The following is taken from David’s interview with Ginger Cockerham in 10 Super Coaches.
What if a client brings up a serious life problem – and I don’t have a clue about how to help her/him?
I learned to distinguish between coaching and therapy and referred clients quickly who needed therapy. With the rest of my clients, I recognized that it was not my job to solve my client’s problems – it was my job to be their coach and support and encourage them as they discovered their own solutions.
How can I possibly convince a company that coaching will impact the culture and the bottom line with no established research to substantiate that?
I did pilot programs that would provide results substantiated by their internal records.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Mike Turner in 10 Super Coaches.
What was the most disheartening for you while building your practice?
What was most disheartening was not getting enough clients – and wondering if I should persevere or go back to being a consultant. I coped with this by working my fairly small network more and by seeking out a couple of organizations which were active in the coaching field and trying to develop affiliate relationships with them.
Although my early attempts to develop such relationships didn’t lead to any work, spending time developing the relationships did mean I was around people who were active as coaches and this sustained my confidence that my work would eventually expand – as it eventually did.
What was the most interesting or exciting thing for you about building your practice?
The point at which I realized that my practice was self-sustaining and that I no longer felt a day to day anxiety about whether I would be able to pay the bills that month!
The following is an excerpt from Judy Feld’s Three R’s of Business Success, as part of 10 Super Coaches.
Reach: How many possible buyers/clients/customers/prospects know about your product or service?
- How many subscribers do you have for your E-mail (faxed or mailed) newsletter or broadcast bulletins? Depending on your business, this could be your most valuable asset.
- How many sets of eyes see the articles you write? Being published, in print or at targeted websites, with your byline, contact information and brief bio may be the best way to expand your reach. This means you have many opportunities for marketing expansion by using specialized print publications, and industry/professional websites and e-zines.
- How many people receive your mailings? Whether you send a simple marketing letter, an elaborate brochue, a postcard, a fax. Monitor and count the increasing size of your mailing list.
- How many people attend your presentations, talks, speeches, TeleForums? How can you grow your numbers? Is it the right audience for your product or service?
- How many people visit your website each day? Do you frequently refresh/update your website? Give visitors a reason to access your site, and reason to return, and measure the traffic. It’s easy to measure your visitor count.
I really think in your business that if you have a weak brand you’re not going to want to really put it out there for people. Your not going to really want to hand out your business card. There’s going to be a difference in your energy. But, if you’ve got a strong brand that is really pumping, you are going to be thrilled to hand out your business card. You’re going to want to actually be really public.
One of the best features of a website is that you can automate almost everything, freeing up your time so you can do the things you really want to do – instead of being up to your neck in paperwork.
One type of automation is called an autoresponder. Autoresponders send out a series of email messages you’ve created, in a particular order, at set intervals. You can even personalize the emails with each of the recipients’ names.
It takes on average between six and ten contacts (emails, phone calls, visits, etc.) with a prospect before they will feel they know you well enough to buy from you. The higher the price, the more contacts are needed. That is where autoresponders come in.
Say you had to email 100 prospects on your list. And you had to email them each 10 times over the next six months. 1,000 emails is a LOT to do by hand!
However, you can set up an autoresponder with ten emails that will be automatically sent to the 100 prospects at set intervals. Setting it up is not hard, but there are definitely are some do’s and dont’s we recommend to produce maximum sales. Once you discover the power of autoresponders, you’ll see your business explode!
The following is taken from David’s interview with Jim Earley in 10 Super Coaches.
What training, experience and qualifications did you have when you started coaching?
Well, firstly I had some solid academic qualifications. Aside from those – although I had no specific coaching training – by the time I came to coaching professionally, I had:
- Taken one college class and one honors program on interviewing.
- Taken classes on interpersonal communication and non-verbal communication.
- Read every book David McClelland had written on motivation as well as others.
- Taken one year-long program devoted to the nature of listening.
- Spent five years developing an internal style of coaching as a swimming coach.
- Developed an approach to problem solving.
