Market Your Coaching Services by Selling to “Invisible Buyers.”

Whether we are offering coaching or consulting services, our clients and prospects are always trying to reduce the risks of using our services.

One way they try to reduce risk is to conform to the attitudes and preferences of others. Family, friends, coworkers, and other groups influence your prospects and their buying behavior. Sometimes called reference groups, I call them “invisible buyers.” Your invisible buyers are a point of comparison for your prospect’s own choices and attitudes. Sometimes the influence of others is subtle; other times it is quite apparent.

For example, as a coach, your invisible buyers can influence prospects by. . .

– Directly recommending a specific coach or training approach they already know about or have used themselves.

– Giving your prospect a frame of reference and an opportunity to compare your coaching service to what is acceptable to group members.

– Influencing the prospect to change his or her attitudes about using a coach so that they are consistent with those of the group.

– Providing reassurance and approval to the prospect’s decision to use your services.

Occupation, memberships, social class, and education are all good indicators of which groups are important to your prospect. The prospect may even mention having had a conversation about using your service with a friend or coworker.

By noting how others in the prospect’s reference groups have used similar services, you can reassure your prospect that working with you is a smart choice.

I would strongly suggest that in your first contact with a prospect that you ask if they or someone they know has used a coach before. Probe a little into that area if they say “yes.” What kind of coach? Was it a positive experience for them? Would they do it again? How much weight does your prospect give to their prior coaching experiences or those of friends and coworkers?

The next step is to adjust your conversation to respond to concerns or experiences that might negatively influence a sale. Similarly, you can reinforce positive experiences and subtly refer to them during your conversation to help establish the value of your service.

Best Principles Before Best Practices.

By Ray Blunt

There is a game being played somewhere right now within almost every government organization. The game is called ‘In Search of Best Practices’ and it is played something like this: “We’re about to launch a major change (like putting in a leadership development program). Before we do, let’s benchmark the best organizations around to find out what they do, and especially, let’s see what other government organizations are doing. After all, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel now, do we?”

So the change team dutifully goes out, does their research, makes some site visits, documents their findings, and then prepares a menu of best practices from which a program is built. The game proceeds by briefings up the line which are bolstered by citations from the Who’s Who of Best Practices—prominent companies in the news, selections from the 100 Best Companies to Work For, other Federal agencies, etc. The game is won when the program, designed around the Best Practices, is given the go ahead. So what’s the problem? It may possibly be declaring a premature end to the game by failing to realize that ‘best’ is simply a local term, not a universal one, and that there may be better and prior wisdom that is being ignored in the bargain. It’s something worth discussing.

Interesting Practices
The victory lap cannot realistically be taken until the program design actually produces the results that people intended because somewhere in people’s minds is the sneaking suspicion that if we do it like the big boys and girls we will be like the big boys and girls. But that syllogism can turn out to be false, and some have fallen into that trap—including me.

Dave Ulrich, perhaps the wisest human resources expert around, uses the term “interesting practices” to describe such approaches to a range of human resources initiatives. They may work in the long run–or they may not. The key is to understand the culture of the organization, the capabilities the organization possesses, and the needs it is trying to address. Keeping up with the GEs or the Microsofts of the world or even the IRSs does not mean your approach to leadership development will mirror the outcomes of theirs.

Five Best Principles
It may make more sense to start with a solid understanding of what can be called ‘best principles’ in succession and leader development and then see which practices will work for your organization’s culture and its specific needs for future leadership. If you begin with the best principles, you can then safely test out your proposed practices to see which ones best fit your situation. Here are five principles that have bred success, specifically in excellent Federal Government organizations:
1. They base their practices on the four proven principles of how leaders learn to lead—challenging and varied work experiences; significant relationships with senior leaders; self awareness based upon feedback, reflection and lessons from the hardship crucibles of life; and self development and selected training.
2. They make a business case for developing future leaders with decision makers that helps drive the mission and avoids the trap of simply being something ‘good’ to do.
3. They recognize that initiating leadership development, at least in the Federal Government, is most often a cultural change as well where leaders shape the culture and it is not simply a case of human resources development (HRD) standing up another new training program.
4. They understand that the key cultural change is this: it takes leaders to grow leaders—not trainers, not HRD experts, not consultants: leaders grow leaders—and that it will take a serious time commitment on their part.
5. Senior leaders hold themselves and their human resources development and training partners accountable for results—those results are that a next generation of good, solid leaders emerge (who, in turn, grow those behind them).

Getting It Right
In my opinion these are tantamount to being non-negotiable principles of developing future leaders, forged from experience. These must be the framework around which any leadership development program is designed before anyone starts thinking about best practices. And if you look carefully, four of these five principles are based on an assumption that it takes leaders to grow leaders. These principles are not a menu; each one is critical to success. Successfully applying these principles requires hard work and persistence over a long period of time—make no mistake about that.

So, what do you see in your own leader development efforts in your organization? If you are a leader, are you actively engaged in developing the next generation in your own organization at whatever level (and devoting the time it takes)? What barriers do you face in doing so? If you are an aspiring leader, what can you do to help imbed these principles if they are not yet implemented? Do you think you can make such an impact on those above you? Finally, is it a realistic expectation that the public service leaders of today have the time and the capability to help grow the next generation or the awareness that their contribution is sorely needed?
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Ray Blunt is currently the Associate Director and Fellow at the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture. For the past 12 years he has served as a leadership consultant and teacher for the Council for Excellence in Government and the Federal Executive Institute as well as for several government and non-profit organizations. He spent 35 years in public service in the US Air Force and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trade shows for coaches.

As much as we would like to believe that the power of Internet-based social networking will fill our schedules with paying clients, old-fashioned, face-to-face social networking should still be a major part of your marketing program.

Since the success of your practices are fundamentally based on the success of our client relationships, it makes sense to interact directly whenever you can with potential customers. Seeing and talking to you will give the prospect a real sense of your style, interest, and professional manner. That’s where trade shows fit in.

Given the large number of trade shows available throughout the year, how do you know which ones to attend?

Before allowing some other experts in trade show marketing chime in, let me lay down CNE’s tradeshow marketing rule #1: The attendees at the prospective show need to closely match your target market profile. For example, if you do life coaching and your target market consists primarily of stay-at-home moms with a home business, don’t waste your money going to trade shows designed to meet high-end business executives. Of course, if they are your target market, by all means go.

In 25 years of marketing I can say with some certainty that most of the waste in marketing budgets goes for marketing programs that reach the wrong people. So, do your homework, define that target market, and then choose the trade shows you want to consider.

In a very helpful post, Trade show Marketing — Getting Ready for the Big Event, author Patty Stripes offers advice about several essential topics. Some examples:

Demographics of previous trade shows: Did the last show done by the trade show provider have a decent show of visitors? Is the trade show provider boasting about the numbers on its marketing material or hiding it in some obscure corner for the number crunchers? Did the trade show provider have a professional organization draw up the demographics of the visitors? Do the demographics fit your requirement? Answers to these queries should help you decide if you should use this trade show as a sales and marketing vehicle for your company.

What is the total number of booths and what is the occupancy rate a few weeks before the show? The thumb rule is that a trade show can have about 5 to 10 percent of empty stands about 2 weeks before the event which eventually gets filled in my last minute confirmations or by sponsors. If the numbers are higher that this, you should check the official reason given by the exhibitors to ensure that you don’t end up participating in a show which has too many empty stands.

Is the trade show provider offering a ‘desperate’ discount and doing unusual number of follow ups? If you get an offer for a trade show booth which is just too good to believe then it is probably too good to believe. ‘Desperate’ discounts are offered by event planners as a last ditch attempt to sell all booths as you should only participate is such trade shows if you have unique reason to do so.

Want to know the Common Exhibit Marketing Mistakes: Ten Tips on How to Avoid Them? You can find all ten in an article on Marketing Today, written by Trade Show Coach, Susan Friedmann, CSP. Giving visitors an incentive to come to your booth and having “giveaways” that work are two common sense pieces of advice.

Trade-Show-Advisor.com bills itself as a one-stop trade show resource and knowledge base. Indeed, I found plenty of sound advice for someone considering a trade show. For example, under Trade Show Promotions they suggest the following –

Personalized contact with your target audience prior to the event. This includes pre-selling attendees through phone calls, personalized invitations, direct mail, email, or meaningful giveaways to introduce your products and encourage conference registrants to visit your booth.

Marketing activities during the event to attract conference attendees to your exhibit booth. This includes live entertainment, hands-on activities, audio-visual programs, unique trade show booth attractions such as a cash cube money machine or high-tech interactive game, tradeshow giveaways (make them as distinctive as possible), and food – if permitted. Of course, a well-trained, professional, and welcoming trade show staff is essential to your success.

Follow-up initiatives after the show with each individual who visited your booth to help turn leads into sales. Send a personalized handwritten note, along with a customized company information packet or other appropriate material, within a week following the trade show event.

You can also find a very thorough guide to all things trade show in this lengthy PDF file, Trade Show Marketing Manual. Take a look!

Happy marketing at your next trade show! And don’t forget to bring plenty of candy (to keep your blood sugar up!).