know where to build value. In your circumstances, some objections may be:

1. How will the firm profit from you coaching employees? Currently you are most likely working on billings, hence the firm can easily quantify their ROI on your wage. As a coach, how can you provide an assurity that the firm will benefit from the transaction of employing you as a coach?

2. How will the firm replace you in your current position? As per above, with the labor shortage of accountants, it'll be a concern for the firm who'll replace you. A 'transition' into coaching may be more palatable than a direct change.

We hope this helps initially. Feel free to contact us again. It's always a pleasure to help.

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